Personalised digital gifting tool embraced by DJs, Country Road for Mother's Day

Several Australian big retailers and brands have taken to personalised digital gift vouchers in time for this year’s Mother’s Day on 8 May.

The new personalised digital gift messages are being facilitated by Melbourne tech startup, gift flick, which has created an ecommerce plug-in allowing consumers to virtually send a product or gift voucher in an online retailer’s store via their preferred messaging channel and at a time they set. The gifts are then revealed as part of a ‘gift story’ featuring a personalised message, photo and/or video, which can run for up to 1 minute.

The list of brands using the new tech includes Country Road, David Jones, Jo Mercer and Kitchen Warehouse.

Gift flick co-founder and CMO, Helen Marsh, said the aim was to offer a creative, positive way for consumers to reveal physical gifts within a digital environment, helping finalise purchases at the last minute while still protecting a level of personalisation to the gifting process.

“The gift flick experience puts the focus on the thoughtful selection and the relationship between the gifter and the receiver and leaves the retailer’s logistics company to deal with the logistical task of shipping of the physical items,” she explained.

Gift flick is an API-based plug-in and connects directly to the startup’s servers in order to avoid any website loading times. Marsh also noted the experience is embedded within the existing customer purchase journey. The brands are charged only as sales are converted at the retail end.

“Brands, retailers and their creative partners can use this ‘white label’ tech to create bespoke seasonal or evergreen customisable gift stories opening up a whole new creative channel that delivers extra value to customers,” Marsh said.

Country Road first signed up to use gift flick last Christmas and reportedly saw a 10x ROI in sales as a result.

“The dedicated gift flick customer EDM received 20 per cent above benchmark engagement and more than 1m views of paid and organic social advertising showed consumers were keen to learn more about innovative, personalised ways to gift,” said Country Road marketing communications manager, Charlie Watt.

Off the back of the Christmas activity, Country Road determined eight in 10 gift flicks were gifting physical products, while the same amount were sent after its traditional Christmas delivery deadline, suggesting incremental sales growth. The company said half of gift flicks then sent in January were related to birthday gifting.

For Mother’s Day, Country Road is using imagery of the chrysanthemum flower, accompanied by a piano music as a backdrop to a personalised video message/ photo and text before revealing the gift(s) or gift card that the buyer has chosen.

“The brilliance of gift flick is twofold: The way in which our customers can now quickly and easily send a personalised gift message digitally to their loved ones using the social platform of their choice; and the benefit for our brand of an additional marketing channel to share our latest creative communications directly with customers,” Watt added.

David Jones also signed on to the gifting tool in time for Christmas last year and will again employ the tech as part of its Mother’s Day ‘You’re my World’ story. This time, it’s using vintage map iconography to reflect the distances potentially existing between children and mums. Consumers can choose to share personal photos or video messages as well as text to reveal the e-gift card, as well as feature one of the brand’s ‘friends of David Jones’, Nicole Warne, interacting with women in her day-to-day world of digital entrepreneurialism.

“This Mother’s Day we are encouraging our customer to show their mother, or the mother figure in their life, that ‘she’s your world’ with a personalised e-gift card from gift flick. This simple to use smart technology is able to connect the customer to their mother or mother figure in a way that is personalised and emotive, two key factors which are imperative to building brand loyalty,” David Jones general manager for marketing communications, Georgia Hack, said.

Shoe brand, Jo Mercer, is using gift flick for the first time for Mother's Day, and is using white box, branded tissue and black ribbon in its creative to encourage digital gifting using the personalised platform. Fellow new user, Kitchen Warehouse’s gifting option includes a more upbeat tune and features a mum cooking up pasta and receiving a kiss on the cheek.

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