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.

8. Stapler and staples. Make sure to get a little mini one, they generally come with their own little box of staples.
9. Extra business cards. I like including cards of people that don’t attend the show. 10 or so of each generally are enough.
10. Protein bar. You won’t always have time to grab lunch, Throw a protein bar or two into the bag so that you can keep your energy up for the whole show.
11. Black sharpie. Useful for marking out old shipping labels or filling in scuff marks on black shoes.
12. Extra pens. Just brace yourself for the inevitable right now – someone will walk off with your pen. So bring extras. And never ever bring your favorite pen to a show. Ever.
13. Sticky notes/note cards. Want to remember something about the guy who just handed you his card and then walked away? No room to write it on his actual card? Grab a sticky note or note card and notate away! Don’t forget to staple it, so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
14. A bag to carry it in. I’ve tried a lot of different bags and plastic make-up bags are the best for the job, in my opinion. They are super durable, clear so you can find the item you’re looking for quickly, and usually the right size to fit everything you really need without too much trouble.

Other things I’ve been known to throw into a bag on occasion – Tide ToGo stain stick for any unfortunate food or coffee accidents, a med kit with band aids, a sewing kit, and tissues.

I usually create at least 2 of these bags, especially if I have a particularly busy events year. That way I can send one out while I’m re-stocking the other.

These bags have sometimes made the difference between success and disaster at a show. The ability to instantly whip out a pair of scissors or a wad of string to deal with whatever pending disaster is threatening is a great feeling as well as a great time saver. You can quickly tape up the rip in the table cloth instead of waiting an hour while someone finds the local Jo-Ann’s in an unfamiliar town.

And there you have it. ‘Chelle’s essential stuff for a successful show.

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.
• Branchfire: In addition to offering a 50% discount on iAnnotate, an app for reading, editing and sharing documents and images, during Teacher Appreciation Week, Branchfire is encouraging people to nominate their Teacher Hero on Twitter or Facebook to win Teacher Hero gift baskets, free apps, or an iPad.
• Staples: Teachers can shop for erasers, glue, pens, and markers for only a penny each through May 11 for Teacher Appreciation Week using their Teacher Rewards cards.
• Melting Pot of White Plains: Celebrate the tireless efforts of teachers  with a three-course fondue dinner with complimentary add-ons for only $29.92/person.
• Ben Franklin Crafts: From May 6-11, teachers save 20% on regularly priced arts & crafts supplies for Teacher Appreciation Week.
• Chipotle Mexican Grill: Bring a valid school faculty ID to any U.S. Chipotle on May 7^th, to get a free salad, burrito, bowl, or tacos with the purchase of any entrée.

Freebies
Giving away a small token of appreciation to teachers once a year is not only a nice way to say thank you, but it increases customer loyalty in this key target market. For inspiration on how to create a free offer that teachers will love, take note of this weekend’s Teacher Appreciation Event in Naperville, IL. The local shop owners in downtown Naperville collaborated to create a memorable event for teachers and school employees in their community. Not only did every teacher who showed ID get an orange wristband that qualified them for discounts (see above on why teachers love discounts!), but they gave away $10 gift cards to the first one hundred teachers who checked in.

• Downtown Naperville Event: The first 50 District 203 school employees and the first 50 204 school employees received  a free $10 gift card.
• Waterway Carwash: Locations across northeast Ohio and in St. Louis, MO are treating teachers to a free car wash during the month of May. In St. Louis, teachers also score 10 cents off ever gallon of gas and a free fountain soda every Wednesday in May.
• Chick-Fil-A: Participating Chick-Fil-A locations are giving educators, teachers, faculty and staff with a valid school/teacher ID a free chicken sandwich on May 7.
• Wendy’s: Get a free Jr. Hamburger on May 7 if you’re a teacher in Tucson in honor of National Teacher Appreciation Day.
• McDonald’s: Teachers in Arizona who show their school ID or pay stub at their local McDonald’s will receive a free Extra Value Meal on May 7 from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Famous Dave’s BBQ: Famous Dave’s BBQ locations in Chandler, Mesa, Gilbert, and  Peoria are thanking teachers with its BBQ Two Meat Salute for National Teacher Appreciation Day.  On May 7, teachers and educators can enjoy a free meal with a main dish, corn muffin, and a choice of one side.
• Bojangles’: Teachers in South Carolina can head to Bojangles’ any time in May to enjoy a free Legendary Iced Tea or other beverage and receive a promotional gift card with a “secret” value of anywhere from $1 to $100.
• Applebee’s: Choose from one of six entrees on May 7, and if you’re a teacher in Wisconsin, your meal is free.
• Learning A-Z: During a week-long tribute to teachers, educators can enjoy free access to online resources like Reading A-Z, Raz-Kids, Writing A-Z, Vocabulary A-Z, Reading-Tutors, and Science A-Z. Learning A-Z is also giving away 10 free classroom licenses each day of Teacher Appreciation Week.
• Study Blue: As part of their “2013 Thank a Teacher a Latte” students, former students, and parents can create a free digital thank-you card that sends their teacher a digital “badge of honor” to display on Pinterest and other social media outlets. They’re also giving away $5 coffee cards in random drawings during Teacher Appreciation Week
• WebTeach.com: Between May 6 and May 10, any teacher who registers as a WebTeacher in WebTeach.com’s education marketplace will receive a $5 Starbucks® e-gift card and be entered into a drawing for a Free iPad.

Cause Marketing
Some companies see Teacher Appreciation Week not only as an opportunity to thank individual teachers, but to support our educational system as a whole by partnering up with educational organizations or nonprofits to make a difference.

• Office Depot and REAL Change Productions: Participants can log onto www.officedepot.com/realchange to register a teacher who needs school supplies or support a teacher who is spending his or her own money on supplies for the classroom.
• Bojangles’ and South Carolina Future Minds: In addition to giving away iced tea and gift cards to teachers, the restaurant chain is also partnering with South Carolina Future Minds. From May 20 to June 2, Bojangles’ customers can purchase a symbolic apple in honor of their favorite teacher to be featured on the wall of the restaurant. Proceeds go to South Carolina Future Minds.

Hopefully these companies’ support, combined with the efforts of thousands of PTA’s, parents, students, and community groups across the country, is enough to give every teacher in the United States a case of the warm fuzzies this year. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week, teachers! We heart you.

We couldn’t help but notice how many of these Teacher Appreciation discounts and freebies are limited to specific, participating locations and require teachers to bring documentation like their pay stubs along when they go clothes shopping or go out to dinner. Maybe by May 2014, retailers will know they can use SheerID to verify teachers’ eligibility automatically, which allows them to confidently offer teacher their well-deserved discounts and freebies online or in person without requiring any extra effort from teachers themselves.

If you know of any other teacher appreciation events or offers this year, please post them in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!

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.

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.
Military Personnel

Nearly one in 10 small businesses are veteran-owned, and retired service members are at least 45 percent more likely than those without active-duty military experience to be self-employed. One of the challenges for many channel marketers is to help resellers find and encourage that purchase trigger. The over 20 million veterans and spouses are a dynamic group of consumers that companies are actively seeking out. 94% of veterans say they are more loyal to companies that they view as “military friendly.” A program launched by you that encourages your resellers to reach out to military personnel could equal immediate incremental revenue and develop a great loyal customer base.

College students and Alumni

Another dynamic consumer group with many triggers coming their way that are going to make them need all sorts of stuff. An early branding program to soon-to-be graduates could fill the sales pipeline for the next year.

Affiliation of Your Choice

Who do you want to reach? Members of certain associations like licensed tax accountants or financial planners? Or members of non-profits? Or customers of a non-competing business that you’ve partnered with? Create a special offer for any affiliated group that makes up your dream target market.

Does it all sound too complicated to stuff into a VAR program? For a ninja? Please, this is easy.

By partnering with a verification platform, all of the heavy lifting is taken care of for you. SheerID, or another verification platform can be your katana (Ninja’s weapon of choice according to Wikipedia, I looked it up). SheerID can create custom hosted pages at no charge for your resellers customers to be verified that they qualify for the exclusive discount, then SheerID will handle all the tracking so you can offer incentives for highest traffic, highest number of verified customers, and highest number of conversions. You come up with the offer, the incentives, and the announcement, and the rest is handled including the reporting. Everything can be customized to meet the needs of you and your resellers. After all, even ninjas need a little help once in a while.

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.

So to reach college students who are interested in student discounts, we could test the following keywords:

Because you’re using those keywords, these people could potentially see your promoted tweets (their last names and twitter handles have been removed to respect their privacy):

Creepy? Maybe. Effective? Apparently. According to Twitter, companies that tested keyword-based ads got higher than average engagement. By connecting with someone through Twitter, you can increase your brand awareness and conversion by engaging with consumers at exactly the right moment- like when they’re about to buy coffee, they’re feeling the pain of high priced fuel, or they’re eager to use their student discount as much as possible before they graduate. With real-time keyword targeting, your timing is now as crucial as your target audience or what you’re advertising.

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.

If you want to zero in on specific segments of the military market or A/B test your ads to see if you get a better response from Facebook users affiliated with the Army vs. the Navy, you can use a combination of precise interests and partner categories to create smaller segments. Take a look at the estimated reach for an ad that is only targeted using precise interests compared to the same ad that is using precise interests and a partner category. This should give you an idea of the power and appeal of Facebook’s new partner categories if your goal is to reach targeted, niche markets with your compelling content and get a great ROI. We used hashtags, or topic targeting, instead of using single keywords, but you could use individual keywords instead if you prefer.

Now just for fun, let’s switch gears and use teachers as an example, instead of military, and take a look at what happens when you start using partner categories to advertise your own product or service directly to consumers. We’re going to pretend that SheerID sells yarn (because most consumers don’t seem to be very interested in buying verification platforms, for some reason). As you may know, May is also Teacher Appreciation Month, so for our purposes, we’re going to say you’re running an awesome, exclusive discount on yarn for teachers for the month of May. You used data from Acxiom’s Job Role menu to select the educator category and Epsilon’s data on demographics and occupation to add 222,800 teachers/educators. Now you’re going to use what you know about your own target audience to create an extremely specific segment of Facebook users. For starters, you know that most of your customers are women between the ages of 25-64, and they like knitting and crochet. See how that works?

Like any other ad campaign you run on Facebook, you’re going to need to do a bit of testing to find your sweet spot. It’s entirely possible that the segment of 15K teachers who knit or crochet that we just created might be a bit too targeted to get a good ROI, but this example shows you how powerful the partner category tool can be.

Showrooming is when you are standing in Target, considering buying an Ipad and 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.

1.  Remember my tastes

There are “push” and “pull” versions of this and retailers should be doing both.

Lowes has launched a “pull” version where they tell customers to keep track of everything they bought on the Lowes site, then next year when you want more of the same daffodil bulbs, you are more likely to buy them from Lowes because you’ll go look them up. By just tracking your in-store or on-line purchases with your phone number you have a great history of everything you’ve purchased.  Last weekend I bought 5 strings of “everyday” string lights from Target and installed them on my covered patio. So next year when I need two more strings, I’ll start the shopping process all over again, looking at Amazon, at Home Depot, and at Target and hope to match them up because I won’t remember. If Target gave me a way to remember, I wouldn’t even bother to look anywhere else. I’d just buy straight from them. Lowes has got it going on with their MyLowes campaign. It isn’t enough for me to start shopping there, I don’t really see it driving new customers, but loyal customers and halting some showrooming—definitely.

Some big retailers handle the “push” version of remembering my tastes in just an awful, clunky way. Their emails have become a joke among the geeky marketer set. I once bought a Tag Hauer watch online for an anniversary gift. Do you want to guess what the next three emails were that I received? Their genius reasoning was that if I bought one $2500 watch, I would undoubtedly want another one in the next 30, 60 or 90 days. It just wouldn’t take much for those emails to become really useful to me. What if they made a couple of basic assumptions: Mark the date that I bought the watch and 350 days later send me an email that suggests cigars, golf clubs, and men’s cashmere sweaters. Not that I would buy any of those, but it might get me to click through just because it was a well-timed email right before either my significant other’s birthday or my wedding anniversary. They could take it even one step further and “push” and “pull” by offering me the option of filling in a bunch more information about my significant other and they could keep an eye out for new stuff coming in that he might like. All of a sudden they become a virtual personal shopper. I’d be loyal. I would. That would work on me.

2.  Remember my dates

How many tiny retailers or super specialty shops have offered this? FTD.com has done it for years, but there literally isn’t a single person that I’m going to send a bouquet of flowers to (can you tell I don’t have a mother-in-law?).  I know, this is soooo 2003, but I still think if a BIG retailer did it well, I’d use it. If Amazon sent me an email 10 days before Angela, Chelle, Jesse, or David’s birthday, I might click through and place an order, maybe not, but I might.

3.  Ask questions, then remember the answers

I covered this a little under number one where I said they should push and pull, but let’s blow that idea up. Incent me to tell you about myself, then remember my answers. This is where SheerID swoops in with a red cape to save the day. Ask if I’m a student, a military member, a teacher, a small business owner, or affiliated with any group, then offer me an exclusive discount for that. SheerID will handle the hard stuff like verifying status and tracking that customer for the retailer. The retailer just needs to offer the discount or special offer and get the word to me, SheerID will protect it from getting posted, it stays personal which is what makes it work. If I walked in to Joann’s Fabric and got a notification on my phone that I could take an extra 5% off today because I’m a teacher—sold! I wouldn’t check prices with their competitors. Or, use that big data for something other than a buzz word that impresses your boss in your quarterly report. Watch my purchases of consumables and reach out to me around the time I’m running out of paper towels and dryer sheets. Offer a discount for cosmetics or candy the next time I buy those dryer sheets to increase the number of items that I loyally buy from you.

See where this is all going? Take that same creative thinking that has you firing at your competitors and apply it to the characteristics and habits and loyalties of your customer. If you want to develop a long-term relationship with me, focus on me.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
   
4. Use social media campaigns to make teachers feel appreciated. Start by using the hashtag #thankateacher on Twitter throughout the month of May. Make them feel even more special by  creating a contest or sweepstakes on Facebook or Pinterest where your customers can nominate their favorite teachers for prizes. For inspiration, check out Target’s Facebook driven sweepstakes from last year’s back to school campaign.
5. Host breakfast for teachers at a local school. If you sell coffee, fruit, baked goods, or own a restaurant, think about donating delicious goodies to a local school. Make it a community event by partnering with other local businesses to create an amazing, free breakfast or luncheon for teachers in your community.

If you start planning now, there’s no reason you can’t come up with something totally awesome by May 6^th for this year’s official Teacher Appreciation Week (May 6^th-10^th, 2013).

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?

Big Data isn’t only being used in ecommerce, although there are many POS technologies, fraud detection platforms, and business analytics software programs that couldn’t exist without it. As Jake (our CEO) pointed out in his article for WIRED, Big Data is also being used to identify at-risk students to improve their performance in school, monitor flu epidemics, and track patients’ health and symptoms. In the last week, stories have been published about how Big Data can improve urban planning, inform oncologists’ patient care decisions, and even help coaches decide which athletes to play and who to bench. Whether you see these developments as signs of progress or fodder for an incredible conspiracy theory, Big Data appears to be here to stay. As we go about our daily lives- shopping online, going to the doctor, watching YouTube videos, and talking on our cell phones- our individual actions are being aggregated into Big Data. I’m proud to be part of a company that is harnessing the power of Big Data in ways that provide tangible benefits to a few of the “data providers” themselves- teachers, college students, and military personnel and their families, to name a few.

Offering discounts on goods or services is a way to quickly draw in potential customers. 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.

3. Improves Image. There are plenty of circumstances in which a business can offer a discount in order to improve its image. Targeted discounting (like seasonal or locational discounts, or for certain subset of people) can greatly bolster a business’s reputation. For example, if a business was to offer discounts to senior citizens or military personnel, cancer survivors, that business demonstrates compassion and aligns itself with specific audiences (which in turns draws yet more attention).

Seasonal & targeted discount benefits

Every holiday season businesses spend billions and billions of dollars on promotions. But seasonal discounts aren’t just about the holidays; many businesses see a big jump in business during other events like during back-to-school. Major holidays and events like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Fourth of July, end of season sales, etc. can trigger massive collective spending.

Offering discounts on seasonal items or services is a great way to draw some of that purchasing power towards your business.

Additionally, customers are trained to expect discounts during certain seasons and are likely to be on the lookout for sales and promotions. While this is can be a good thing, as you have customers actively looking for products and services you offer, with so many other businesses out there offering similar promotions, it can become difficult to stand out from the competition. A way to stand out from the crowd of sales during the season is to offer off-season discounts.

Not only will your promotion have less competition, but you are also encouraging and rewarding shoppers for planning ahead.

For example, if you ran a personal training service or a gym, offering discounts on training for the New Year resolutions set in late December or before summer officially starts is a great way to target customers thinking ahead. Or, for the travel agency, you offer travel incentives in March when families and students are planning their summer vacations.
Rather than waiting to offer products that are beginning to lose their luster or usefulness like in end-of-season sales, offer pre-season sales to encourage customers to stock up on what they think they will need for the upcoming season.

Experiment to see what works. Discounts can help your business grow its customer base and improve sales; trying targeted and seasonal strategies as well as off-season promotions will help you discover which is best for your business.

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.

The main point we’re trying to make here is that even if you don’t think your margins support a percentage or dollar amount off every order year round, with a little creativity, you can still create a special offer for active duty military that will show your support for our troops without hurting your bottom line. We’re also looking out for your bottom line by ensuring that only active duty military can redeem your offer, even if you dream up something so amazing that it goes totally viral and it gets posted on every coupon code site in existence and RT’ed by every single person on Twitter. Only active duty military can redeem your offer. We promise. So unleash your inner creative genius and come up with something truly special.

Any business can use our new self-service portal or our API to verify active duty military, free of charge. There are no set up fees, and no hidden costs. Find out how to get started here. If you don’t procrastinate, you can have your verification page set up and running in time for Military Appreciation month in May!