Customers can now connect to their Facebook account on Amazon.com and create a personalized gift card that will be delivered on the recipient’s Facebook Wall.
“Sending gift cards has never been easier and we’re excited to offer the Facebook option just in time for the holidays,” Amazon mentioned in its press release announcing the gift cards.
After connecting to his or her Facebook account on Amazon.com, the sender can choose a gift card design, specify an amount up to $5,000 and provide an optional gift card message. The sender can also schedule the date for the gift card to appear on the recipient’s Facebook Wall up to a year in advance.
“We think our customers who use Facebook will be thrilled that we’ve made gift-giving more social,” said Michal Geller, director of ACI Gift Cards, Inc., the exclusive issuer of Amazon.com Gift Cards. “Sending gift cards has never been easier and we’re excited to offer the Facebook option just in time for the holidays.”
In addition, Amazon is now offering a “Give 5, Get $5” promotion for a limited time. In order to ramp up adoption of this novel form of gifting, the first 10,000 customers who give an MP3-themed Amazon.com Gift Card to five different Facebook friends will get a $5 credit good for music downloads at Amazon MP3. Amazon MP3 has a library of more than 13 million songs and all music downloads sold at Amazon MP3 are DRM-free, which means they work on virtually any MP3 player or phone.
This is one of the most creative uses we’ve seen of a company using Facebook to grow sales. Now to make sure that friend you just gifted the Amazon gift card to actually checks Facebook.