If you have a chamber gift certificate, or chamber bucks program, you’ve rolled out in the hopes of encouraging people to spend more locally, you know what a help they can be to local businesses. They make great prizes and giveaways, as well as employee recognition awards and awards for chamber bests.

While all of those recognitions are well received, they are also thought of in advance. If your chamber gives out chamber bucks, you may never have considered the convenience factor in purchasing.

Online Chamber Bucks Programs Offer…

Frictionless purchasing. Many chamber gift certificates must be purchased at the chamber office. This alone can create friction in the buying process. First the purchaser needs to think of chamber bucks as an option, then he needs to make a special trip to the chamber during chamber hours. Then he has to wait for you to “write” one up for him.

What about if he remembers he needs to purchase chamber bucks in the middle of the night?

Oh well. Hope he thinks of it again tomorrow when the chamber’s open.

If your chamber bucks were online, he could access your website whenever he thought about it (hello impulse buyers), and purchase when it’s most convenient for him to do so. He can print off the gift card then and there.

Tracking. If your gift certificate program is all on paper, you write out a gift certificate in the amount the purchaser wants and send him on his way. Who knows how it’s spent and where, not to mention what happens if it’s misplaced.

At the end of each month, you can add everything up on your own and spend hours on the administrative management of a chamber bucks system.

An online system saves you time from a management perspective and it also gives you insight into where your bucks are being used. Not only is this interesting information, it can be employed later when your member businesses are renewing. You can provide them with the amount of chamber bucks spent at their store. This can be a pretty successful renewal tool.

Last-Minute Shopping. Waiting for the chamber to open doesn’t work to capture those last-minute purchases. If you offer online purchasing, people can buy, print, and give their certificates in a matter of minutes. Your chamber can save the day and make the purchaser look like a hero for giving the gift of local.

Is your chamber gift certificate program online? It should be if you want it to be successful.

Image credit: stevendepolo via Flickr