Know your audience: three ways to verify students

In order to make your marketing as effective as possible, it’s crucial to know who you’re actually marketing to. Luckily, it’s easier to this with students than it is with many other demographics.

Why verify students?

Firstly, verifying students makes sense because it means you can better plan your engagement strategy with them. There are almost 20 million college students in the US, and a further 2.5 million in the UK - these young consumers are right at the start of their purchasing journeys. Engage with them now, and you’re well-placed to nurture them and secure their lifelong loyalty. Student verification is a proven way to optimize your conversion rates, too.

Many brands have seen huge success from offering student incentives. This brings us on to the second reason why it’s crucial to verify students - you don’t want non-students to obtain student discounts.

So, on to the methods of verifying students. We verify students wherever they shop - on your website or ours, via app or desktop, online or in-store.

In-app verification

Today’s students are Gen Zs - and given that Gen Zs are digital natives, it’s natural that part of their shopping journey happens within their smartphones. In fact, almost one-third of students in the US prefer to make their purchases within an app. 61% say that they prefer this method because it’s quicker while 53% say that they like that it can be done anywhere. So it makes sense to verify student status within your own app - or within ours.

Online verification

Secondly, you can verify student status online. Given that 95% of students shop online (with 50% preferring desktop for online shopping), this is an essential way of optimizing your student conversion rates while verifying that all of your purchases are coming from verified students.

Our secure conversion optimization tool acts just like a student card - but unlike a student card, it’s instant and secure. It determines, in real-time, if one of your customers is a student - if they are, we instantly grant them access to a student-specific offer. And once a student is verified online, their path to purchase is significantly reduced - making for a dreamy user experience that keeps them coming back.

Instore verification

Of course, in-store verification is a key consideration for lots of businesses - and this is something that we offer, too. Students can verify their student status in real-time via our Student Beans iD. They do this via the one thing they’re never without - their smartphones! To make your student offer even more visible, we’ve developed our Local feature, so they know exactly where to find you.

With students switching seamlessly between in-app, online and in-store shopping, it makes sense to go with a verification solution that can do all three. To explore your options further, book a demo today.