Incentives are a proven method for motivating customers to take action. They can be used in pre-sales to get customers into the store or in post-sales to up-sell and cross-sell customers

Since nearly every business offers purchase incentives of one form or another, the real question is "Which incentives work best?” The trick is to differentiate your incentives from competitors and to improve their effectiveness. Product gifts continually outperform cash incentives (of equivalent value) because they have a higher perceived value and trigger a stronger emotional response.

The key to creating a successful gift-with-purchase sales promotion is to give a gift with a high perceived value relative to the action you are trying to get the customer to take. The higher the perceived value of the gift (relative to the action you want,) the more effective the incentive will be.

Using certificates for gift-with-purchase promotions gives you the best of both worlds - a higher perceived value than cash and a lower cost than the product itself. This creates leverage: you can offer a promotion with a perceived value of $125 and a cost to you of $25 - that's 5:1 leverage.