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The Giftbit Blog | Digital Gift Cards, Rewards, and Incentives

Inside Giftbit: Why Gift Cards Make the Best Incentives

Written by Nat Salvione | July 2, 2025

 

📌 TL;DR 

 Pavlov was right → incentives work
 Gift cards are the best incentives → thanks to speed, choice, emotional impact.
 The game has changed
automation and wallet integrations are essential
If we know, you know
Giftbit shares every detail of your program
 Our competition doesn’t want you to know
they purposefully build in friction to maximize revenue. We don’t.

 
🎥 Watch my full interview where I share my opinions on the industry 

The science (and simplicity) behind why digital gift cards work

Everyone uses incentives.

Parents use them to motivate kids, teachers use them for learning outcomes, managers use them to boost performance, and businesses use them to drive revenue. The reason is simple: incentives give people a reason to act, and they feel better than penalties

That’s what makes them so powerful. Whether you’re trying to get someone to adopt a new behavior, fill out a survey, or close a sale, the right incentive can be just the right nudge that tips the scale.

One of the things I love most about working at Giftbit is that we get a front-row seat to how companies of all sizes use incentives to drive measurable, positive, lasting results. Incentive programs are an investment, and the results that a business gets should far outweigh the cost of that investment.

Old school rewards

Twenty years ago, rewarding someone meant mailing them a physical item. It was slow, inconvenient, and usually done for major milestones like Salesperson Of The Year. Today’s businesses need to reward smaller, more discrete actions like completing a survey, taking a training course, or referring a friend. That’s where digital gift cards really shine.

The three big advantages of digital rewards 

Gift cards are the best incentives for three main reasons: choice, speed, and stickiness.

1. Choice → makes them personal

Studies show that when you choose a gift for someone, there is some value lost in the process. You guess what you think the recipient might like, but you’re rarely going to hit the nail right on the head. 

A gift card solves this problem by letting people choose exactly what they want. That’s a big reason gift cards have remained the most popular holiday gift for nearly two decades.

Better still, some programs even let recipients choose what type of gift card they want from a full catalog of options, whether that’s one from