Utilizing pulse offers

  • Updated

SheerID’s most-successful customers employ a strategy that utilizes both evergreen offers and pulse offers. The below article details what a pulse offer is and how best to utilize it.

A related article is available to assist with evergreen offers.

What is a pulse offer?

A pulse offer is typically more attractive than an evergreen offer in terms of what is being offered, but is only available for a short period of time.

Accompanied by a targeted marketing campaign, a pulse offer is designed to grab attention and create a sense of urgency to spark intense virality and conversions within the target community.

The timing of a pulse offer is often centered around a celebratory calendar event that is unique to its target community.

Example use case

In this example, a company wants to honor Heroes.

They already have an existing evergreen offer on their website that gives all new site visitors an opportunity to save 10% off of their purchase by signing up for their email marketing list. This offer is not exclusive to any particular community, though.

To generate extra excitement at key times of the year and help Heroes feel closer to their brand, the company creates a pulse offer targeting Hero communities that provides a value of 30% off entire orders.

This specific pulse offer would only be available during meaningful times of year, for certain subsegments of Heroes, and for a limited period of time. Examples might include:

Hero Community Pulse Offer Availability Window
Military service members, veterans, and dependents
  • Entire month of May for Military Appreciation Month
  • First two weeks of November for Veterans Day
Teachers
  • Early May for Teacher Appreciation Week
  • One week in August for back-to-school
Healthcare workers
  • Early April for National Public Health Week

Military, teachers, healthcare workers, and first responders

  • One week in May for Heroes Week

Setting up pulse offers

Unlike evergreen offers, pulse offers require some time-based management of your programs and webstore or website to ensure that they are available precisely when you want them to be. It is also important to ensure that they be unavailable outside of the times you want them to be available.

It is recommended that you create a separate program for any pulse offers, as this will enhance your ability to understand program performance and track campaign conversions related to the pulse offer. That said, the process of creating a new program for pulse offers can be sped up by cloning and modifying existing evergreen offers.

The sections below will walk you through creating a pulse offer with or without an existing evergreen offer in place.

Using an existing evergreen offer to create a pulse offer

  1. Log in to MySheerID.
  2. Go to MySheerID > My Programs and hover over an existing evergreen program.
  3. Click on the drop-down arrow and select Clone.
    • This will create a new program with the same settings as the existing one you hovered over.
  4. Go through each of the program steps and update any relevant fields or items that will be different for the new pulse offer. These may include:
    • Eligibility > Offer Definition (e.g., "30% off total purchase")
    • Codes (you will need to upload a new, unique .CSV list of codes for the pulse offer)
    • Publish > Landing Page > Page Description (e.g., "Limit 1 code per person, must redeem by May 31st")
    • Settings > Redemption Limit (e.g., set to "1 times in 365 days" to ensure each visitor can only access the pulse offer once per year. See our Redemption Limits article for more details)
    • Settings > Offer Has Ended Message (it's recommended to have this point toward the existing evergreen offer so that anyone navigating here after the pulse offer has expired can still be verified and converted)
  5. Send an email to productsupport@sheerid.com notifying SheerID's support team of when you would like the offer to expire. This must be configured by SheerID staff.
    • In many cases, it is recommended to have the offer expire one week after you plan to remove the link to it on your webstore or website. This will allow for visitors who started, but did not manage to complete, the verification process during the eligible time period to complete it and successfully convert.
  6. Determine if your pulse offer will be offered concurrently with your existing evergreen offer, or if it will be temporarily replacing it.
    • If the pulse and evergreen offer will be available concurrently:
      • Launch the pulse offer.
      • Provide a link to the pulse offer in your webstore or on your website.
      • Once the pulse offer period is over, remove any links to it from your webstore or website.
    • If temporarily replacing the evergreen offer with the pulse offer:
      • Launch the pulse offer.
      • Replace any links to the evergreen offer in your webstore or on your website with links pointing to the pulse offer.
        • Anyone who has started, but not yet completed, verifying for the evergreen offer will still be able to complete their verification after the links have been removed.
        • Anyone who has already received a code from verifying for the evergreen offer, but has not yet used the code, will still be able to use the code after the links have been removed.
      • Once you are ready to restore the evergreen offer and remove the pulse offer, simply swap the links in your webstore or on your website back to their original state so that they all point to the evergreen offer.
  7. Expire the pulse offer's discount in your promotion platform so that any remaining unused codes or no longer functional.

Creating a pulse offer from scratch when no evergreen offer exists

  1. If you don't already have one, create an account for MySheerID.
  2. Follow the standard steps for launching SheerID and setting up a program as shown in this article.
  3. Launch the pulse offer.
  4. Provide a link to the pulse offer in your webstore or on your website.
  5. Once the pulse offer period is over, remove any links to it from your webstore or website.
  6. Expire the pulse offer's discount in your promotion platform so that any remaining unused codes or no longer functional.