SheerID Blog

May 16 I’m an event addict.

I love events, I love planning for a conference. I love the logistics, the strategy, and most of all, I love being at the event itself talking to everyone that comes by our booth or table. What I don’t love about an event is not feeling prepared. Or worse – sending my SheerID team without everything they need for a successful show.

When I put a show together, I always send whomever is attending a conference bag. This is a little bag of essentials. I might add to it once in a while, but at the core, I always include these basic items to make sure I’m covered for every possible request.

1. Hand sanitizer. Vital to keep the “ConCrud” away.
2. Over the counter pain relievers. Being on your feet for hours at a time is hard, make sure you have something to help keep that headache at bay.
3. Scissors. No brainer, you’re going to need to open boxes, snip zip ties, cut tape, among a hundred other things. Just don’t forget about them and bring the bag on the plane with you. Apparently the airlines frown on that sort of thing these days.
4. Mints. I prefer mints over gum. You don’t want to be chewing on something while talking to people at your booth. Also try and stay away from anything that turns your tongue different colors.
5. Packing tape. Unless you’re a planning genius, you’re going to have leftover materials to take back to the office with you. Bring tape to box that all back up. Plus this is super handy to tape down any random power cords or quickly fix broken things.
6. Rubber Bands. Good for keeping gathered business cards into groups or simply bundling items so they aren’t loose in the bag. Also a vital tool in rubber band wars with neighboring exhibit booths.
7. Zip ties. Great for containing wires and cords for different laptops or electrical. I like a tidy exhibit space.

May 6 2013 Teacher Appreciation Week Discounts and Freebies

To celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week (which is May 6-10), we thought we’d take a look at what businesses are doing to show teachers a little love. Most of the Teacher Appreciation campaigns we’ve seen this year, fall into one of three categories- discounts, freebies, and cause marketing partnerships.

Discounts-
Some stores and restaurants only offer a teacher discount once a year, either for the whole week, or just on Teacher Appreciation Day, which falls on May 7^th this year. Other companies, like Jo-Ann’s, generously offer teacher discounts year-round, and sweeten the pot for Teacher Appreciation Week with an even deeper discount than usual. Teacher Appreciation Month is also a terrific time to launch a brand new every day teacher discount, like The Hook Up Bar and Restaurant in Biloxi, MS is doing this month. Take a look at who is offering discounts this month.

Jo-Ann Fabric and Crafts Stores: Save 20% with a Teacher Rewards card through May 11 for Teacher Appreciation Week.
The Hook Up Bar and Restaurant: As a small token of appreciation for their hard work and dedication, The Hook Up’s new teacher discount is coming in May.
Fun Spot: Celebrate Teacher Appreciation week with $5 deals for 5 days in May.
Dressbarn: In addition to a 20% discount off their entire purchase, on Teacher Appreciation Day, Tuesday, May 7, teachers will be pampered with personal attention and fashion tips as they shop.
New York and Company: All teachers are eligible for a 30% discount in stores through May 8 when they show valid ID. Read More…

Apr 30 Channel Marketers–The Ninjas of the Marketing World

Channel Marketing is such a specialized marketing challenge. I’m not a career channel marketer, I’ve only dipped my toe in that world with a couple of companies. I think in the world of all marketing professionals, the channel marketers are the ninjas. They are the stealthy ones convincing companies with all different goals, strategies, locations, and customer types to pay attention to their product and adopt their programs to sell more of their products. Also, as new trends come up like showrooming, big data usage, or mobile shopping, channel marketers are the ones standing at the bottom of that proverbial hill that the poo rolls down. They have to interpret how those trends affect not only their products but understand how it is affecting dozens of types of resellers and retailers and then determine how to respond. Whew!

So now what? We’ve all agreed that the ninjas of the marketing world deserve a fist bump, but in the ever changing world of technology and marketing, are there strategies that can help them? In a word, yes. The channel marketers newest weapon of choice to consider is affiliated exclusive discounts.

marketing ninjas use sheerid Note I didn’t say “affiliate discounts” that’s completely different. I’m talking about offering a discount for your products to pre-defined groups of consumers that your resellers can attract to create new and loyal customers. Instead of looking at your resellers existing customers and speaking to them, look outside of that to where new customers could be coming from. Here are a few examples, then we’ll talk about how you turn this strategy into a channel marketing program:

Businesses

Um duh, that’s covered. But what if you broke down businesses and offered discounts to the target markets you wanted. Create special programs for specific SIC codes, or for women- or minority-owned businesses, or specifically small businesses. Or better yet, offer the verticals to your resellers, let them decide who the program targets.
Read More…

Apr 25 Exploring Twitter Keyword Targeting to Advertise Student Discounts

Last week Twitter announced the launch of Keyword Targeting for Promoted Tweets. If you currently advertise on Twitter using Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts, you already know that you can target your paid content by targeting by interest categories like stage of life, education, etc. or by targeting specific users’ followers.

So to create a campaign to inform college students about a new student discount using Twitter’s previously existing tools, you could use a combination of interest categories and users whose followers are likely to be college students. Your targeting might look something like this:

Odds are good that using these techniques you’d reach an audience that was mostly college students.

With Twitter’s new keyword targeting you can insert your branded tweets into the conversation that Twitter users are currently having about student discounts by displaying ads to people who have included your keywords in their recent tweets, or tweets users engaged with through retweeting, favorites, or replies.

Apr 19 Using Facebook Partner Categories to Create Targeted Ad Campaigns

If there’s one thing you can count on in the magical world of social media advertising, it’s change. As soon as you’ve zeroed in on a platform, type of ad, and budget that’s working for you, you can bet that an algorithm is going to change, a platform will push updates, or the social media network of your choice will introduce fancy new options that make your head spin. Case in point- last week Facebook launched partner categories for Facebook ads, and this week Twitter introduced keyword targeting for promoted tweets (but that’s another blog post…coming soon).

The beauty of Facebook’s new ad option is that it offers marketers one more way to create more targeted marketing campaigns. How does it work? I’m glad you asked.

Using offline data from Acxiom, Epsilon, and Datalogix, Facebook has created 500 partner categories based on demographics and spending to segment its one billion+ users and allow more narrowly targeted advertising. As an example, let’s pretend your company is launching a new, exclusive military discount for veterans and military families during Military Appreciation Month in May. This discount is deeper than anything you’ve offered before, and you want to spread the news to the military community using Facebook ads. Let’s also say you’re using SheerID to verify that only eligible veterans, active duty military, and military dependents can redeem your discount, which means you’re not worried about your discount going viral. You can use your ad spend to reach your target audience, not broadcast the discount to people who aren’t eligible to use it and drive up your cost if you’re paying per impression.

So you log into the Facebook’s power editor to create your ads, create the content, and you use Datalogix demographics to target 3,123,300 families in the United States with veterans in the household.

If your goal is to create even more buzz and brand awareness around your military-friendly business, you can also add 7,012,200 Facebook users who donate to veteran’s causes to your audience using Epsilon’s Lifestyles and interests data.

Apr 12 Three Ways to Battle Showrooming

I love it when a new phenomenon comes around that give marketers something to worry about and to debate. I’m sure you have heard of showrooming. Even if you haven’t heard the term, you’ve probably done it.

Showrooming is when you are standing in Target, considering buying an Ipad and kelly gets a discount you pull out your smart phone and look up the pricing of the same product on Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. Chances are, you’ll find it for a little cheaper, which then leaves you to decide if you head to the Target check-out with just the red velvet cookies, the $9 polka-dot push-up bra, and three plastic chairs for your patio, or if you add the Ipad to your not-as-random-as-it-seems collection of purchases. As you can imagine, Target, and other big retailers, are spending a lot of money, energy, and brain power to come up with ways to push your decision in their favor.

The battles around showrooming are in full swing. Amazon has offered permanent price-matching, so has Target. So at least they have neutralized each other. There are also apps that recognize when you are in a store like Best Buy and they can immediately offer you a coupon if you buy today. From a non-tech point of view, exclusive product like Target’s designer appliances, bikes, and bedding also battle that option of looking at competitors and leaving with only a $.99 bag of popcorn.

It makes sense that big retailers would first focus on themselves, their products, and their competitors, those are concrete concepts that are easily spit-balled in conference rooms. But I gotta say, what about me? Isn’t it all about me? I am the customer after all. If you want me to pledge my loyalty and devote all my dollars to you, then I need to be wooed. I need to know that you see me as individual and that you care about my point of view. Here are three things that big retailers should be doing to increase loyalty.

Apr 4 Top 5 ways to celebrate teacher appreciation month

Think back to your own school days. Do you remember your favorite teacher and the impact they had on you? My favorite teacher was Mrs. Daniels. She taught first grade at Fort Worth Christian elementary school. She gave me my first lesson in brand marketing when we performed blind taste tests of Jiffy, Peter Pan, and generic peanut butter. She also introduced me to Ramona Quimby. Chances are she did more than I’ll ever know. 91% of teachers buy supplies for their own classrooms, and more than half of teachers have paid for students to go on field trips when they students couldn’t afford them. Teachers deserve our thanks and appreciation every day, but it’s especially important for us as former students, parents, and socially responsible companies to show them a little love for what they do day in and day out.

Maybe your company can’t afford to donate millions education, like Best Buy, Staples, Apple or Dell, but there are ways any company can help out teachers, regardless of how big or small they are.

Host a donation drive for school supplies. It’s estimated that teachers spend $1.3 billion out of their own pockets on supplies for their classrooms each year. Hosting a school supply drive or book drive can be as easy as setting out a collection bin for the month of May and encouraging your customers to drop off pencils, pens, crayons, and other school supplies. At the end of the month, drop them off to a grateful teacher or principal at a local school.
Donate to DonorsChoose.org. Working with this charity organization to support teachers and schools couldn’t be simpler. We partnered with them ourselves at our booth at InTix in January by making a donation for each business card we collected from trade show attendees. Teachers post projects that need funding, and you simply log on, select the project that you want to support, and make your donation. You can give any amount, and funding an entire project can cost as little as $200.
Offer a teacher discount. Teachers truly appreciate teacher discounts, and they are loyal to the companies offer them. This list of teacher discounts regularly makes the rounds among teachers on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. If you’re interested in offering teacher discounts for the month of May (or any time of year), we can help. Getting your teacher verification platform in place is fast and painless.
Read More…

Mar 28 Big Data- what is it and how is it used?

Here’s the thing about Big Data. Thinking about it kind of makes my head hurt. Trying to wrap my brain around Big Data is like trying to visualize the scale of the universe or imagining how many millions of bacteria are living in my kitchen sponge.

I’ve read that the amount of information on the internet doubles every three years and that every single day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. I had to do a Google search to find out how big a quintillion is. Apparently, if you made a carpet of pennies, quintillion pennies would cover the surface of the Earth. Twice. The mind boggles.

Luckily, what’s interesting about Big Data isn’t the actual data itself. It’s what we can do with it when we use apps, API’s and software to crunch those numbers and facts, chew all of the flavor out of them, and then spit out something interesting and useful. For example, our API bumps elbows with Big Data everyday as it compares consumers’ provided information against our authoritative data sources and returns a yes or a no to SheerID’s clients to tell them whether or not their customer qualifies for an exclusive offer. Because retailers can verify that only qualified customers can redeem protected offers, they can offer their customers deeper discounts and better deals. So the next time you use Shindigz military discount or buy the academic version of Norton’s anti-virus software for your computer, you should actually thank Big Data for the extra cash lining your pocket. It blows your mind, doesn’t it?

Mar 22 Back to Basics–Why Offer a Discount

Continuing our guest blog series, today’s post comes from Marcela De Vivo who is a freelance writer and accomplished online marketing professional in Los Angeles. She has written on everything from health & wellness, marketing, and technology, and currently works with web designers Planet Telex. Marcela reminds us why “discount” is not a four-letter word.

Offering discounts on goods or services is a way to quickly draw in potential customers. kelly gets a discount When customers hear that they can save money on products or services they are looking for, likely to use, or even have considered using, a discount is likely to bring their attention to you, even if they had not previously heard of your business. Discounts not only bring new business and attention as a marketing tool, they can help improve your bottom line.

General advantages of offering discounts

1. Attracts Customers. As mentioned, discounts are very attractive to customers and may not only bring new clients, but can also bring back previous customers. Discounting products and services, particularly in-demand ones, is a good way to get attention. Especially in these days of social media, word-of-mouth traffic can increase results on promotions exponentially quickly. Your business is likely to experience increased traffic online or in-store (or both), and a boost in sales.

2. Increases Sales. While the discounted items and services are generally the ones that will garner the greatest sales, the increased traffic to your store or site means that other products and services also enter customers’ awareness and become potential purchases. The increased traffic for one item may lead to purchases of other items while they’re there.

Mar 12 We Want YOU… to offer a military discount

It all started with just one question. “Wouldn’t it be cool if every business gave military discounts or special offers?” That one question spawned a series of other questions like, “Well, why don’t retailers offer military discounts?” and “What would make it easier for small businesses to create special offers for members of the Armed Forces?” We try to stay solution-focused around here, so we came up with an answer.

We’re giving away our active duty verification solution for free. Yep, free. What does having a free verification solution enable retailers to do (other than offer an everyday discount like Fathead’s)?

Offer discounts to active duty military during Memorial Day weekend or for the week of Veteran’s day.
Give active military coupon codes for free shipping to APO addresses.
Create a special sweepstakes or contest especially for active duty military.
Include printable coupons for free popcorn or soda on a custom thank you page when verified military purchase tickets online to your events.

SheerID

SheerID Blog

May 16 I’m an event addict.

May 6 2013 Teacher Appreciation Week Discounts and Freebies

Apr 30 Channel Marketers–The Ninjas of the Marketing World

Apr 25 Exploring Twitter Keyword Targeting to Advertise Student Discounts

Apr 19 Using Facebook Partner Categories to Create Targeted Ad Campaigns

Apr 12 Three Ways to Battle Showrooming

Apr 4 Top 5 ways to celebrate teacher appreciation month

Mar 28 Big Data- what is it and how is it used?

Mar 22 Back to Basics–Why Offer a Discount

Mar 12 We Want YOU… to offer a military discount

Who We Are

What We Do

Who We Verify

Stay In Touch

SheerID

Post navigation

Who We Are

What We Do

Who We Verify

Stay In Touch

Connect