[00:00:00] Tara Underwood: Hi everybody! Welcome to today’s webinar, Omnichannel Guide to Exclusive Offers. In today’s noisy digital world, marketers are facing more pressure than ever, which is no surprise to anybody on this call. It’s not enough to be personalized; you need to be trusted. Omnichannel strategies help deliver consistent seamless experiences, especially when paired with verified, high-value audiences like students, teachers, and military members through partnership with SheerID. So that’s what we’re going to dig into today. How can brands achieve exclusive offers across channels while protecting the integrity of those offers through identity verification? It’s all about getting the right message to the right person at the right time and doing it at scale. As a quick housekeeping note, feel free to drop questions in the chat at any time. Uh, we’ll have some time at the end for question and answer, and we’ll be sharing this recording with the—sharing this recording with you. So watch for that in your inbox.
[00:00:59] Tara Underwood: To kick things off with introductions, I’m Tara Underwood, a Senior Customer Success Manager here at SheerID, and I’ll be your moderator for today’s session. I work really closely with brands to help them create programs that connect meaningfully with the audiences that they want to honor. Now hand it over to Jodie to introduce herself.
[00:01:19] Jodie Thiel: Thanks, Tara. Um, I’m Jodie Thiel, Senior Marketing Strategist. I’ve been with Sheer for a couple of years, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a lot of brands about their market strategies. So, I look forward to doing a deeper dive into some of those conversations that I’ve had. And I’m going to throw it over to Chris.
[00:01:38] Chris Oliveira: Hi everybody. Uh, Chris Oliveira, Senior Product Marketing Manager here at SheerID. Been here for a little over four years. It’s been great, and I’m excited to talk about this topic today. So we can just jump right in.
[00:01:49] Chris Oliveira: So let’s dive into first the big opportunity, right? Like why are—are brands considering this? Why are they investing in omnichannel strategy? And I know a lot of you are already doing this, but if you aren’t engaging with specific target audiences, uh, like students, teachers, military members, healthcare workers, etc., through various channels, um, it’s—it’s—it’s becoming a more crucial part—or a more crucial strategy for growth and retention for brands in—in 2025. Because for a few reasons—I’ve just put a couple here on the screen, but there are—there are many more. One is because it helps brands gain more new-to-file customers, even from competitors. We ran this—uh, this survey, and it showed that almost half, 45% of consumers are willing to switch their loyalty from one brand to another because they want to take advantage of a—exclusive offer that—that was given to them, so like a student deal or a teacher deal, like we talked about. So not only does it give you new—new-to-file customers, it also helps uh, create more loyal customers. So you can see the—the higher lifetime value there: 71% of members of a specific audience are more loyal to brands that give them an exclusive deal.
[00:03:08] Chris Oliveira: And lastly, it’s because it creates brand advocates. Almost all of them, 96% of them, are willing to share that—share that offer with their peers, so like students with other students, teachers with other teachers. So um, it—helps spread that—that offer around and also helps you lower your cost of acquisition, uh, as well, right? So we always want to track those types of—of metrics. So why is reaching them everywhere so crucial? Because it’s how people shop, right? We know that—as marketers, we know that it takes more than just one touchpoint to convert that person into a—a customer. And especially as we I think transition out of the COVID online digital-only mentality, people are looking to engage with brands through various—a very—a through multiple channels, right? So uh, I know there—there’s plenty of data to back this up, right? Three-quarters of—of consumers are—use multiple channels during a shopping journey. Uh, it also helps you increase uh, year-over-year retention, right? Brands with strong omnichannel engagement see a 91% um, increase in—in customer retention. And then also, they’re also spending more. If you have that omnichannel strategy in place, these customers are spending more, um, as well. So the—the crucial part is—is when we’re tying those two things together, right? The target audiences with the omnichannel experience, the—the key for that is creating a secure and seamless verification process to make sure that’s a clean and seamless experience both in the digital world and—and in—in the physical world as well, which Jodie is about to—to touch on that. But I just want to—I want to bring that up.
[00:04:49] Jodie Thiel: Yeah, thanks, Chris. So let’s jump into, you know, how do we do this and how—how do we do it successfully? So, um, let’s get really specific. So one of the things, um, a powerful way to activate offers is through out-of-home, OOH. So advertising tailored to where your audience spends their time. So here are some proven strategies. Um, one—now Chris just talked about why this is important; I’m going to walk through what’s going to um, work without creating friction for your audience and—and internal teams as well. So these are the top three, I’d say, best practices.
[00:05:25] Jodie Thiel: Um, seamless and secure is key. So think about your team, um, how they manage the handoff from marketing to the store floor or digital checkout. Uh, reducing uh, manual steps here is going to payoff fast. So no matter where someone shops—online, in-app, or in-store—your audience expects that same simple experience. So verification should be unified and efficient. One time should unlock all that access to all these other touchpoints. So another thing, and that ties into consistency. So in this consistent experience, we’re talking about brands—brands like to keep that experience real tight. So again, um, every channel should—shouldn’t feel like a one-off. They should be part of a brand’s fabric. So messaging, value, and tone—uh, need to be consistent, whether someone sees a billboard, an email, shelf tag. Um, think this—think this thought: if your offer is visible at point of sale, is the landing page mobile-friendly in-store? Have you trained your staff to talk to—talk about it confidently?
[00:06:31] Jodie Thiel: Um, and then third, bridge that digital and physical world. This is what we’re talking about; your audience often moves fluidly between digital and physical shopping. So should your offer? Send store-specific reminders to users based on location that customers verify online, and then use a digital barcode or coupon in-store, or flip that, vice-versa. Uh, so this duality is going to help maximize that engagement and ROI. So what does that look like with a specific audience? I’m just going to take these three top audiences here, which are students, military, and educators. So when we’re approaching omnichannel best practices with students, they’re going to be highly mobile-first. They’re going to be using their phones, the SMS is going to be important, social is going to be aware—uh, where they’re going to get brand awareness, but also where they’re going to share it. So um, you can remind them that they are near key retail districts or campus hubs. Um, OOH placements near dorms, public transit, back-to-school shopping corridors can reinfor—can reinforce that relationship.
[00:07:41] Jodie Thiel: And then jumping over to military, uh, these are really tight-knit mission-driven communities. So consider OOH near military bases, um, ad placements in military publications and apps. Um, messaging should feel like a—a real sincere thank you, not a sales pitch. Community-first language is going to go a long way here. Um, jumping over to educators, uh, consider commute-focused OOH or placements near school supply stores. Acknowledge timing. So with each of these, there’s going to be very specific calendar times of year that are going to resonate with these groups. You know, for student-educators, back-to-school, graduations, finals week, move-in days. Um, for military, May is going to be a big month, Veteran’s Day, Fourth of July, things like that. They’re going to create a higher conversion window.
[00:08:38] Jodie Thiel: And then if we jump onto the next slide, um, we’re going to go ahead and let’s see some of these examples live. Let’s—let’s look at in action here. So let’s kick this off with Target, one of the best examples of, I think, an omnichannel strategy that we see. Um, so Target doesn’t just run exclusive offers online; they bring those offers to life in the store and across all touchpoints. You can say—you can tell they’re thinking about that personalization. So during their military and teacher appreciation campaigns, you’ll see signage in store aisles, um, as you can see the kiosks here, mobile app tie-ins, um, email reminders, and even the self-checkout screen prompts. You can see the language they’re using here too: “Thank you for your service.” There’s—they’re trying to create a deep emotional relationship with this group of people. And so, um, it—being connected is everything for them. The offer is the same no matter where you shop, and it’s personalized. So whether you’re a teacher getting back-to-school supplies or a military family member stocking up, um, they’re going to make that really seamless and the experience feel meaningful. So it’s not just a digital coupon, here you go, it’s a full integrated into their shopping experience and journey.
[00:10:00] Jodie Thiel: And then on the next spot, we’re going to look at the mix of brands doing omnichannel in very clever ways. So on the left here is Madewell. They do a great job speaking directly to students and teachers, and they make it personal with in-store signage. So their use of the phrase “Extra Credit,” um, that’s just being brand-aligned with the messaging that doesn’t just inform, but it’s going to connect emotionally to this group. And moving to the center, we have IKEA. Um, this leans into the college setup, so complete with OOH displays, um, this is very experiential, which ranks high with students, really nails back-to-school. So, but it’s not just visual; that layout is going to invite students to imagine the space, then they’re going to head online to order or continue in-store. So they’ve got options there. It’s that digital-physical bridge that I spoke about earlier that keeps that experience going. And it makes it memorable, as well. So um, bottom right here, Vineyard Vines. So simple but effective. Their storefront signage directly speaks to college students and military shoppers. You can see they take some liberties with their logos here, um, but it—it’s going to attract—strategically, this is placed near um, a college, and it’s also placed not too far from military bases in the—in the area. So this is going to encourage walk-ins and it’s going to encourage loyalty. So these window decals work like mini little billboards, um, I’d say low effort, high return here. It’s going to be, again, memorable.
[00:11:36] Jodie Thiel: And then finally, Sleep Number. This one’s a great example of retail meeting omnichannel and verification. So they pair an exclusive offer with an in-store visual and then make it really easy for the customer to verify right there on the spot on a tablet. So even if someone walks in off the street, say they haven’t even heard of the offer, they can get verified on the spot right at the point of decision making. So it’s a great way to remove friction. You don’t have to leave and come back or go online later, if—it’s all right there. And I think what I love about this approach is that it isn’t flashy, but it works. It meets people where they are, it respects their time, and then instantly rewards them. So as you can see, these brands aren’t just talking about omnichannel, um, they’re really living it. It’s not just smart marketing; it’s creating meaningful brand moments across all touchpoints. And they really won as they start seeing increase in customer lifetime value, increase in AOV. If we want to get down into the numbers, um, this—this really impacts that.
[00:12:40] Jodie Thiel: So uh, now to show you what kind of impact this can actually have, not just in theory but in real numbers, I’m going to hand it back over to Chris, who’s going to walk us through some results from recent campaigns.
[00:12:51] Chris Oliveira: Yeah, I want to walk through some—some really great numbers that we’ve seen uh, some of our customers have when they created this experience that uh, Jodie’s talked about. So the first one is going to be uh, Michaels. So they wanted to boost their loyalty program sign up, right? So they created this—or they implemented a streamlined verification process that you can either do in-store or online for uh, specific audiences like teachers, seniors, and military customers. And because of this, they were actually able to verify 200,000 people into their loyalty program. Right? So not only do they—they get that initial boost of loyalty program uh, signups, but they also now have that—what we call permission data, right, which is the highest level of clean data that you can have, uh, to re-engage these audiences in—and dates that matter to them, right, like teachers like back-to-school or holiday or Veteran’s Day for—for military members and things like that. So they can—they can uh, get that initial boost of membership signup, but also re-engage those customers uh, through—through the year, which is great.
[00:13:57] Chris Oliveira: But it’s not just for retail. I know we gave a lot of retail uh, ex—examples, but uh, another—another kind of omnichannel uh, example that I really like to give is uh, YouTube. So um, obviously not—not a retailer, but they wanted to create more buzz around their TV streaming service. So they actually went to different campuses and—in five major markets to host these events, right, to show their—their product, to talk to students directly. And they saw almost 40,000 in-person conversions just from that—those events alone, which—which is great. Plus all these other metrics that are on the screen as well. But I think it’s great for non-retailers as well because you’re not limited to your brick and mortar stores, right? You can pick up your tents like—like YouTube has here and go to the next school and the next school or—do other types of events, right, military bases or everything like that. Um, so—so—that—this is a—the omnichannel strategies are really good option for not just retailers as well, anybody can do it, subscription companies for example.
[00:15:01] Chris Oliveira: And uh, one more example I have for you is Adobe. They took a little bit different approach, but what they did is they built these like ambassador programs for colleges uh, from—from the ground up. So it’s students talking to other students about their product, doing like different workshops and uh, different in-person events. So it goes back to that brand advocate piece that we talked about in the beginning, right? It’s real students talking to other real students about the Adobe suite of products, uh, which led to, again, a bunch of great results and the campaign was highly successful. Um, again, there’s multiple different ways you can approach omnichannel, right? So uh, you can see some of the creative ways that some of our customers have—have gone ahead and—and done, which is—which is I think is great.
[00:15:47] Tara Underwood: Yeah, and I get to jump in here and share the CSM perspective. So this is a really good example of how taking an omnichannel approach can amplify results of a program. This retailer used to do a back-to-school offer for educators every year. Prior to partnering with SheerID, their associates were verifying educators right there at the register, and they didn’t have an offer that was available online. So that’s not really ideal, right? What about those people who don’t have maybe a store in their city or those who just shop online? What made this activation so successful was how they promoted it across multiple touchpoints. They used social media, email, website banners, and even in-store signage to meet educators wherever they were. They created a consistent high-visibility campaign throughout the five-week period, and this promotion went viral. Educators throughout the US were posting about it, sharing it with friends, they were even thanking the retailer publicly for the support. And as you can see on the screen, the results pretty much speak for themselves. They saw a 127% year-over-year increase in the number of individual transactions compared to the prior year’s promotion. They added 10,000 new educators to their CRM and—get ready for this one—they reactivated nearly 9,000 lapsed customers while also being able to identify and tag them as educators in their CRM. The im—the impact on their revenue was just as strong. They grew 14% year-over-year, and the average order value jumped by $30 compared to their typical shopper. When you combine both omnichannel marketing with smart audience verification both in-store and online, you don’t just expand your reach, you re—you see results that—that actually matter.
[00:17:33] Tara Underwood: So that wraps up the content that we have for you today. But as promised, we wanted to save a little time at the end for question and answer. All right, so I’m just going to peek into the chat to see what came through. Um, Jodie and Chris, you ready?
[00:17:50] Jodie Thiel: Ready.
[00:17:51] Chris Oliveira: Ready.
[00:17:52] Tara Underwood: All right, let’s do it. Okay, so see this first one. Um, how do you recommend brands prioritize which channels to activate first when launching an omnichannel exclusive offer?
[00:18:05] Jodie Thiel: Okay, I’m—I’m going to jump in on this one. Um, yeah, I think the first thing that is really um, is just really knowing where your audience already is. So for example, if you’re going after students or Gen Z, for—um, you probably want to start with social, email, and then text. Um, the places they’re already engaging with you, so if you can kind of take an audit where that might be already, definitely take advantage of that. And then once things are running smoothly, you can layer in that in-person touchpoints like events, uh, store signage to reinforce it. So I’d say focus on the channels that are going to give you the biggest reach and impact first, then expand from there once you’ve got some good results to work with.
[00:18:53] Tara Underwood: Yeah, so it sounds like there’s not a one-size-fits-all; you really need to know your audience and then work with them so that you’re making it the right fit for who—who you’re trying to target. Um, yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, Jodie. Okay, we’ve got—got another question in here. Um, how can brands maintain a consistent experience while bridging digital and physical channels, especially when verification methods differ?
[00:19:20] Chris Oliveira: Yeah, I can take this one on. Um, well if you’re using SheerID, um—it’s the same verification method across all channels, right? But if—let’s just hypothetically let’s say you are—uh, there’s two different things that I think I would do. One is always tying it back to your loyalty program, uh—regardless of the how they verified for that specific offer, is always just tying it back to that loyalty program. Like you saw like Target and—and Michaels; those were great examples of—of always having it in like the app or—or on your, you know, your account page or wherever that is for—for your loyalty program. And the second thing I think I—I really like that um, brands are doing is creating that consistent kind of visual language across both digital and physical. Like, uh, I really like Vineyard Vines, for example. I don’t know if you remember the—the little sticker on—on the window that Jodie showed, like the little whale with—with kind of the Ame—the American flag on it, and then for the students, uh, had the—the little whale with the little books next to it. And if you go to their website right now, if you go to their like military discount page, they’ll have that same little whale on there. So uh, I think those are great ways to create visual—like a distinct visual language that—that bridges the physical and the digital, right? It’s a quick recognizable thing that people can look at and—and automatically remember uh, about—about the—what they saw maybe online and now they’ve seen uh, in—in store or vice versa. Which I think—which I think is—I think those—that’s a great example you can do that; it’s the creating that—that specific visual language around—around your—your offers.
[00:21:00] Tara Underwood: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you, Chris. So it sounds like consistency across your messaging, but then also knowing your customer so they have that consistent experience regardless of where they’re buying from you.
[00:21:10] Chris Oliveira: And I think it’s going just that one step ahead, right? Like they didn’t have to do that. Like Vineyard Vines didn’t have to do that; like they could have just put a—a standard—a—like a generic page on their website, but they went the extra little mile. And I think it’s not a—it’s not a high-effort thing, right? It’s a—it’s a pretty simple uh, uh, distinguisher I think for—for that offer. But I think they going the extra mile means a lot to those—to those target audiences for sure, so yeah.
[00:21:36] Tara Underwood: Absolutely. It feels authentic.
[00:21:39] Chris Oliveira: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:21:41] Tara Underwood: Great. Okay, uh, let’s see. We’ve got one more question in here. Um, oh, I like this one. So uh, what are some common pitf—pitfalls brands face when rolling out omnichannel offers and how can they avoid them? How can we avoid pitfalls, y’all?
[00:21:57] Jodie Thiel: Yeah. Okay, I’m going to jump in. I get to talk to brands about this, so sometimes they’re not seeing the results that they’d like. So the first place we start is, you know, what do your marketing efforts look like? Um, what kind of push are you putting behind them? Are they able to find you? Once we get kind of past that, um, and they start using those omnichannel that are really successful for them, one thing I see a lot is when each channel starts to feel like it’s running its own campaign instead of telling one cohesive story. So you can see a pattern in what we’re talking about here: consistency, right? The new marketing is being human. So when we talk about personalization, that’s what we’re talking about. So make sure you’re telling the same story. Um, that’s when messaging starts—if you’re not doing that, it starts to feel inconsistent to the consumer and people start to get confused. So, um, another is, you know, again, going back to that first thing, is just not promoting it or not promoting it enough. Uh, you can have the best discount in the world, but if people don’t see it, it’s just not going to work. So make sure all your touchpoints—CRM, paid ads, social, in-store—that they’re aligned and they’re easy to understand. So you’ll see, especially with the Sleep Number example, nothing too flashy, but it was clear and people were able to get through it without any friction. Who’s the offer for, how much is the discount, how do I activate it? You know, and—um, you then using some of that emotional language to make the connection is going to help tertiary-wise. So um, and of course, you know, just what Sheer offers: that smooth verification process is going to make it feel seamless for the customer as well.
[00:23:36] Tara Underwood: So consistency, like a parenting, stay consistent. And then also if you keep a tool in the toolbox, it’s not going to get—not going to get any use. So take it out, make it useful, and uh, let it work for you. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, um, that is all the questions that we have received. But we want to thank you once again for joining us today, and I want to do a quick plug here: our team is working on a lot of highly value—highly valuable webinars—ugh, getting tongue-tied today for some reason. But we are. We’re going to have some great webinars coming up in the future. Keep an eye out for those. We’ll be sending some information over to your inbox, um, some invites coming out, and you won’t want to miss what’s next. So thank you for jumping on the call with us. We’ve enjoyed our time with you.
[00:00:59] Tara Underwood: To kick things off with introductions, I’m Tara Underwood, a Senior Customer Success Manager here at SheerID, and I’ll be your moderator for today’s session. I work really closely with brands to help them create programs that connect meaningfully with the audiences that they want to honor. Now hand it over to Jodie to introduce herself.
[00:01:19] Jodie Thiel: Thanks, Tara. Um, I’m Jodie Thiel, Senior Marketing Strategist. I’ve been with Sheer for a couple of years, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a lot of brands about their market strategies. So, I look forward to doing a deeper dive into some of those conversations that I’ve had. And I’m going to throw it over to Chris.
[00:01:38] Chris Oliveira: Hi everybody. Uh, Chris Oliveira, Senior Product Marketing Manager here at SheerID. Been here for a little over four years. It’s been great, and I’m excited to talk about this topic today. So we can just jump right in.
[00:01:49] Chris Oliveira: So let’s dive into first the big opportunity, right? Like why are—are brands considering this? Why are they investing in omnichannel strategy? And I know a lot of you are already doing this, but if you aren’t engaging with specific target audiences, uh, like students, teachers, military members, healthcare workers, etc., through various channels, um, it’s—it’s—it’s becoming a more crucial part—or a more crucial strategy for growth and retention for brands in—in 2025. Because for a few reasons—I’ve just put a couple here on the screen, but there are—there are many more. One is because it helps brands gain more new-to-file customers, even from competitors. We ran this—uh, this survey, and it showed that almost half, 45% of consumers are willing to switch their loyalty from one brand to another because they want to take advantage of a—exclusive offer that—that was given to them, so like a student deal or a teacher deal, like we talked about. So not only does it give you new—new-to-file customers, it also helps uh, create more loyal customers. So you can see the—the higher lifetime value there: 71% of members of a specific audience are more loyal to brands that give them an exclusive deal.
[00:03:08] Chris Oliveira: And lastly, it’s because it creates brand advocates. Almost all of them, 96% of them, are willing to share that—share that offer with their peers, so like students with other students, teachers with other teachers. So um, it—helps spread that—that offer around and also helps you lower your cost of acquisition, uh, as well, right? So we always want to track those types of—of metrics. So why is reaching them everywhere so crucial? Because it’s how people shop, right? We know that—as marketers, we know that it takes more than just one touchpoint to convert that person into a—a customer. And especially as we I think transition out of the COVID online digital-only mentality, people are looking to engage with brands through various—a very—a through multiple channels, right? So uh, I know there—there’s plenty of data to back this up, right? Three-quarters of—of consumers are—use multiple channels during a shopping journey. Uh, it also helps you increase uh, year-over-year retention, right? Brands with strong omnichannel engagement see a 91% um, increase in—in customer retention. And then also, they’re also spending more. If you have that omnichannel strategy in place, these customers are spending more, um, as well. So the—the crucial part is—is when we’re tying those two things together, right? The target audiences with the omnichannel experience, the—the key for that is creating a secure and seamless verification process to make sure that’s a clean and seamless experience both in the digital world and—and in—in the physical world as well, which Jodie is about to—to touch on that. But I just want to—I want to bring that up.
[00:04:49] Jodie Thiel: Yeah, thanks, Chris. So let’s jump into, you know, how do we do this and how—how do we do it successfully? So, um, let’s get really specific. So one of the things, um, a powerful way to activate offers is through out-of-home, OOH. So advertising tailored to where your audience spends their time. So here are some proven strategies. Um, one—now Chris just talked about why this is important; I’m going to walk through what’s going to um, work without creating friction for your audience and—and internal teams as well. So these are the top three, I’d say, best practices.
[00:05:25] Jodie Thiel: Um, seamless and secure is key. So think about your team, um, how they manage the handoff from marketing to the store floor or digital checkout. Uh, reducing uh, manual steps here is going to payoff fast. So no matter where someone shops—online, in-app, or in-store—your audience expects that same simple experience. So verification should be unified and efficient. One time should unlock all that access to all these other touchpoints. So another thing, and that ties into consistency. So in this consistent experience, we’re talking about brands—brands like to keep that experience real tight. So again, um, every channel should—shouldn’t feel like a one-off. They should be part of a brand’s fabric. So messaging, value, and tone—uh, need to be consistent, whether someone sees a billboard, an email, shelf tag. Um, think this—think this thought: if your offer is visible at point of sale, is the landing page mobile-friendly in-store? Have you trained your staff to talk to—talk about it confidently?
[00:06:31] Jodie Thiel: Um, and then third, bridge that digital and physical world. This is what we’re talking about; your audience often moves fluidly between digital and physical shopping. So should your offer? Send store-specific reminders to users based on location that customers verify online, and then use a digital barcode or coupon in-store, or flip that, vice-versa. Uh, so this duality is going to help maximize that engagement and ROI. So what does that look like with a specific audience? I’m just going to take these three top audiences here, which are students, military, and educators. So when we’re approaching omnichannel best practices with students, they’re going to be highly mobile-first. They’re going to be using their phones, the SMS is going to be important, social is going to be aware—uh, where they’re going to get brand awareness, but also where they’re going to share it. So um, you can remind them that they are near key retail districts or campus hubs. Um, OOH placements near dorms, public transit, back-to-school shopping corridors can reinfor—can reinforce that relationship.
[00:07:41] Jodie Thiel: And then jumping over to military, uh, these are really tight-knit mission-driven communities. So consider OOH near military bases, um, ad placements in military publications and apps. Um, messaging should feel like a—a real sincere thank you, not a sales pitch. Community-first language is going to go a long way here. Um, jumping over to educators, uh, consider commute-focused OOH or placements near school supply stores. Acknowledge timing. So with each of these, there’s going to be very specific calendar times of year that are going to resonate with these groups. You know, for student-educators, back-to-school, graduations, finals week, move-in days. Um, for military, May is going to be a big month, Veteran’s Day, Fourth of July, things like that. They’re going to create a higher conversion window.
[00:08:38] Jodie Thiel: And then if we jump onto the next slide, um, we’re going to go ahead and let’s see some of these examples live. Let’s—let’s look at in action here. So let’s kick this off with Target, one of the best examples of, I think, an omnichannel strategy that we see. Um, so Target doesn’t just run exclusive offers online; they bring those offers to life in the store and across all touchpoints. You can say—you can tell they’re thinking about that personalization. So during their military and teacher appreciation campaigns, you’ll see signage in store aisles, um, as you can see the kiosks here, mobile app tie-ins, um, email reminders, and even the self-checkout screen prompts. You can see the language they’re using here too: “Thank you for your service.” There’s—they’re trying to create a deep emotional relationship with this group of people. And so, um, it—being connected is everything for them. The offer is the same no matter where you shop, and it’s personalized. So whether you’re a teacher getting back-to-school supplies or a military family member stocking up, um, they’re going to make that really seamless and the experience feel meaningful. So it’s not just a digital coupon, here you go, it’s a full integrated into their shopping experience and journey.
[00:10:00] Jodie Thiel: And then on the next spot, we’re going to look at the mix of brands doing omnichannel in very clever ways. So on the left here is Madewell. They do a great job speaking directly to students and teachers, and they make it personal with in-store signage. So their use of the phrase “Extra Credit,” um, that’s just being brand-aligned with the messaging that doesn’t just inform, but it’s going to connect emotionally to this group. And moving to the center, we have IKEA. Um, this leans into the college setup, so complete with OOH displays, um, this is very experiential, which ranks high with students, really nails back-to-school. So, but it’s not just visual; that layout is going to invite students to imagine the space, then they’re going to head online to order or continue in-store. So they’ve got options there. It’s that digital-physical bridge that I spoke about earlier that keeps that experience going. And it makes it memorable, as well. So um, bottom right here, Vineyard Vines. So simple but effective. Their storefront signage directly speaks to college students and military shoppers. You can see they take some liberties with their logos here, um, but it—it’s going to attract—strategically, this is placed near um, a college, and it’s also placed not too far from military bases in the—in the area. So this is going to encourage walk-ins and it’s going to encourage loyalty. So these window decals work like mini little billboards, um, I’d say low effort, high return here. It’s going to be, again, memorable.
[00:11:36] Jodie Thiel: And then finally, Sleep Number. This one’s a great example of retail meeting omnichannel and verification. So they pair an exclusive offer with an in-store visual and then make it really easy for the customer to verify right there on the spot on a tablet. So even if someone walks in off the street, say they haven’t even heard of the offer, they can get verified on the spot right at the point of decision making. So it’s a great way to remove friction. You don’t have to leave and come back or go online later, if—it’s all right there. And I think what I love about this approach is that it isn’t flashy, but it works. It meets people where they are, it respects their time, and then instantly rewards them. So as you can see, these brands aren’t just talking about omnichannel, um, they’re really living it. It’s not just smart marketing; it’s creating meaningful brand moments across all touchpoints. And they really won as they start seeing increase in customer lifetime value, increase in AOV. If we want to get down into the numbers, um, this—this really impacts that.
[00:12:40] Jodie Thiel: So uh, now to show you what kind of impact this can actually have, not just in theory but in real numbers, I’m going to hand it back over to Chris, who’s going to walk us through some results from recent campaigns.
[00:12:51] Chris Oliveira: Yeah, I want to walk through some—some really great numbers that we’ve seen uh, some of our customers have when they created this experience that uh, Jodie’s talked about. So the first one is going to be uh, Michaels. So they wanted to boost their loyalty program sign up, right? So they created this—or they implemented a streamlined verification process that you can either do in-store or online for uh, specific audiences like teachers, seniors, and military customers. And because of this, they were actually able to verify 200,000 people into their loyalty program. Right? So not only do they—they get that initial boost of loyalty program uh, signups, but they also now have that—what we call permission data, right, which is the highest level of clean data that you can have, uh, to re-engage these audiences in—and dates that matter to them, right, like teachers like back-to-school or holiday or Veteran’s Day for—for military members and things like that. So they can—they can uh, get that initial boost of membership signup, but also re-engage those customers uh, through—through the year, which is great.
[00:13:57] Chris Oliveira: But it’s not just for retail. I know we gave a lot of retail uh, ex—examples, but uh, another—another kind of omnichannel uh, example that I really like to give is uh, YouTube. So um, obviously not—not a retailer, but they wanted to create more buzz around their TV streaming service. So they actually went to different campuses and—in five major markets to host these events, right, to show their—their product, to talk to students directly. And they saw almost 40,000 in-person conversions just from that—those events alone, which—which is great. Plus all these other metrics that are on the screen as well. But I think it’s great for non-retailers as well because you’re not limited to your brick and mortar stores, right? You can pick up your tents like—like YouTube has here and go to the next school and the next school or—do other types of events, right, military bases or everything like that. Um, so—so—that—this is a—the omnichannel strategies are really good option for not just retailers as well, anybody can do it, subscription companies for example.
[00:15:01] Chris Oliveira: And uh, one more example I have for you is Adobe. They took a little bit different approach, but what they did is they built these like ambassador programs for colleges uh, from—from the ground up. So it’s students talking to other students about their product, doing like different workshops and uh, different in-person events. So it goes back to that brand advocate piece that we talked about in the beginning, right? It’s real students talking to other real students about the Adobe suite of products, uh, which led to, again, a bunch of great results and the campaign was highly successful. Um, again, there’s multiple different ways you can approach omnichannel, right? So uh, you can see some of the creative ways that some of our customers have—have gone ahead and—and done, which is—which is I think is great.
[00:15:47] Tara Underwood: Yeah, and I get to jump in here and share the CSM perspective. So this is a really good example of how taking an omnichannel approach can amplify results of a program. This retailer used to do a back-to-school offer for educators every year. Prior to partnering with SheerID, their associates were verifying educators right there at the register, and they didn’t have an offer that was available online. So that’s not really ideal, right? What about those people who don’t have maybe a store in their city or those who just shop online? What made this activation so successful was how they promoted it across multiple touchpoints. They used social media, email, website banners, and even in-store signage to meet educators wherever they were. They created a consistent high-visibility campaign throughout the five-week period, and this promotion went viral. Educators throughout the US were posting about it, sharing it with friends, they were even thanking the retailer publicly for the support. And as you can see on the screen, the results pretty much speak for themselves. They saw a 127% year-over-year increase in the number of individual transactions compared to the prior year’s promotion. They added 10,000 new educators to their CRM and—get ready for this one—they reactivated nearly 9,000 lapsed customers while also being able to identify and tag them as educators in their CRM. The im—the impact on their revenue was just as strong. They grew 14% year-over-year, and the average order value jumped by $30 compared to their typical shopper. When you combine both omnichannel marketing with smart audience verification both in-store and online, you don’t just expand your reach, you re—you see results that—that actually matter.
[00:17:33] Tara Underwood: So that wraps up the content that we have for you today. But as promised, we wanted to save a little time at the end for question and answer. All right, so I’m just going to peek into the chat to see what came through. Um, Jodie and Chris, you ready?
[00:17:50] Jodie Thiel: Ready.
[00:17:51] Chris Oliveira: Ready.
[00:17:52] Tara Underwood: All right, let’s do it. Okay, so see this first one. Um, how do you recommend brands prioritize which channels to activate first when launching an omnichannel exclusive offer?
[00:18:05] Jodie Thiel: Okay, I’m—I’m going to jump in on this one. Um, yeah, I think the first thing that is really um, is just really knowing where your audience already is. So for example, if you’re going after students or Gen Z, for—um, you probably want to start with social, email, and then text. Um, the places they’re already engaging with you, so if you can kind of take an audit where that might be already, definitely take advantage of that. And then once things are running smoothly, you can layer in that in-person touchpoints like events, uh, store signage to reinforce it. So I’d say focus on the channels that are going to give you the biggest reach and impact first, then expand from there once you’ve got some good results to work with.
[00:18:53] Tara Underwood: Yeah, so it sounds like there’s not a one-size-fits-all; you really need to know your audience and then work with them so that you’re making it the right fit for who—who you’re trying to target. Um, yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, Jodie. Okay, we’ve got—got another question in here. Um, how can brands maintain a consistent experience while bridging digital and physical channels, especially when verification methods differ?
[00:19:20] Chris Oliveira: Yeah, I can take this one on. Um, well if you’re using SheerID, um—it’s the same verification method across all channels, right? But if—let’s just hypothetically let’s say you are—uh, there’s two different things that I think I would do. One is always tying it back to your loyalty program, uh—regardless of the how they verified for that specific offer, is always just tying it back to that loyalty program. Like you saw like Target and—and Michaels; those were great examples of—of always having it in like the app or—or on your, you know, your account page or wherever that is for—for your loyalty program. And the second thing I think I—I really like that um, brands are doing is creating that consistent kind of visual language across both digital and physical. Like, uh, I really like Vineyard Vines, for example. I don’t know if you remember the—the little sticker on—on the window that Jodie showed, like the little whale with—with kind of the Ame—the American flag on it, and then for the students, uh, had the—the little whale with the little books next to it. And if you go to their website right now, if you go to their like military discount page, they’ll have that same little whale on there. So uh, I think those are great ways to create visual—like a distinct visual language that—that bridges the physical and the digital, right? It’s a quick recognizable thing that people can look at and—and automatically remember uh, about—about the—what they saw maybe online and now they’ve seen uh, in—in store or vice versa. Which I think—which I think is—I think those—that’s a great example you can do that; it’s the creating that—that specific visual language around—around your—your offers.
[00:21:00] Tara Underwood: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you, Chris. So it sounds like consistency across your messaging, but then also knowing your customer so they have that consistent experience regardless of where they’re buying from you.
[00:21:10] Chris Oliveira: And I think it’s going just that one step ahead, right? Like they didn’t have to do that. Like Vineyard Vines didn’t have to do that; like they could have just put a—a standard—a—like a generic page on their website, but they went the extra little mile. And I think it’s not a—it’s not a high-effort thing, right? It’s a—it’s a pretty simple uh, uh, distinguisher I think for—for that offer. But I think they going the extra mile means a lot to those—to those target audiences for sure, so yeah.
[00:21:36] Tara Underwood: Absolutely. It feels authentic.
[00:21:39] Chris Oliveira: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:21:41] Tara Underwood: Great. Okay, uh, let’s see. We’ve got one more question in here. Um, oh, I like this one. So uh, what are some common pitf—pitfalls brands face when rolling out omnichannel offers and how can they avoid them? How can we avoid pitfalls, y’all?
[00:21:57] Jodie Thiel: Yeah. Okay, I’m going to jump in. I get to talk to brands about this, so sometimes they’re not seeing the results that they’d like. So the first place we start is, you know, what do your marketing efforts look like? Um, what kind of push are you putting behind them? Are they able to find you? Once we get kind of past that, um, and they start using those omnichannel that are really successful for them, one thing I see a lot is when each channel starts to feel like it’s running its own campaign instead of telling one cohesive story. So you can see a pattern in what we’re talking about here: consistency, right? The new marketing is being human. So when we talk about personalization, that’s what we’re talking about. So make sure you’re telling the same story. Um, that’s when messaging starts—if you’re not doing that, it starts to feel inconsistent to the consumer and people start to get confused. So, um, another is, you know, again, going back to that first thing, is just not promoting it or not promoting it enough. Uh, you can have the best discount in the world, but if people don’t see it, it’s just not going to work. So make sure all your touchpoints—CRM, paid ads, social, in-store—that they’re aligned and they’re easy to understand. So you’ll see, especially with the Sleep Number example, nothing too flashy, but it was clear and people were able to get through it without any friction. Who’s the offer for, how much is the discount, how do I activate it? You know, and—um, you then using some of that emotional language to make the connection is going to help tertiary-wise. So um, and of course, you know, just what Sheer offers: that smooth verification process is going to make it feel seamless for the customer as well.
[00:23:36] Tara Underwood: So consistency, like a parenting, stay consistent. And then also if you keep a tool in the toolbox, it’s not going to get—not going to get any use. So take it out, make it useful, and uh, let it work for you. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, um, that is all the questions that we have received. But we want to thank you once again for joining us today, and I want to do a quick plug here: our team is working on a lot of highly value—highly valuable webinars—ugh, getting tongue-tied today for some reason. But we are. We’re going to have some great webinars coming up in the future. Keep an eye out for those. We’ll be sending some information over to your inbox, um, some invites coming out, and you won’t want to miss what’s next. So thank you for jumping on the call with us. We’ve enjoyed our time with you.
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