How Your Brand Can Offer Key Worker Discounts Online
Whether you’re an all-in e-commerce business or offer a unique service via your website, key workers likely make up a significant portion of your potential customer base. Encompassing a wide range of professions, including emergency workers, NHS staff, and teachers, this audience can be a lucrative one, made up of individuals with stable incomes, clear needs, and a strong sense of loyalty when they find brands that value them.
If you’re looking to drive long-term revenue, attracting key workers by offering discounts and offers is therefore one of the smartest moves you can make and a great way to give back, too. Not sure where to start? Our team has created this short guide to help you get this affiliate marketing tactic deployed and get your brand in front of key workers effectively.
Why Offer Key Worker Discounts?
The reality is that if you’re not offering a discount to key workers, there’s a good chance that your competitors will be. We’ve seen how this closed user group has increasingly been targeted by brands looking for high-intent and high-trust customers, particularly post-COVID-19 pandemic, when the work completed by this group at a challenging time has been praised by so many.
The benefits of course extend beyond making sure that your competitors aren’t eating up all of your sales. Offering a discount to key workers is undeniably a great way to say your thanks and send out a positive brand message, and also generate long-term revenue. These groups are likely to return if they feel appreciated and share positive experiences with their colleagues, creating customers for life.
Key Considerations
When setting up discount-focused affiliate programmes for our clients, one of the biggest hesitations we see is concern around misuse. This fear is particularly pertinent when targeting closed user groups like key workers. If anyone can access the offer, you risk eating into your margins without the benefit of reaching the intended audience. It also weakens the sense of exclusivity that makes these kinds of offers so attractive in the first place.
These concerns and the possible implications are why it is so important to get the setup right when offering key worker discounts online. Proper verification is key, and there are a couple of routes you can take.
Option 1 – Offering Key Worker Discounts On Your Own Site
Some brands prefer to keep things under their control as much as possible, and that’s absolutely fine. If you want to offer key worker discounts, whether to a wide breadth of professionals or on a more exclusive basis, such as just to NHS staff, your first option is to verify things within your site.
Keeping the offer on your own site gives you full control over the user experience and ensures that the customer always shops within a space you have oversight of. Tools like Gocertify and Pion can help you achieve this by integrating with your site and verifying the user’s key worker status via their email address or by requiring an upload of relevant ID.
Once verified, the shopper can access their discount or offer directly through your store. This approach also allows you to directly gather key insights about how key workers are interacting with your brand and products and tailor future offers accordingly.
Option 2 – Offering Key Worker Discounts Via A Third Party
Another route to go down is to house an offer on third-party platforms targeted at key worker audiences, such as apps and affiliate sites like Blue Light Card, Discounts for Teachers, or Discounts for Carers.
The main draw of using these platforms is that they already have established trust and reach among key workers, increasing the chance that the intended audience will see your offer even if they’ve never heard of you before. These third parties will also handle the verification and, in many cases, some of the promotion of your offer via tactics like email newsletters and special placements on their site. The trade-off is that it may cost more to go about things this way, but it does allow you to quickly get your brand in front of the right audience without having to build the infrastructure yourself.
Tailored & Expert Advice
How you choose to offer a discount to key workers is ultimately up to you. There is no single ‘correct’ strategy; often using a combination of methods can be a good long-term strategy, such as a third-party to build awareness, then a tailored key worker discount within your own site. The most important thing is knowing that the planning and execution required to offer a discount to key workers online is well worth the effort, as this is an audience who are actively looking for brands that support them.
At Fuel, we understand that getting your brand in front of new audiences and opening up your margins in new ways can be daunting. This is why we are on hand to help you with all of your affiliate marketing needs and can assist your brand in targeting closed user groups in the most effective way. Whether you are entirely new to the affiliate space or want to open up an existing programme to a new closed user group, we can help with a risk-free and revenue-based model. We have great relationships with the tools and platforms you need to get your brand in front of your desired audience, so please do contact us for more information or reach out to me directly by emailing seve@fuel-growth.com.
