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February 11th, 2013:

Part 13: Merchant Service Providers Can Increase Your Sales

Welcome to bonus part 13 of our 12 part series – Tell Me the Best Merchant Solution for My Business.”   In this chapter of our series we will discuss the following questions: “Can my payment processor actually help me increase my sales?”

The answer to this question is a resounding yes.  Any credit merchant service provider  that is good at what they do can help you do this.

Here are 7 ways that you merchant services provider can help you improve your sales.

1. Custom In Store Receipts – Based on what your customers buy from you or have bought from you they should get custom receipts printed up for them upon purchase by your merchant equipment.  Your merchant services provider should be able to give you  merchant equipment and software that is capable of this.  This can bring them back to your customers to your store sooner and have them buy more.

2. Electronic Gift Cards – Gift cards improve your sales because they drive people to your store to buy the gift cards. They drive new customers to your store after they receive a gift card and they can fall in love with it and come back again. They drive customers that love your store back that otherwise would not come to your store.  They drive people to your store that spend all of the money on the gift card and then more.  In addition, not all gift cards are redeemed meaning that you make nearly 100% profit on unredeemed gift cards.  Any good merchant services provider should offer this program to you and make it easy for you to set up and maintain.

3 & 4. Electronic Referral & Loyalty Programs – Your merchant account should come with the ability to reward customers that refer you and that come back with special discounts and promotions.  This is simple to set up and very powerful for your business.

5. Promotion Codes for eCommerce – People will be driven to your website when they get email alerts telling them of a 20% off sale if they enter promo code “BigSale20.”  You can easily set this up if you partner with a merchant service provider that can offer you a good internet gateway and shopping card solution such as Authorize.net or PlugNPay.

6. Shopping Cart Abandonment Emails – If you send customers a triggered email after they add a product or service to an internet shopping cart and then fail to make a purchase, you will regain 30% to 40% of those purchases.  If you do not have a merchant account provider that is capable of giving you this solution you are missing out on a lot of business.

7. Upsell Website Emails – Have you ever purchased something on-line on Amazon.com and were then told by the website, “People who liked what you are about to buy also liked X, Y, and Z.”   Amazon does this because it is a great way to increase average order size and improve your customer shopping experience.  Your website should do the same.