Introducing CashStar Product eGifting

These are just some of the common grumblings often uttered by troubled gift givers throughout the year, and even more so around the holidays. With CashStar’s newest solution—CashStar Product eGifting—I can now confidently respond to these complaints by saying, “Fixed,” “You don’t have to,” and “So let’s avoid it completely!”

Admittedly, I’m a bit biased as I’ve been working on solving these problems with the awesome team here at CashStar and our great partner, Nordstrom, but believe me when I say that the CashStar Product eGifting solution definitely ranks among the most fun and interesting projects I’ve worked on during my three+ years at CashStar.

Simply put, Product eGifting allows a shopper to select a gift from a retailer’s ecommerce site and send it electronically to a recipient via email. Just like CashStar’s eGift card solution, gift givers may add a personal message and select a future date for the email to be delivered (so the email arrives on the recipient’s birthday or a particular holiday, for example). The recipient simply clicks the link in the email to visit the retailer’s website, selects the appropriate product options, such as color and size, and provides their shipping information. The gift is then fulfilled just like any other of that retailer’s online orders. Of course, if the recipient decides they would rather have an eGift card, they can do that, too.

The best part of Product eGifting is it runs on top of our industry-leading gift card ecommerce platform. For retailers, this means all of the benefits of CashStar Consumer come along for the ride—first-tier customer care, risk mitigation, fraud indemnification, order management, reporting and a familiar revenue recognition model.

For a relatively small effort, retailers can offer their customers a practical, personal and efficient gifting solution that takes the hassle and discomfort out of having to guess at a recipient’s preferred style or size and saves everyone (especially the retailer!) the time, energy and frustration in handling the return process for physical goods.

The part I like most, however, is the personalization opportunities Product eGifting provides. For me, personalization is about more than just selecting a product and adding a message to the gift. It’s about reflecting the personality of the gift giver and the nature of the relationship between the giver and the recipient.

Product eGifting allows me to send a thoughtful, yet practical, gift of a new snowsuit to a nephew (to his mother, really) in upstate New York, knowing that she’ll be able to select the appropriate size. But it also allows me to send a four-and-a-half-foot inflatable flamingo to my sister (no—she doesn’t have a pool), knowing that she’ll not only get a laugh but also be able to shop at one of her favorite retailers for whatever she might really like or need.

In one of these instances, I’d fully expect the recipient to choose a gift card instead—but either way, Product eGifting provides the ideal gifting experience for both myself and the recipients.

Read the press release.