The following article will walk you through the steps needed to create your own program with SheerID.
Each program represents a single, gated offer targeted toward a specific consumer audience (also known as a community) and protected by a verification flow.
For example, you may have a program that verifies whether a visitor to your website is a student, and if so, provides a 15% discount on merchandise. If you also wanted to offer a 15% discount to verified first responders, this would be a second program.
You can create unlimited programs with SheerID.
Creating an account
Before you can get started creating programs with SheerID, you'll need to register an account.
If you've been working with a member of SheerID's Sales team, you may already have an account created. If you're not sure what it is or how to access it, reach out to your SheerID contact or SheerID Product Support to inquire.
Selecting a consumer audience
After creating a new program you will choose a consumer audience to verify. While most audiences are available for immediate launch, please note that Low Income, Employment, and Identity requires a package upgrade and engagement with SheerID's Professional Services team.
Refine your audience
The first step on this page is to select the countries and languages in which you wish to make your offer available. The options selectable depend on package type, but starts with three (3) countries and one (1) language per program. For more information about available packages and how to upgrade, visit SheerID's business site.
Eligibility segments
Most consumer audience supports a predefined set of segments or affiliations. By default, new programs will have the most popular applicable segments selected.
Our recommended best practice is to be as inclusive as possible (i.e., select as many segments as possible) in the offer definitions in order to reach the broadest possible audience. This is also useful in avoiding negative sentiment from consumers who unexpectedly find themselves excluded from an audience during the verification process.
If you wish to narrow down your offer, you may deselect eligible segments beneath the “Eligible student status” heading.
In our example program above, high school students who have been accepted into college are excluded from receiving the gated offer.
Based on your segment selections, the program will automatically update the following:
- The selectable organizations in the verification form
- The data sources used to instantly verify consumers
- The document review rules applied to your program
When you are satisfied with your offer's eligibility details, press Next to save your progress and move to the next step.
Defining a reward strategy
Configuring your offer
SheerID offers multiple ways for your consumers to redeem your offer.
Coupon Codes
Select Coupon Code if you would like to give every customer that successfully verifies a discount code. You can choose:
- One code for all eligible customers. The same code is given to all verified customers (e.g. "LABORDAY-20"). This is the simplest option, but also the least secure type of promo code as it is an easy target for offer abuse.
- Unique, Single use Codes. Each verified customer receives a unique code (e.g. XYRC-0905-LPRF) pulled from a list of codes you have uploaded to your program until all codes are exhausted. Codes should be alphanumeric, and uploaded as a .CSV file with each code in a separate row. For more information, see Uploading codes.
You must define your discount code or upload codes in order to move to the next step if you have selected Coupon Codes.
Upon selecting "Unique, Single use Codes," you will see the option to configure what happens if the offer runs out or is close-to running out.
To configure what a user sees when an Offer Runs Out, hit +Add and then toggle the feature on. You can also edit the title, error message, button text, and button URL.
To warn users that an offer is running low, hit +Add next to Limited Offer and toggle the feature on. Here you can choose a threshold for when to show the message, as well as customize the message. Dive deeper into these settings here.
Account Tagging
Additionally, you can choose to mark a consumer's account in your database as verified by selecting Account Tagging. This is an ideal solution if you have an existing rewards program or login process.
When you select Account Tagging, you will see two options:
To successfully set up an account tagging strategy, you will need to use webhooks to be notified of the successful verification event and then pull data from our REST API.
Additionally, you can choose to gate your offer by requiring that a consumer log in prior to verifying by clicking +Add on Require Consumer's Account ID and toggling the value to required.
You can also customize the message a consumer will see if the value is missing. Note that this will require you to send the consumer's account ID back to SheerID as a part of the verification URL. Read Passing a consumer's account ID, for more information.
Hit Next to move on to protecting your program.
Protecting your offer
Default setting
New programs will default to the Standard level. This setting is intended to provide a reasonable balance between maximizing consumer conversions and protecting against offer abuse.
Permissive
This setting applies more lenient criteria to document and data evaluation, allowing more users to pass verification automatically.
- Best for: Specific in-store use cases where some level of human oversight is available
- Considerations: This setting is not recommended for most digital programs. It can lead to increased approval of ineligible users and heightened abuse by bad actors.
Standard
This is the default setting used by most programs. Standard makes use of our multi-layered offer protection and mitigation protections. This setting balances robust data sources and document-based verification with a more seamless user experience.
- Best for: Programs seeking a balanced approach between protection and conversion.
- Considerations: Offers a smoother user experience, though some low-risk false approvals may still occur depending on audience and offer value.
Conservative
This setting prioritizes verification accuracy by enabling more strict verification criteria for instant data sources, and by disabling Automated Document Review (ADR). When consumers are not instantly verified and are asked to upload a document, it will be routed to manual review rather than being evaluated automatically.
- Best for: Programs where offer protection is a high priority and tolerance for ineligible approvals is low.
- Considerations: Manual document review is more secure, but introduces processing time and can negatively impact user experience and conversion rates.
For more information about offer protection settings, click here.
Redemption limits
On this page you can also configure your redemption limits. Redemption limits allow program administrators to define how often the same person can be verified to redeem an offer.
By default, new programs will have a system redemption limit activated based on your chosen audience and offer protection configurations. You can choose to add up to two (2) additional limits on top of this by clicking Add Redemption Limit within the dialog box.
In the example below, the redemption limit has been adjusted to permit verification approval twice within 30 days.
You can use the drop-down options show above to adjust how many times a person can be approved during what span of time. You can also add up to one additional redemption limit, in which case both redemption limits will be applied.
For example, you could configure your settings so that each individual can be approved for an offer once every 30 days, but no more than 6 times total over the course of 365 days.
The following values are available to select:
- Number of times: 1-10
- Days: 30, 60, 90, 120, 335, and 365
Changing a redemption limit will reset the "number of times" counter on your program to zero (0) for that specific redemption limit for all consumers. It will not reset the "number of times" counter for your other redemption limit if no changes were made to that limit. This means that consumers who have already been verified and received access to your offer will be allowed to verify again until they reach one or more active redemption limits.
From here, you can choose to create your program or further customize the look and feel.
Customizing the experience
In the Customize section of MySheerID, you can customize the look and feel of your program's verification flow in order to better align with your own brand guidelines.
Customizing text
In the Customize Flow section, you can choose to edit Content text fields to customize the messaging that consumers will encounter during the following steps of the verification flow, which changes depending on the audience selected. Features also change or are stateful depending on the targeted consumer audience.
To customize your messaging, select the Verification Method on the left of the preview window. The steps for that method will appear below where you can then click on a step to edit the content fields on the right side of the page. Flow options appear in the order that they are seen by the consumer.
Flow
Collect step
Success
SSO
Email Loop
Email loop is enabled by default on some programs. SheerID Product Support can add it to your program by request.
Document Upload
Document Upload Countdown
Document Upload Pending
Document Upload Limit Exceeded
Consolation
Contact SheerID Product Support to have Consolation Offers enabled on your program.
By default, all text fields are prefilled with our recommended copy.
If you've chosen to narrow the scope of eligibility, you should also update the messaging at the Collect step to clearly and succinctly state the conditions of eligibility.
For example, if you have only selected the "Full + part time college students" segment as being eligible, you should update the subtitle text at the Collect step to read something like, "Verify you're a student at a degree-granting school."
Read through each field and update any you'd like to better reflect your brand's messaging.
As you edit the fields, the form preview in the middle of the screen will update to reflect your changes.
Once you are satisfied with the content, click Save.
Customizing the theme
Design
In the Theme section, you can find options for the following design elements:
- Upload a logo for your program
- Select colors and one of 5 web-friendly fonts
- Upload a background image
To upload your logo, click the Upload button in the Logo box, and select a .png, .jpg, or .gif logo file that is 210px X 70px, and 1MB or less. You can delete the logo and upload a new one at any time by navigating back to the Theme section of your program.
Landing Page
Layout
There are 3 layout options for landing pages:
- Centered
- Right justified
- Full page
To upload your background image, click the Upload button in the Background box, and select a .png, .jpg, or .gif logo file that is 2000px X 800px, and 2MB or less. You can delete the image and upload a new one at any time by navigating back to the Theme section of your program.
Next, select the colors for your Layout (for full page option) or Landing Page:
- Background Color
- Primary Font Color
Verification Flow
To choose colors for the verification flow throughout your program, click in the color sample box to make your selections.
Once you are satisfied with the content, click Save.
Overview
After customizing your offer, you will see an overview page. On this page you can see or edit all of your configured settings. Before you publish your offer, you'll need to decide how to integrate the offer into your website or webstore. Click on the Embed button on the top to see your options.
SheerID offers three ways to install your program:
- Pop-up form. Make use of a modal lightbox to present the offer in a pop-up window when the relevant button is clicked on your webpage. We provide the code snippet that can be copied and pasted into your current webpage code.
- Embedded form. This option will allow you to embed the offer as an iFrame within an existing brand webpage you own. We provide the code snippet that can be copied and pasted into your current webpage code.
- Landing Page. Present the offer in a new, standalone landing page hosted by SheerID. This option provides a discrete URL toward which your marketing can point toward. If choosing this method, be sure to confirm the copy for this webpage matches your branding and offer, as it will default to our best-practice messaging.
Once you've selected the method you'd like to use to publish the offer, your program will successfully be created. Additional details on publishing programs are available here.
It is recommended that you fully test your program before going live with it. Instructions for testing your program and pushing it live can be found here.
Promote your offer
Once your offer is live, you can opt-in to SheerID's reach capabilities, sharing your offer on SheerID for Shoppers or through our partners when you click the Promote button in the header. This will open a form in a new tab where you can enter your offer details. Read more here.