by Want to offer gift cards on Instagram? Wondering how to set up and use Instagram Stories gift card stickers?
In this article, you'll discover how to sell gift cards on Instagram.
About Selling Gift Cards via Instagram
To support businesses in selling online, Instagram has made it easier to sell directly to their audience (and for customers to do business with their favorite stores) via either an action button on their business profile or two new story stickers for gift cards and food orders.
When your Instagram story post with a gift card or food order sticker goes live, viewers will be able to tap on the sticker to complete the order. The process will guide them through to a screen with the option to order or add a sticker on their own story.
While this seems like an unnecessary step in the process, it's likely that Instagram is pushing for more usage of these stickers and bringing awareness to the option to use them. It is, however, an extra tap that users have to take and this step may eventually be removed.
If people choose to order, they're taken to the third-party site the business has chosen to complete the transaction. Once in the app or on the site, users can complete their transaction by choosing the items or options they want and processing their payment.
To offer this functionality to Instagram users, businesses will need to choose one of the third-party tools that Instagram offers as options (which include Kabbage, LoyLap, Raise, Square, Toast, and Yiftee) and follow the setup instructions on the partner's website.
Now we'll look at how to use the Gift Cards sticker (or Food Order sticker) in your own stories and add similar call-to-action buttons to your business profile.
#1: Add Gift Card Stickers (or Food Order Stickers) to Your Instagram Story
The new stickers have rolled out to the U.S. and Canada, with plans for global rollout in the coming weeks. As with many Instagram story stickers, if you don't see them, try restarting your Instagram app and ensure you have the most recent updates. If you still don't get the stickers, you'll have to be patient and wait for your account to receive the rollout.
If you have access to the stickers, you'll see them in your stickers section on your Instagram stories. They're clearly labeled as Gift Cards and Food Orders.
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CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORETo use one of these stickers, start by designing your Instagram story post as you normally would: with the photo, video, text, and doodles you want to use. Then tap the sticker icon to access the gift card and food order stickers. Both stickers have the same general setup options.
Once you've selected one of the stickers, you'll choose a third-party partner to connect with. I'm using the gift card sticker here as an example:
After choosing which partner to use for the sticker integration, enter the URL for the partner link. This is the link that will be the destination for the sticker—whether it's to purchase a gift card or begin an online food order. You can get this URL from your account with your chosen third-party tool. You may have to go to a web version of the tool's website rather than your mobile app to get the link and details.
Once you've entered the link information, the sticker option will populate on your story. Complete the sticker format process by selecting a color option for the sticker. To do this, tap the colored circle at the top of the screen. When you're happy with the sticker design, tap Done to add it to your story.
Once the sticker is on your story, you can pinch to resize or drag to reposition it.
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In these examples from Little Sister in Toronto, they added a food order sticker to their story post and to a post that shared a tagged story. Little Sister is part of Feed the Frontlines TO, which aims to help local restaurants stay in business during the pandemic by providing delicious meals to Toronto's hospital and social services teams. They're using the stickers to raise awareness that they're open for orders and to keep orders coming in to support more people.
View Insights for Instagram Gift Card Stickers and Food Order Stickers
When your Instagram story with the gift card or food order sticker is published, you'll be able to view the insights for that post just as you would any other story post. Unfortunately, at this time, the details on sticker taps don't seem to be populating in the story insights for either of the two stickers. Hopefully, this is just a glitch with the new feature and Instagram will add this functionality to the insights in the coming weeks.
Pro Tip: Given that you can't currently track the number of taps on a sticker (and even if you could, you wouldn't know how many of those translated into a sale), consider offering a coupon code with the sticker. Offering a 10% discount, or free dessert or delivery with an exclusive coupon code would allow you to track conversions more accurately. List the coupon code on the story post with the sticker, making it clear this is the code to use for the discount or bonus.
#2: Add a Gift Card (or Order Food) Action Button to Your Instagram Profile
Along with the options to add the gift card or food order stickers to your stories, Instagram is also providing the option to add the same action buttons to your Instagram business profile.
To add one of these action buttons to your profile, tap on the Edit Profile button on your Instagram business profile. From there, choose the Action Buttons option, and on the next screen, select the Gift Cards or Order Food option. As you did with the sticker option, add your partner site's URL to the button and save the changes. The button will immediately appear on your profile for your audience to access easily.
Conclusion
Many local businesses are closed temporarily but are happily selling gift cards that consumers can redeem when they reopen. And people are looking to help others during tough times by giving them gift cards to certain businesses. Additionally, lots of restaurants are now offering online orders, and delivery or curbside pickup when they didn't before.
The challenge businesses face with these options is that online ordering, delivery, and curb-side options are new solutions for their customers, and many of their followers don't know these options are available. Or people may not know how easy it is to take advantage of them.
The Instagram Stories stickers and action buttons for gift cards and food orders will allow more businesses to connect with their audiences online and increase sales through the platform. Many people aren't familiar with the stickers and action buttons yet, however. And because Instagram stories only last for 24 hours, you may want to use the stickers repeatedly in the coming weeks and mention the action button in multiple feed posts.
The more people become familiar with this functionality and recognize that your business offers it, the more likely you'll generate sales with these stickers.
What do you think? Have you used the food order or gift card stickers yet? Are you going to give them a try after reading this? Please share your thoughts or tips in the comments below.
More articles on Instagram marketing:
- Discover useful tips to optimize an Instagram profile for business.
- Find a complete guide to using hashtags strategically across Instagram.
- Learn four ways to showcase and promote your products on Instagram.
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