How Employment Verification Can Help You Win New Customers
Corporate discounts are a triple win. Companies use them to attract and retain employees. Brands provide them to their corporate partners to attract new prospects. And employees love them. In fact, the number of programs and benefits a company offers is one of candidates’ top considerations when looking for new jobs.
A corporate discount program can be a powerful customer acquisition tool, but only when the discounts are protected. Brands that don’t use employment verification to secure them lose money, create inefficiency, and limit their program’s full potential.
Warning: Your Corporate Discount Is Not Safe
Many companies use coupon codes to implement their corporate discount programs. But these codes can easily go viral and are often fraudulently redeemed by shoppers who never earned them. And some employees use them long after they’ve moved on to another job. That’s a big concern, considering employees change jobs an average of 12 times during their careers! When using coupon codes alone, fraudulent redemption of personalized offers can be as high as 35%.
Some brands try to prevent corporate discount abuse by verifying eligibility through a manual process, such as requiring shoppers to show a pay stub in person. But manual verification strains internal resources and consumes valuable time. It can also lead to lost revenue if consumers decide to abandon a tedious verification process and shop elsewhere.
And sometimes brands think they’re verifying customers, but really aren’t. One company simply asked callers if they worked for a certain company and gave them the discount if they said yes.
To prevent fraud and simplify the verification process for users, companies need an employment verification platform to implement their corporate discount programs.
How Employment Verification Protects Your Corporate Discount
Employment verification prevents corporate discount abuse by using digital verification to ensure that customers who redeem the discount are currently employed by the partner offering it. For example, Sprint uses digital verification to implement its corporate discounts to major companies, including Comcast, Disney, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft.
Employment verification is fast, easy, and employee-friendly. Here’s how it works:
- A brand offers its partners a corporate discount.
- Employees of the partner company opt in to receive the discount by providing their name, email address, and country. Their active employment is instantly digitally verified using authoritative data sources.
- Employees enjoy the discount. Brands use the customer data to nurture their loyalty.
4 Reasons to Use Employment Verification
01 Prevent Revenue Loss
Employment verification prevents discount abuse which protects a company’s margins and increases profits from the program.
It also prevents hidden revenue loss that can occur when buyers penalize brands that let shoppers cheat. One survey found that when customers know that a brand allows a shopper to wrongfully redeem an offer like a corporate discount, half would shop there less often, and four of five would lose trust in the brand.
Unsurprisingly, consumers reward brands that provide personalized offers that are truly exclusive. The same survey revealed that 94% of shoppers would take advantage of a personalized offer, and 91% would share one with their friends or family. Personalized offers also motivate 40% of shoppers to spend more and 48% to purchase sooner.
02 Make it Easy for Employees to Redeem the Offer
Employment verification streamlines the purchase process. Employees can redeem the promotion online, eliminating the hassle of in-store visits or customer service calls. And the experience is entirely in-brand—employees don’t need to leave the brand’s website to be verified. This ensures a seamless and friction-free process that increases conversions.
03 Protect Consumer Privacy
In an era of data breaches, privacy is a top priority. Employment verification uses minimal data—name, email address, and country—and never sensitive information such as Social Security numbers.
04 Optimize and Expand Your Programs
Employment verification tracks usage, so brands can measure and improve the success of their campaigns. What’s more, they can expand their program options by creating single-use codes or establishing reward levels based on business rules.
And brands can tap into global companies anywhere those companies have an office. Employment verification is available in 191 countries worldwide and localized for 25 languages.
Employees—The Consumer Community You’re Overlooking
Corporate discounts can be a customer acquisition goldmine. Delivering personalized marketing to a consumer tribe based on their core identity—such as values, stage of life, or affiliation—moves them to act. For example, if a brand provided a personalized offer to the military, 42% of the military community said they would use it to purchase more items, and 61% said they would shop with that brand more often.
Our co-workers also form a powerful consumer tribe with whom we are deeply connected. As Jake Weatherly, SheerID’s CEO said, “The long hours we spend at the office and the thrill of sharing our success are intimate experiences that create a deep bond with our colleagues.”
Consumer tribes have strong networks, and when a good thing comes their way, they spread the word. Research shows that 71% of teachers who receive a personalized offer will tell a colleague about it.
Corporate discount programs activate the same kind of sharing. An employee who used their corporate discount to stay in a luxurious hotel or buy a fancy new outfit is going to rave about it at the water cooler. That kind of praise will make your offer go viral, and with employment verification, that’s just what you want.
