Gift Registry Setup Tips & Checklist for Store Owners

The shopping wishlist feature allows your store's shoppers to create personalized collections of desired products and save for future reference. Although wishlists represent a shopper’s interest in your products without an immediate sale conversion, the shopper may distribute copies of their list to family, friends, and other stakeholders who may buy the contents of the list in whole or in part as a gift to the author.

Gift Registry Setup Tips & Checklist for Store Owners

• Encourage the registrants set up the registry as soon the event or key date is known and planning is reasonable. Set the timing and wording of advertisements accordingly. It is therefore ideal to consider the mind set of the registrants prior to the event. 
• Example: In the case of wedding registries, target advertisements around engagement announcements and other pre-wedding events to encourage registration as soon after the engagement as possible, ideally within no later than 4 to 6 months before the wedding. Advertising only around the wedding may attract registration later than ideal. Family and friends are often eager to start giving you gifts for many of the pre-wedding events, ie including the engagement party and shower.
• Example: Graduation-themed registries may also target registrants not as graduants but final year students. 

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• Allow registrants to have gift registries at different stores.
• Example: Newlyweds usually register at 2 to 3 stores, ideally with different price points. This is especially noteworthy if your price point occurs consistently on an extreme of the scale
• Gift registries are a gift from the gods of brand awareness. Essentially, whether new or not, your registrants commit to a type of evangelism; giving you free social proof and publicity to people who are probably similar to them and within their circle of influence. It is key that you provide a positive customer experience. Imagine what it would be like if a wedding guest arrived to the reception and someone forgot to order forks for hungry guests. Think of this growing public and even registrants as such guests. Prevent problems before they can occur by visualizing their every moment in your mind so you can take care of every detail. While everything else on this page applies, here are some basic examples.
• Registration should be easy and convenient
• Since your automatic fraud prevention policies will have already established rules to flag and even block cases where the billing and shipping addresses do not match, establish slightly different rules for gift registries beforehand. Frankly, this is also beneficial for the internal customer experience (ie your employee experience) as less time and other resources will be needlessly expended. (See fraud prevention phone script)
• Offer flexible options that are meaningful to registrants 
• Example: For wedding registries, registrants can specify a delayed delivery date that will translate into their receiving gifts after the wedding when the newlyweds have moved in together (if they had not already been) and are settled in after the honeymoon. This way, they will also remain within the grace period for requesting returns.
• Offer the option for registrants to receive notifications when items are bought. This helps couples to keep up with thanking guests and updating their registries, if they wish.
• Offer a 'plus one' to exceed expectations. 
• Offer discounts for remaining items. The registry can remain active up to several months to even years after the wedding.

• Offer the following tips and advice to registrants. 
• Post the link to the gift registry on any celebratory website. Example: Newlyweds often have a dedicated wedding website
• Announce the gift registry at the culturally appropriate time. Example: It is generally considered impolite to send gift registry information along with wedding invitations
• Revisit the registry to update it with any additions and or changes. 
• Select gifts that can be enjoyed between both parties over personal gifts that can be used by only one person. Guests typically prefer to contribute to these types of gift. 

• Send a reminder to registrants to thank their givers. What a wonderful excuse to keep in touch without being creepy. (See how to set up an automatic email campaign or learn the basics of MailChimp, the email marketing app). 
• Example: For wedding registries, registrants can be prompted to send thank you notes within 2 weeks after receiving gifts. The email campaign can provide tips, like including personalized details such as the product name and how it will be used. Depending on the product, registrants may even ask whether the guest wants an update of how the gift is adding value to their lives.
• Gifts of cash are now more acceptable than before. However, since this might be disadvantageous to you, see how such funds may somehow contribute towards the registry, possibly for some add-on services. Perhaps you can even partner with a bank that allows for guest deposits 

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CONTENT RELATED TO STORE OWNER TIPS & CHECKLISTS FOR SETTING UP A SUCCESSFUL GIFT REGISTRY

• Gift card and wishlist programs may be designed to be stand alone or an integrated component of your current referral program. 
• Gift registries from a marketing perspective
• Gift registries may have themes around specific events. Consequently, consider your options through tentpole marketing
• Gift registries are a gift from the brand awareness gods. Your registrants are giving you free publicity to people who are probably similar to them. It is key that you provide a positive customer experience.
• Use drip email campaigns to promote brand awareness for guests, especially if those guests are interested but not yet ready to buy otherwise for themselves or others. Remember, they were thrust onto your stage by someone else and may not be ready. Drip campaigns may be what is required to keep your brand fresh in their minds until they or their friends are ready again.
• Gift registries can be used as a type of promotional strategy to build brand awareness. See other promotional strategies that may be combined for synergistic success
• Apps for gift registries (among other things)
• Gift card programs
• Why the old 'earn and burn' loyalty program model is failing and a new approach for modern consumers.
• Tiered loyalty programs
• Use spend-based loyalty rewards programs to give greater rewards to customers with the highest customer lifetime value (CLV) ... and reduce costs while you are at it. 
• A great loyalty rewards program can not help your business if customers can not understand it sufficiently well to sign up. Create a loyalty rewards program explainer page.
• Brief overview of loyalty and evangelism as they relate to the sales funnel.
• Analyze how well your rewards catalog has been curated.