How To Get Gift Certificate Wording Right

Wording for a gift certificate can be tricky to nail down. There are a few mandatory elements and some optional elements you want to include in a gift certificate. In addition to these standard elements, you might consider a few legal mentions to include in order to force certain restrictions on the usage of your gift certificate.

Mandatory elements in a gift certificate

When you're filing a gift certificate template, don't forget to include the following elements:

- name of your company
- recipient's name
- certificate value (in dollars or your local currency) or service provided. the certificate value is the most sensitive element of the gift certificate. In particular, you don't want for the customer to easily change the amount! So it's better to have it printed rather than manually written.
- certificate serial number. A serial number is important for multiple reasons, in particular to fight against fraud and to keep track of gift certificates you've issued. By giving every gift certificate a unique number, you can easily verify that the gift certificate has not been modified when the customer wants to redeem it. For example, you can have a tracking log associating gift certificate numbers with their value, issuance date and customer name.

A few optional elements

- purchaser's name: probably a mandatory element for most gift certificates!
- personal message: this is a very nice way to personalize a gift certificate, by giving the possibility to the purchaser to add a custom message on the gift certificate.

Legal mentions to include in a gift certificate
- restriction for a certain type of service/product: if you want to offer a gift certificate for a specific service, mention valid only for service X or to be used towards the purchase of X.
- no cash value. This will protect you against customers willing to redeem the certificate for cash (people will try to do that!). Mention no cash value or not redeemable for cash on the certificate.
- non-transferability: if you want the gift certificate to be redeemed only by the person whose name is mentioned on the certificate, mention non-transferrable on the certificate.
- certificate expiration: this might not be legal in your state/country. Check your legal regulations or an attorney for this. If it is legal, you might want to include a certificate expiration date, to avoid having gift certificates out in the open for years. One year from now is a good default. Mention expiration date: 2012-03-17.

Now you know what elements are important to come up with for a good gift certificate wording, so work your way through a gift certificate template and mix and match the different elements until you're satisfied with the result!