OneSaneVoice

At Rosh Hashanah dinner last night at my friend Caryn’s, Daughter asked if I’d visited a site she emailed me recently called Groupon.com.  I hadn’t so I asked her to tell me more.

She pretty much paralleled the  information I’m sharing below, although with lots more hand gestures, facial expressions, and anecdotes.  Despite the fact that her description was more animated, I’m reprinting an entry I found online from Harvard Business Publishing by a blogger named John Sviokla who covers the basics from a business viewpoint.  From a consumer viewpoint, it sounds awfully cool.  And one does not normally associate Harvard with cool.  Where I read about it was here, but where I heard about it was Daughter.

Groupon’s Four Keys to Customer Interaction

There is an interesting experiment happening on the web.  The e-coupon site Groupon.com offers one deal a day in sixteen cities across the USA.  They just added three new cities — Miami, Philadelphia & Austin — and hope to be operating in over thirty urban areas by year’s end.

Here’s how it works:  would-be buyers have until midnight to recruit a total of 50 participants.  If, by midnight, there are fifty buyers, everyone gets the discount.  If the number falls short of 50, the deal expires and no money changes hands.  The firm’s video on “how Groupon works” gives you the idea.  On September 8th, the deal in Boston was “$75 for $175 worth of Designer Handbags & more at Hayden-Harnett Online” — and Groupon had 11 people who had given their credit card information before 8 am.  The company’s aim is to help introduce people to your store, restaurant, service, or other retail or wholesale establishment.  Groupon makes money by keeping a share of the discount; in the above case, Hayden-Harnett Online might split part of the $75 collected.

Their early growth is notable:  a Groupon representative reports that they have doubled in just the past few weeks.  First started in November of 2008, they now have 80 employees, and 675,000 email subscribers growing at 40-50% per month.  They hope to exit the year with over a million.  What are they doing right?  How are they gaining customers at such a rate?

After the site was written up by Jennifer Van Grove on Mashable, some of the commenters said that this couponing idea was old news, as there are many other coupon aggregator sites including Daily New Deals.  But those sorts of traditional coupon sites are a beast of a different color, as they provide buyers with a lot of choice.  By contrast, Groupon is focused:  one deal, each city, each day.  There are other group-buying sites, such as Buy With Me, but Groupon does a much better job of making the participation process easy, and the offer alive.  Too much choice stifles decision making.  For me, Groupon is to couponing what iTunes is to music buying — clean, simple, and exciting.

I see four key lessons that every company can learn from Groupon’s winning approach with customers:

· Make the interaction super simple — one deal, one day, one city.  What could be clearer?
· Create a sense of urgency in your customers.  If there are not enough people by midnight, the offer disappears.
· Energize your customers to get other customers.  Good word of mouth is useless unless it turns into sales.
· Make it fun!  Groupon’s tone is upbeat, enjoyable, and does not have that yet-another-boring-coupon feel.

Here’s the obvious question to ask yourself:  in the myriad investments your company is making online, is there a simple, engaging, fun, fresh, daily interaction aimed to energize your customers?  If not, now’s the time to design it.

In the meantime, you always have Daughter’s Featured Fotos

mj sighting in soho

are over! back to school

she was bummed

bold statement

almost anatomically correct