This article was first published in 2017 but has been updated several times to reflect new research and product advancements.
Leading brands from Nike to YouTube to Pvolve extend special discounts to college students for good reason: student offers are a proven tactic to acquire customers and build brand loyalty with a lucrative new audience.
But if you’re relying on a .edu email address to verify university students for your exclusive offers, you’re putting your profits and brand reputation at risk.
In this article, we’ll cover why student discounts are worth the investment, how to protect your offers from abuse, and how using the right verification method can enable you to turn a conversion into a lifetime of loyalty.
Why Offer Student Discounts?
Exclusive offers are a terrific tool for driving high CLV with students because they enable you to:
- Acquire new customers. Ninety percent of Gen Z college students check to see if a brand offers a student discount before purchasing. And 86% would be more likely to purchase from a brand that gave them a student offer.
- Collect Permissioned Data. Verifying students for an exclusive offer is a way to invite them to give you their data in exchange for something they value, which builds brand trust.
- Build Long-Term Loyalty. More than seven in ten Gen Z college students feel more emotionally connected to brands that give them an exclusive offer, and even more would join a brand’s loyalty program to redeem one.
- Re-Engage with Relevance. When you know someone is a student you can create personalized campaigns, like when they leave for break, take finals, and head back to school.
But What About the Honor System?
Offering student discounts can pay off in dividends—but you have to protect your profits by verifying that only eligible individuals can redeem it.
Our customer audits have shown that in general, discount abuse can be as high as 35%. It erodes your profits and damages the exclusivity of your discount, which makes it less appealing and can even hurt your brand when students see their exclusive offer is available to everyone.
Why Isn’t .edu Verification Enough?
Some brands ask students to enter a .edu email address to sign up for a student discount, and then send an email to that address to confirm it. And while that’s better than nothing, using a .edu email address leaves your offer vulnerable to discount abuse.
There’s a whole cottage industry devoted to helping people secure fake .edu addresses so they can take advantage of student discounts. A quick Google search turns up dozens of blogs and videos with workarounds and tricks.
.edu verification also enables a subtler form of discount abuse. Many college alumni retain their .edu email address for years after they graduate, enabling them to redeem your offer even though they’re no longer eligible for it.
Using .edu verification also limits your ability to reach millions of nontraditional students because more than 40% of college students never receive a .edu email address in the first place. Preventing eligible students from redeeming your offer limits your revenue and creates a negative brand experience for these students.
Finally, using .edu verification creates friction because would-be customers have to leave your website, go to their inbox, click an email, and then go back into your website to complete their purchase. This can lead to cart abandonment, which lowers your offer’s conversion rate.
How Can You Verify Students?
Fortunately, SheerID’s Audience Network can verify students through an experience that is user-friendly for your customers and your brand.
When a student wants to redeem your offer, our Audience Network asks them to verify their identity as a seamless step in your purchase process. Students provide basic information—like their email address, date of birth, and school they attend—and our Audience Network uses more than 200,000 authoritative data sources to instantly verify their student status.
When a student is verified, their discount is automatically applied to their purchase and they finish checking out. Verification can happen once, or you can schedule it to repeat at any interval you choose, such as every year or every semester.
Best of all, the data you collect from students can be appended to more than 400 martech platforms so you can use it to re-engage them with personalized marketing. And you have the option to customize the verification form by adding two fields, so the data you gather can also include insights like their major and expected date of graduation, enabling even greater personalization.
Building Loyalty Past Graduation
Verified, exclusive offers lay the foundation for a loyal brand relationship because they recognize a student’s unique stage in life. This makes them feel seen and valued, which creates an emotional connection.
With the permissioned data you collect, you can cultivate this connection while they’re in school and beyond. Below are three ways.
1. Combine Verification Data with Purchase Behavior
For example, a streaming service can analyze student purchase trends. If it sees that most verified students subscribe to the basic plan, it can create an exclusive upsell offer that reflects those behaviors, like a student-only bundle with music and video streaming.
2. Engage Students at Key Moments
Knowing someone is a student gives you the opportunity to re-engage them at noteworthy times in the year when they’re most receptive to relevant promotions.
For example, a fashion retailer can run a spring break campaign that gives students special deals on swimwear or travel gear. And as summer is ending, it can give them an exclusive back-to-school discount on campus essentials.
3. Create a Transition When Students Graduate
If you track graduation timelines, you can celebrate that milestone by giving students a small gift and then transitioning them to full-price with an exclusive, post-grad offer.
For example, a software company that’s been giving students free access to its platform can offer students a “welcome to the workforce” discount, incentivizing them to continue using the software at a competitive price before paying full price.
Students Want Discounts on Everything
Verified, exclusive offers work across all industries because students love discounts. Research shows that if they’re given an exclusive discount, students are more likely to purchase:
- Take-Out / Food Delivery – 56%
- Beauty / Personal Care – 54%
- Apparel, Footwear & Accessories – 49%
- Groceries – 42%
- Music Streaming – 41%
- Electronics – 38%
- Subscription Services – 37%
- Cell Phone / Wireless Services – 35%
- Travel – 35%
- Software – 13%
3 Great Examples of Student Campaigns
CompTIA
Non-profit organization CompTIA provides training, credentialing, and mentorship to new IT professionals—so offering a student discount was a perfect fit to grow its audience. At first the company relied on .edu email addresses to verify eligibility, but it saw high levels of offer abuse when people started using fake emails to secure vouchers and re-sell them to non-students.
When CompTIA began verifying students with our Audience Network, it reduced discount abuse by 20% and generated a 20:1 ROI. The results impressed Randy Gross, CompTIA’s chief information officer, but he was equally pleased by the ability it gave the company to widely promote the offer.
“SheerID’s Audience Network doesn’t just save us money,” he said. “It helps protect our academic program while letting as many students as possible take advantage of it.“
Back Market
Back Market provides high-quality refurbished electronics and helps reduce e-waste. This mission resonates strongly with Gen Z, so the company created an exclusive discount for college students and in 2020 began using our Audience Network to verify their eligibility for it. The program brought in 300,000 verified students in one year.
Since then, Back Market has seen student verifications increase by 4x year-over-year, and the permissioned data it collects has helped drive student customer lifetime value (CLV) to 30% higher than the company’s global average.
Peacock
Peacock launched NBCUniversal into the streaming era in 2020. In an effort to expand its user base, drive awareness, and build lasting loyalty, the company used our Audience Network to launch an exclusive student offer.
Peacock’s campaign brought in nearly a million verified students. It also inspired the company to create similar programs for educators, first responders and other audiences that have seen equally impressive results, with conversion rates exceeding 60% across key segments.
You can see more examples of successful student discounts from leading brands, including ASICS, Pvolve, and Comcast, at our customer stories page.
Ready to Upgrade Your Student Offer?
Learn more about how our Audience Data Platform drives student acquisition and loyalty at our student audience page.
