Gift cards are the highest-margin product on any restaurant’s P&L — and the most under-marketed. The Gift Card Sales automation runs your four big-window campaigns (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s) on autopilot, delivers cards by SMS within 60 seconds of purchase, lets recipients check their balance by text, and nudges expiring cards back into a redemption visit.
What it ships with
- GHL workflows:
Gift Card – Holiday Campaign,Gift Card – Purchase Confirmation,Gift Card – Recipient Delivery,Gift Card – Balance Lookup,Gift Card – Expiry Nurture - Pre-built holiday calendar: Mother’s Day (T-21 to T-1), Father’s Day, Valentine’s (T-14 to T-1), Thanksgiving (T-10 to T-1), Christmas (T-30 to T-1), New Year’s
- Stripe + Toast/Square/Clover gift-card SKU sync
- SMS templates for buyer confirmation, recipient delivery, balance reply, expiry nudge
- Landing-page template for each holiday campaign (denomination selector, recipient phone, personal message)
- Custom fields:
gift_card_purchased_at,gift_card_value,gift_card_balance,gift_card_recipient_phone,gift_card_expires_at
The flow (step-by-step)
1. Holiday campaign window opens
Each campaign auto-launches on its calendar date. SMS and email go to the existing diner list with daypart-appropriate timing (Mother’s Day promos go out Sunday morning; Valentine’s promos go out the Thursday before).
2. Purchase
The diner taps through to the campaign landing page, selects denomination ($25/$50/$100/custom), enters recipient phone and a personal message, and pays via Stripe.
3. Buyer confirmation
The purchaser gets an SMS receipt within 30 seconds and an email with the gift-card image (for printing or screenshot).
4. Recipient delivery
The recipient gets an SMS at the scheduled delivery time (default: holiday morning at 9 AM local) with the personal message, the redemption code, the balance, the expiry date, and a “book a table” link.
5. Balance lookup
The recipient can text BALANCE [code] to the restaurant number any time. The reply comes back in under 5 seconds with current balance and expiry.
6. Expiry-reminder nurture
At T-30, T-14, and T-3 before expiry, an SMS reminds the recipient of the balance and offers a slow-night reservation slot to use it. Once redeemed, the workflow exits silently.
What you can expect
Operators typically see holiday gift-card revenue grow 40-80% year-over-year in the first full cycle with the snapshot running, driven primarily by SMS open rates that outpace email by 6-8x. Expiry-reminder nurture converts roughly 30-45% of dormant card balances into redemption visits — visits that average 1.4x the card value because diners tend to spend over the comp amount. The buyer-purchaser becomes a 2x lifetime value contact: people who buy gift cards eat at your restaurant too.
Setup & customization
Pre-built: the holiday calendar, every campaign workflow, all message templates, the Stripe integration, the POS gift-card SKU sync, and the balance-lookup keyword.
What you tweak in 10 minutes: the denomination options, the personal-message character limit, the delivery time per holiday, the campaign send dates if you want to start earlier, and the expiry window (12 months default, some operators run 18).
Compliance notes
Gift card SMS to the buyer is transactional (purchase receipt). SMS to the recipient is consent-by-third-party — the buyer entered the recipient’s phone, which under 10DLC use-case rules for restaurant gift cards is permitted as long as the message is a one-time notification of a gift purchased on their behalf. The expiry-reminder nurture treats the recipient as an opted-in contact (they received and used the gift), with STOP honored on the first reminder. State gift-card expiry laws vary — the snapshot defaults to 12 months but the field is configurable to match California, Massachusetts, or any state-specific minimums. No card data passes through GHL; Stripe handles payment under PCI scope.
Turn Valentine’s Day into a four-week revenue event. Get the Restaurant Snapshot for $997 full or $997 lite, 30-day money-back guarantee. Buy now or book a walkthrough.