Supplier Profile: Blackhawk Soars September 25, 2008
By Alexandra Haake
One of the major suppliers in the gift card area of this year's Motivation Show is Blackhawk Network. With expanding operations and growth in both the consumer and B2B market, the company continues to see new opportunities for gift cards.
Vice President of Marketing Teri Llach says the company receives substantial exposure in the US and Canada in grocery, convenient, drug, and specialty stores through its Gift Card Malls. Llach describes gift cards as a new kind of "category" that stores and retailers are now offering alongside the traditional categories of, say, dairy and cereal. She describes Blackhawk as a "category manager" that is responsible for overseeing this component of its retail partners' stores.
According to the company's Web site, the pre-paid gift cards are the fastest growing segment of the incentive market, making them ideal for corporate managers looking for a simple and convenient incentive solution. On the B2B side, Llach says, Blackhawk offers businesses the ability to reward employee contribution, and on the B2B and retail sides it enables them to reward customer loyalty.
Pre-paid gift cards lead the incentive pack largely because users are given the freedom to choose. The variety of gift card retailers, and the pre-paid, re-loadable debit card option are extremely attractive to HR managers in charge of corporate incentive programs, says Llach.
"That flexibility is really nice, especially today, where you don't want a bunch of stuff but you want the right stuff," Llach says. "Gift cards allow people to feel like they’re treating themselves. There's no guilt in using a gift card. You don't pay bills with it, you get to treat yourself."
Retailers are just as eager to keep their customers happy and loyal. They want users to come to the stores and use their cards because research shows that most actually spend over the amount of the card, Llach says. This provides a major incentive for the retailer to promote the cards, but for the corporate buyer looking to give their own diverse body of employees a useful incentive, it demonstrates the card's effectiveness because consumers are finding the cards useful and even spending more.
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