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Buying Amazon bulk gift cards
Is your company sending gift cards as a way to improve employee recognition, lead generation, brand marketing, or customer loyalty? One of the most popular gift card options to send is an Amazon gift card.
Senders and recipients alike enjoy Amazon for its fast delivery, excellent customer service, and expansive selection of products. However, if you are sending at scale, buying Amazon bulk gift cards may not be the most efficient way of delivering an impactful customer experience.
Today we will look at the differences between purchasing Amazon bulk gift cards and using a gift card management platform - like Runa - to meet your digital gift card management needs.
Before we get into the differences between buying in bulk and sending gift cards at scale, it helps to understand what you’re looking for in a provider.
Some questions you should ask yourself before choosing between a bulk purchase of Amazon gift cards and investing in a gift card platform:
- How often do you intend to send gift cards with your campaigns?
- How many recipients do you anticipate for upcoming campaigns?
- How much time do you have to dedicate to manually sending physical or eGift cards?
- Do you need the ability to report back on the results of your gift card campaigns?
- Do you need to conduct financial reporting for your enterprise business in connection with your gift card campaigns?
- Would you like the ability to recapture unused gift card funds?
Based on your answers to these questions, you may find it is more efficient to conduct your gifting campaigns through a dedicated platform like Runa.
Let's examine some of the advantages of delivering through Runa versus placing manually purchases of Amazon gift cards through the company’s website.
Quick shameless plug: Runa makes it super easy to order high volume of all gift cards, including Amazon. Why should your company use Runa to distribute Amazon gift cards?
Want to learn more? Schedule a demo of Runa today.
What are bulk Amazon gift cards?
Amazon offers businesses the opportunity to buy gift cards in bulk through its website. It can deliver either a physical gift card or bulk order codes. These can be delivered through an app, via promotional emails, or over social posts. Though there aren't any discounts or special promotions associated with buying in bulk, there are no fees for Amazon gift cards delivered with the service, and no expiration dates.
This is one of the main advantages of ordering gift cards directly through Amazon versus buying through a retail store. A retailer such as a grocery store may charge an activation fee of up to $6 per card, greatly impacting your budget over a large-scale send. Amazon also offers the option of “swift claim” cards deposited directly into the recipient account.
For those sending a one-time or occasional corporate gift card campaign, buying Amazon gift cards (or Starbucks gift cards) in bulk might provide an easy way to reward a small number of employees, leads, or customers. You can order them through the standard checkout process on their website with easy payment options such as a credit card payment or bank transfer. If you want to get more mileage out of your gift card campaigns, there are some aspects of our platform you’ll want to consider.
How to buy Amazon bulk gift cards
There are several ways to buy Amazon gift cards:
- eGift cards through the gift card section of the Amazon online store or app (these can be delivered to recipients by providing their email addresses)
- physical gift cards through Amazon (delivered in bulk to your address)
- bulk purchases conducted through the Amazon.com incentives API
- through a retail outlet such as a grocery store, online merchant, or card kiosk (subject to store availability)
- by using a digital gift card platform like Runa
Though Amazon provides a variety of ways to meet the need for products, there are major advantages of using a gift card platform instead of purchasing directly from Amazon.
Click here to start buying Amazon gift cards in bulk.
Advantages of using Runa over Amazon to buy gift card bulk purchases
While any of the above-mentioned methods will work, there are many advantages to using the Runa platform for your gift card programs:
Less expensive, more efficient
One of the biggest advantages of using the Runa platform is the potential to save money and time when buying your cards. When sending a campaign in bulk, depending on volume, you’ll take advantage of discounts available within the platform. Users can buy their Amazon gift cards (or cards from any of our other 1,000+ partners) through the dashboard, versus providing a credit card or bank transfer. This allows multiple users to send at scale, without the hassle of expense reporting, corporate card use, or expenditure requests.
Quick, customizable sends
Users have the ability to send Amazon gift cards to recipients quickly and easily. You can order the number of cards you need, create fully customized bulk orders that improve the customer experience, create expiry dates for time-expiring deals, and reward your customers or employees with the corporate gifts most likely to make an impact.
Reporting and tracking
Through the Runa platform, you also have the ability to track the success of your gift card campaigns in order to inform future projects and understand what types of offers work for your recipients. You can use this information to tailor an offer, discern preferences in your reward program, and improve your corporate gifting programs. The reporting features of Runa also allow you to do any financial reporting required for your organization.
Reclaimed funds
Another major advantage is the ability to recover funds that have gone unused in a specific amount of time. When you buy gift cards - either physical or digital - using Amazon, you essentially give away those assets, without the hope of recouping in the event a recipient either doesn’t use their total balance or inadvertently loses access to the account. For instance, if someone accidentally throws away their physical gift card, that's just free money for Amazon, while it's a loss for both the sender and the recipient. But with Runa, the gift card balance is always stored within the software and can be recaptured if it goes unused.
General bulk gift card purchase disadvantages
Despite the benefits of placing bulk orders, there are several drawbacks to buying gift cards - especially from Amazon - in bulk.
Distribution remains the responsibility of a point person within your organization. When buying in this manner, there is little opportunity to track the success of your gift card campaign. This may be important, in order to understand how and when your recipients are using the balance on their card.
Even though an Amazon gift card is a practical offer that can be used to purchase the perfect gift, much like a generic Visa gift card or another prepaid card, it may be perceived as impersonal by the recipient if not sent in a personalized way. Buying through Runa allows you to fully customize the experience of each recipient, making a potentially generic gift into a stronger connection.
Recapture isn’t available. Once the recipient has the card or code, that portion of the budget is gone (whether they use the whole balance or not).
Sending gift cards at scale with Runa
Are you looking for more flexibility than you get with standard Amazon bulk gift card orders? Runa is here to help.
Schedule a free demo of Runa and see how our intuitive platform and API can help optimize your gift card distribution process while helping you save money.
