In marketing to students, companies may often choose to give discounts, offers, and other enticing promotions to them, with varying degrees of success. Keeping track of these offers, who gets them, what qualifies them to be part of the process, and other pertinent details is challenging for the companies.
Enter student verification services! Verification services/software allow the companies offering the promotions to access tools that collect opt-in data about the students in question, to verify that they are indeed students.
Since these kinds of offers are prone to scams, which could hurt a business’ margins, the companies need a way to verify not just the eligibility of someone claiming to be a student but also an opportunity to market to a generation that will soon leave school, join the working class and become the consumers of tomorrow.
How student verification of eligibility works
To understand how the business and students benefit from student eligibility verification, we must look at how it works. The process starts with the student verification of eligibility service, which collects information from students to give to the company/business in question.
A good example to illustrate is Spotify. The service shows ads to users for offers intended for students. How do they know that someone is a student? The short answer is they don’t, not until a student verification of eligibility service steps in.
The job of this middleman is to collect verification information like copies of a dated student ID, fees bill, class schedule, class registration, and other official documents that prove the applicant is in school. The data is then made available to Spotify or other companies with similar offers, who can then use it to ensure they don’t get defrauded by people pretending to be students.
How businesses cater to the student market
As a general rule, we tend to assume students don’t have that much money to spend on things. After all, they are not working (for the most part). However, that doesn’t mean they don’t need anything and will often choose to buy something based on its affordability.
That is where the offers come in.
Businesses trying to cater to the student market may offer free or heavily discounted plans, which are balanced to provide value to the end-users and entice them to sign up and hopefully remain lifelong customers.
Adapting the marketing experience for the new generation(s)
It has always been difficult to market to younger generations. Trends in marketing change over time, making demographic data difficult to track or adapt wholesale for the next generation.
However, because Gen Z is outspoken and always online, predicting their purchasing habits is far less of a game of chance.
Treating GenZers as one monolithic demographic is a mistake that many brands have made and continue to make. The name of the game now is personalization and making customers feel seen as individuals. The topic is multi-faceted and complex, but students marketing is navigable with the right data and tools.
What brands must do
Brands must learn to bridge the generational divide between Gen Z and other generations, such as Millennials. Knowing Gen Z’s online activities and social inclinations is the first step in interacting with them despite their many similarities.
Keep in mind that they are wiser to marketing tactics than other generations and have a great degree of influence that can turn the tide for or against entire industries.
The other thing to keep in mind is that the students want you to market to them how they want, with sensible offers (exclusive offers work wonders) and a great deal of respect for their privacy and demands (especially regarding hot topics like climate change and corporate responsibility).
