Updated tips on how to grow greeting card sales in your newsagency

Greeting cards remain one of the most financially and traffic valuable product categories in any newsagency business. Newsagencies are top of mind for major seasons as well as for less popular card giving captions.

I know from experience that engaging with the category can increase traffic and sales for the category. Here are my refreshed top tips for engagement if you want to grow card sales:

1. Pitch at the counter. Always have a two or three cards for impulse purchase at the counter. If they don’t work in two days, change them. Otherwise, change weekly.
2. Make it easy. Setup a small writing desk. Let people write o the card. Sell them a stamp and offer to post it for them.
3. Pitch at the entrance / exit. Follow the national approach by Coles. They do it because it works. You choose the cards. Do not purchase extra cards, use existing stock.
4. Train and engage the team. Ensure every staff member understands your cards and knows how to approach shoppers. Reference cards in every team meeting.
5. Staff picks. Close to the counter have a selection of staff pick cards. These should change regularly.
6. Include cards in every gift display.
7. Include licenced cards with other products in-store form the same licence.
8. Be a specialist. Leverage low volume captions that most other retailers do not cover. Captions like Thank You Coach and New Home give you the opportunity to remind people about giving cards.
9. Reward loyalty. Ensure every card purchase is a step toward a loyalty bonus. Differentiate your business through this.
10. On social media. Promote a single card or a single licence or a single theme in posts. There should be at least 3 card related posts every week.
11. Promote to businesses. Businesses send cards – if they do not they should – pitch bulk purchase at an offer.

I think we as retailers carry the prime obligation to drive card sales and to attract new shoppers to our businesses looking to purchase cards. We are on the front line. This, to me, is what sets our obligation. We need to do this by being engaged with the category, loving it for its high margin and traffic generation and being creative in our pitch. Our influence is greater than we and suppliers have allowed it to be over the years.

What I have written here is a subset of a much larger piece on greeting cards.

I hope you find the suggestions useful.