How Leading Brands Are Making Stored Value More Useful
Many consumers have spending power they aren’t using. Loyalty points, promotional credits, refunds and rewards often sit unused because customers don’t know what they have or can’t easily access it when they’re ready to make a purchase.
That value becomes even more important as consumers pay closer attention to every dollar they spend.
Idle value doesn’t help customers, and it doesn’t help brands. For marketers, there is a clear opportunity to bring all types of stored value into the shopping and payment experience instead of hoping customers remember to go looking for it.
Put Stored Value Where Customers Need It
Even though consumers want to reduce the cost of purchases, most aren’t thinking about stored value as a primary form of payment at checkout.
But imagine a customer opening a retailer’s app and immediately seeing all available spending power in one place. This detail can shape what they end up shopping for. When they reach checkout, eligible balances automatically appear alongside other payment options so they can apply the value they have without disrupting the transaction.
The experience feels seamless because value shows up right when it’s relevant and removes extra steps. It also helps promotional campaigns perform as intended by making incentives and rewards easier for customers to access and use.
Real-World Example of Stored Value Done Right
Different brands approach stored value strategy in different ways depending on their customer journey, business model and goals. What they have in common is a desire to make value more visible and convenient, to support everything from customer retention to repeat purchases and ongoing engagement.
At Blackhawk Network (BHN), we have partnered with several global brands to make this reality possible. Here is a highly successful example demonstrating how one leading brand is using stored value and generating impressive results:
How a Top Social Media Platform Makes Social Commerce Easier
The path from discovery to purchase can be surprisingly fragile on social media platforms. Too often, customers discover or like a product they see in their feed, put the item in their cart, but then abandon the purchase. There are many reasons this could happen. They may switch over to another app, skip the purchase because it’s too expensive, or want to consider other options outside of the platform.
A clunky checkout experience can also make the purchase not worth the effort or a return visit, and many brands don’t realize that stored value can influence the outcome of some of these critical moments.
This premise is true and visible through a case study with our partner, one of the largest social media platforms in the world. Our partner wanted to become a starting point for shopping journeys and encourage spending that stayed within its app via gift card purchases and redemption. So we designed and helped launch a digital gift card program tailored to its billions of app and online users. Through our API technology, we made sure the payment process was smooth and frictionless, which encouraged completed gift card transactions and future purchases within the platform.
After seeing strong engagement and ROI, we explored other ways stored value could be integrated into our partner’s platform. This resulted in the development of an in-app digital wallet that advanced the platform’s payment process to display gift cards, refunds, appeasements and promotional credits as a single balance at checkout.
Adoption of this technology was fast and fruitful. In the first year, our partner’s platform retained tens of millions of dollars that otherwise would have left its ecosystem. It also saved millions in payment processing costs as customers used stored value to pay more often than credit and debit cards. Roughly 90% of funds added to the balance were spent within 30 days, and 95% within 60 days.
The results show what can happen when stored value is fully integrated into brand experiences. Customers are more likely to use what they have; brands keep more value within their ecosystem and each balance becomes a reason to come back.
Make Stored Value Work Harder
Many brands already have programs featuring stored value. But rewards, points, refunds and other incentives only deliver value to customers and businesses if they can be easily accessed and used.
As consumers continue to be intentional about their spending, there is a distinct opportunity for brands to help customers put the value they already have to better use. Brands that make total spending power fully visible and surface rewards, credits and balances at checkout can make those programs more relevant, more useful and ultimately more valuable to shoppers.
When customers can easily see and use the value they’ve already earned, loyalty becomes less about accumulation and more about action — to everyone’s benefit.
