Case Study: Headspace achieves secure student discounts and higher conversions with SheerID

Headspace Uses Gated Offers To Prevent Discount Abuse

Headspace launched a deeply discounted student plan ($9.99/year) to make its meditation app accessible to college students, but worried that wide promotion would invite discount abuse, hurt margins, and undermine customer trust and privacy. The challenge was to offer a major price cut while ensuring only eligible students could redeem it.

Headspace integrated SheerID’s digital verification into checkout, using minimal student data and third‑party verification (with document review) to gate the offer. That gave the team confidence to promote the plan broadly across campus and digital channels, protected revenue and user privacy, and helped drive reliable acquisition—illustrating how verified gated offers can boost conversions, ROAS and long‑term retention.

Headspace

Keya Patel

Growth Product Manager