Summary
For 75 years, ASICS has sought to empower its customers through sports, driven by the ancient Greek philosophy of “a sound mind in a sound body.”
In recent years, this idea has become even more vital to the mission of the shoe and apparel company. In particular, ASICS has recognized that supporting community groups that give back to others—healthcare workers, teachers, military members, and first responders—is fundamental to its purpose.
Starting with the pandemic, ASICS began rewarding the people who worked long, hard hours on the front lines by giving them discounts, powered by SheerID’s Audience Data Platform (ADP). Due to the success of the program—which drove an average of more than 1,000 purchases per day in its first 25 days—the company expanded its rewards strategy to honor more communities online and in stores with SheerID InStore.
Challenge
ASICS is committed to keeping their customers healthy, whether they’re running marathons, getting in shape, or spending long hours on their feet at work. This was particularly true for frontline workers, whose stress and long hours impact their physical and mental health. ASICS knew these workers needed to remain active and resilient, and the company wanted to find a way to support them.
The company began by offering a discount for healthcare workers, manually verifying each customer who requested a discount. The process ended up running weeks behind, with a backlog of nearly 70,000 requests. The team doing the verification was overwhelmed, and the prospect of adding new consumer groups, such as the military, was daunting.
ASICS needed a low-friction solution to relieve its internal teams and to support customers who wanted to redeem discounts online and in stores.
Streamlining our verification process was critical because rewarding frontline workers was central to our brand mission and promise. We needed a solution fast if we wanted to support our customers and walk our talk.
Solution
ASICS quickly replaced its manual verification process with SheerID’s Audience Network, which verifies that customers are eligible for select community offers via 200,000+ authoritative data sources. Customers seeking a discount complete a simple form, are instantly verified, and then can redeem their discount.
ASICS then rapidly rolled out a major expansion of their heroes discount program, giving healthcare workers, first responders, and the military a generous 60% discount. After the initial three-month program, the company converted the offer to an evergreen discount of 25% for these communities and added student and educator discounts of 15%.
In addition, ASICS leveraged the InStore add-on to help create a seamless verification experience in their retail locations throughout the U.S. The company took advantage of our “Train-the-Trainer” program to ensure store associates were up to speed on how their discounted offers worked.
ASICS also implemented barcodes as a coupon redemption method to make redeeming discounts easier at checkout and added the “Associate Override” feature, which enables store associates to quickly bypass and track verifications if there are any issues with customers proving their eligibility.
“When we launched these programs on our ecommerce sites, our store teams started asking to provide in-store discounts immediately. They knew they had members of these communities as loyal customers and they wanted to be able to show support for them,” explained Shani Braun, Senior Manager of Retail Operations & Visual Merchandising. “With SheerID, our store teams feel very well-armed with information to guide them on their verification journey and complete their transactions.”
I was able to build out all of our programs in SheerID in an hour, and the platform generated code snippets that were simple for our web team to add to our website. SheerID enabled us to launch our campaigns quickly, which let us immediately shift our focus to making customers aware of the discounts they were eligible for.
Results
Today, omnichannel community offers continue to drive consistent revenue growth.
Launching these programs with our ADP paid off. ASICS’ initial campaign saw a remarkable 100% conversion rate lift. The campaign also quickly generated revenue. The medical, first responder, and military discount drove an average of more than 1,000 purchases per day and 15% of total sales for the month in its first 25 days. Even better, these customers had an average order value (AOV) that was $12 more than customers who purchased without the discount.
Replacing its manual verification process with our Individual Verification Engine (IVE) also saved ASICS hundreds of work hours each week, which freed its support team to provide even greater value to customers.
And, with the in-store verification experience, ASICS is thrilled to be able to provide a personalized experience for customers, enabling their associates to connect with and reward community members for their professions. This not only deepens customers’ emotional connections to the brand, it also results in increased loyalty, better customer experience scores, and, ultimately, more revenue.
Using SheerID doesn’t just save us time and generate revenue, it allows us to support the well-being of customers who give our communities so much. We’re building customer loyalty in a way that fulfills our brand’s mission.