Client Success: Fathead

How to Keep a Military Discount Exclusive

Fathead LLC is the industry leader of graphics products for large & small spaces – led by authentic, officially licensed sports & entertainment graphics.

Challenge:

As part of their military appreciation program and initiatives, Fathead wanted to offer an exclusive sweepstakes for members of the U.S. Military and their families, as well as an everyday military discount on their graphics products. They also needed an easy way to verify military status so these special offers would not become widely available to the general population. It was important to find a way to protect these offers without requiring a service member to share sensitive information. Fathead wanted to make sure this special program was reserved for this specific customer group while also providing the military community assurance that this exclusive offer was just for them.

Solution:

Fathead connected with SheerID because the verification service provider had originally reached out to Fathead regarding their ability to verify college students. When key decision makers at Fathead learned about SheerID’s military verification service, they knew SheerID was the right solution for protecting their military appreciation programs.

We felt their instant military verification solution addressed our concerns by not excluding anyone who does qualify while excluding those who don’t.

Molly McLeod, Marketing Project Manager, Fathead

Fathead launched with a military-only sweepstakes in July 2012, and in March 2013, they added an exclusive everyday discount of 25% for active service members and their immediate family. Fathead built a robust landing page for its military visitors that included the sweepstakes, product recommendations, information about a military charity they support, and a banner advertising the military discount. Upon clicking the banner, visitors are presented with a brief form to fill out to verify their eligibility. After a successful verification, the discount is automatically applied at checkout.

In addition to verifying the eligibility of any customer redeeming the 25% military discount, SheerID also audits the sweepstakes entries that Fathead receives each month, and returns a list of verified active duty and family members that Fathead uses to randomly select their monthly sweepstakes winners.

By using SheerID’s document review solutions to verify anyone who can’t be verified instantly, like many military spouses, we take the extra step to ask for secondary information to prove affiliation. We’ve found that people who are indeed eligible are willing to provide necessary information to qualify.

Molly McLeod, Marketing Project Manager, Fathead

Benefits:

Based on their internal reporting, Fathead feels confident that they are only providing the discount to eligible military members and that the military community is actively using the discount. SheerID provides reporting that allows Fathead to see the percentage of customers who are verified false, as well as the percentage that are verified true. 4% of people who are using a discount on Fathead.com are using the military discount (only .5% of the population in the United States currently serves in the Armed Forces).

When Fathead launched the everyday discount, they saw:

• 700% increase in military engagement
• 70% of verified military members were new Fathead customers
• 60% increase in unique visitors to their military landing

After Fathead felt confident that the military community was responding to the discount, they added a link to the military landing page from their homepage and saw instant results. When they gave added exposure to the offer, unique visitors to the military landing page increased up to 140%.

When we added an everyday military discount, we saw a significant increase in unique visitors, with an even greater increase when we gave more exposure to the program.
 We feel our military appreciation program has been a great success.

Molly McLeod, Marketing Project Manager, Fathead