Cape Town based startup, GoGifting has launched in South Africa, bringing the world’s latest marketing concept to Africa.
Social Gifting is a new concept in online marketing and consumer services. It allows users to send their friends gifts using their connections on social networks like Facebook. These gifts are usually supplied by recognised brands to gain additional exposure online, and are free.
“We’re very excited about launching a social gifting platform in South Africa. Most international companies don’t see the benefit of launching here, but with the relatively high number of Facebook users, South Africa is, in fact a perfect market to launch GoGifting,” said Founder Kevin Tucker.
“The gift card market is already a $100 billion market in the US alone, and in South Africa it really is growing maturity. We’re seeing all kinds of gift cards on sale and now we’re bringing that to Facebook,” he added.
We reported back in March, that German based internet company Rocket Internet was planning on bringing social gifting to South Africa with its startup DropGifts. Kevin Tucker was the MD at the time. Pre-launch the company then decided to focus on a select few markets including the UK, France, Germany, USA and Brazil and so it never made it to SA. Once the project closed down in SA, Tucker took a brief break and decided that the concept was too good an opportunity for the South African market to miss and so launched GoGifting at the beginning of October.
In more detail, GoGifting will allow people to give their friends gifts, at this stage gift cards only, for their birthdays and any other special occasion they chose using Facebook as a platform. There will be free gift cards on offer from a variety of Local brands and retailers. Users will also have the unique ability to pool together as a group and give a group gift card to a friend.
Through the use of Facebook, it becomes easier for South Africans living abroad to send Rand value gifts to friends and family back home.
GoGifting also offers a unique, performance-based marketing channel for merchants and their brand. The free gift card system is a modern way to reach new customers at a considerably lower customer acquisition cost than traditional channels. Research in Sweden has shown that recipients spend upwards of three times the gift card value whether in-store or online.
GoGifting is launching with exciting free offerings from some of South Africa’s most popular retailers including @home, kalahari.com, Edgars, WantItAll.co.za, Flowers.co.za, Norman Goodfellows and Mantality.co.za.
More retailers will be joining GoGifting soon so watch this space.
