I have a half dozen Target gift cards floating around in my wallet.  In December, Target had a great promotion:  with a printable coupon, spend $50, get a $10 gift card.  This was all over the deal message boards.  It got me into Target several times!

This is a brilliant promotion when traffic is slow or competition is intense.  Here's why:

• The coupon drives traffic by getting folks into the store.  It entices consumers to come to Target and buy stuff that they could have bought other places (Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us, grocery stores, etc)
• The terms of the coupon require one to spend $50.  If this is more than the average person spends, Target is incenting behavior that is driving incremental sales.  
• Giving a $10 gift card for a future shopping trip ensures that the consumer will return to Target, so that the promotion drives traffic in the future.
• The promotion only rewarded those who knew about it and bothered to print out the coupon.  Target didn't give a discount to everyone who spent $50, making the promotion much more efficient.

Some clever folks on the message boards figured out that you could use this coupon to purchase $50 worth of Target, Amazon, and iTunes gift cards.  Thus my plethora of gift cards!