A number of major UK retailers including John Lewis, Urban Outfitters and Amazon.co.uk are among the early adopters of major new social gifting service DropGifts, which has launched in the UK this week.
DropGifts is a new international service that allows customers to send gift cards to friends and family via Facebook for birthdays or other special occasions.
It allows Facebook users to send both free and paid-for gift cards to friends and family on their computer, tablet or through a mobile app.
It is already available to customers in the UK, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Spain and will be live in 20+ countries by autumn 2012.
David Van Reyk, joint Managing Director of DropGifts, said: “DropGifts allows people to give and receive real gifts via social media. We have signed up numerous top-name retailers already including John Lewis, Amazon.co.uk and Hotel Chocolat and they are telling us that they see this as a tremendously exciting new sales channel for their gift cards.
“We work with our retailer partners on a one-to-one basis and this ensures that the gift card redemption process is as simple as possible and fits with their existing in-store and online processes and procedures. This makes us a really attractive partner for retailers.”
Gift cards for between £5 and £200 can be sent via the service. Once the card has been sent, it is served to the recipient via Facebook who can then redeem it online or in-store.
Gifts appear in Facebook’s news feeds when they are given and received. This viral effect means that retailers are benefitting from peer-to-peer recommendation in social media every time one of their gift cards is purchased.
John Lewis’ Head of Corporate Sales Simon Williams said: “We are thrilled to be part of the launch of DropGifts in the UK. We see this as an excellent opportunity to share John Lewis gift vouchers via Facebook.”
Urban Outfitters’ Head of Digital Marketing Europe Aurelia Noel said: “Being part of DropGifts is an exciting prospect for Urban Outfitters. Not only will it allow us to reach audiences in the UK, we are particularly excited about the potential reach of the platform internationally.
“It will allow us to connect with customers in France and Germany, where we are looking to expand our brand among fashion-conscious, digitally savvy consumers.”
Other retailers signed up for the launch include Hotel Chocolat, SpaFinder, luxury online retailers Boticca and Girl Meets Dress, Independent Cinema Tickets – which offers tickets to over 230 UK cinemas – and Blurb photo books.
www.dropgifts.co.uk