Vail Resorts is a network of the best destination and close-to-home ski resorts in the world including Vail Mountain, Breckenridge, Park City Mountain, Whistler Blackcomb, Stowe, and 32 additional resorts across North America; Andermatt-Sedrun and Crans-Montana in Switzerland; and Perisher, Hotham, and Falls Creek in Australia. In 2016, Vail launched the industry-changing Epic Pass, a multi-resort season ski pass offering access to dozens of world-class ski destinations globally.
Miranda in five:
- Senior Analyst of Product and Revenue at Vail Resorts, where she manages business operations for Vail’s Epic Pass
- Leads end-to-end verification strategies, including Vail Resorts’ flagship Epic Pass military program in partnership with SheerID
- Spearheaded the expansion of the young adult market strategy beyond traditional student-only offers during the March pass launch
- Uses verification data to drive mountain experiences, like pop-up events with John Summit and military meetups
- Still keeps one loyalty key tag on her keychain and is always praying for snow
What do you own at Vail Resorts?
I’m a Senior Analyst of Product and Revenue at Vail Resorts where I oversee business operations for the Epic Pass and lead our audience marketing program.
How did Vail Resorts initially get started working with SheerID?
Vail Resorts first partnered with SheerID to manage identity verification for their military offer programs. Military members are deeply rooted in Vail Resorts’ history, as the company’s origins trace back to World War II, where the 10th Mountain Division trained in the mountains surrounding where Vail Mountain now operates. Because honoring military members is central to their business, Vail Resorts needed a secure way to keep these high-value offers gated specifically for service members that deserve them.
Why did Vail’s audience expansion go beyond students?
We recognized an opportunity to expand our footprint beyond students, into the young adult space. This audience is not necessarily in school, many of them are years into the workforce, a lot of them have families. This is very much an audience we still want to provide access to the mountains, without requiring them to be in school to do so.
Did you already have the audience data, or did you have to go find it?
We have a lot of years’ worth of first-party data that is really incredible, so there are segments we understand very, very well. Where the research and the work come in is when and how guests shift in and out of those segments, and why. Since we sell experiences rather than operating a brick-and-mortar style space and inventory, we can’t always look at just our data to tell us the right story.
How do you decide which audiences are worth personalizing for?
Every guest is in my heart, but not every guest brings the same value to the business. Personalization takes a lot of time and a lot of money, and it is not always valuable to invest your costs there. Leveraging SheerID’s verified data helps us dive deeper on what’s landing with what communities.
What does personalization at scale look like for an enterprise like Vail?
Of course there is still value in our evergreen offers, but GenZ and Gen Alpha engage differently; they expect more personalization.
We had to think about what that looks like for an enterprise of our size. We cannot go all in on every channel at once—I don’t think any business would. Starting with a targeted, verified audience gives us a roadmap for both personalization we can scale, and what other communities we can apply it to.
Our military offer is incredible and we keep it gated for those service members. SheerID has helped us do that in such an intentional way, so we can speak to these military members one to one—giving us a roadmap for how we can do this for young adults, which is a significantly bigger audience.
What changed once you started speaking to young adults directly?
We’ve seen real wins in loyalty among Gen Z. Moving beyond traditional student verification to such a broad audience felt like a leap at first, but it completely expanded our reach. SheerID helped us make that shift quickly and seamlessly, so we could engage Gen Z directly across paid media, CRM, and tailored landing pages.
Why does protecting those offers matter right now?
Margin optimization is always important, and shouldn’t surprise anyone. We had a really tough winter, and in a season like that, protecting these offers, gating access, and building guest lifetime value matters even more. We know we’re reaching the right people, at the right time, in the right way.
There is also brand recognition and credibility. Gen Z cares about brand with a capital B. We have the Epic Pass brand, but we also have a network of resort brands a lot of people were not aware of, especially Gen Z. it has increased our ability to create awareness around our world-class resort brands and the benefits for that audience
What does a verified audience look like in experiential marketing?
We sell an experience, not a tangible product — creating high-value moments that make memories, drive deep engagement and loyalty. A great example is our pop-up series with DJ John Summit at premier mountain destinations like Heavenly in Tahoe, the top of Vail, and Whistler. We notified Epic Pass holders first, before rolling the news out more broadly, and required guests to physically reach the top of the mountain to participate. That created massive FOMO, especially among the young adult demographic — the mindset becomes: I have to have an Epic Pass, because what if he shows up and plays?
Once we bring people to the mountain, we can fully deliver on that immersive experience. We can leverage this same strategy for specific communities, using SheerID’s verified data to send targeted text and emails for military meetups, or sending heartfelt thank you’s for Veteran’s Day.