For those unfamiliar with Groupon, it is essentially an email marketing offer that consumers can opt-in to receive a daily email highlighting a product or service, usually from a local company, at a heavily discounted rate (between 35% and 85% off the regular price). I have participated in Groupon a few times, opting to purchase for myself and as a gift. Some examples of products/services include; Massage/salon services, flowers and home décor, and food and drink.

With 218,000+ “likes” on Facebook and offering deals in more than 150 cities across the nation, founder and CEO Andrew Mason has created a way to bring buyers and sellers together to offer an unbeatable deal. Groupon claims that they have “saved consumers more than $300 million dollars to date and has generated millions in revenue for the business it features.” (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/groupon)

from www.compete.com

Don’t tell that to Jessie Burke, a coffeeshop owner in Portland, OR. She almost saw her business go under because of Groupon. According to Burke, Groupon sold customers a $13 credit for the coffeeshop for $6, and then sought to keep the entire $6. Eventually, Groupon and Burke ended up settling on a 50/50 split and each got $3 from each purchase. Groupon’s $3 was nearly pure profit, but the coffeeshop had to use that $3 to cover $13 worth of food and drink. (http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2010/09/groupons_success_disaster.html) With over $1000 groupons sold for the promotion, the Groupons took a financial toll on Burke’s bottom line. The pitch that Groupon sold in was that the amazing deal would attract new customers and then would result in repeat business. According to Burke, that was not the case. “Over the six months that the Groupon is valid, we met many, many wonderful new customers, and were so happy to have them join the Posies family. At the same time we met many, many terrible Groupon customers… customers that didn’t follow the Groupon rules and used multiple Groupons for single transactions, and argued with you about it with disgusted looks on their faces or who tipped based on what they owed.”

On 9/15/10, Groupon Atlanta offered a daily deal for Donna Dawes Photography. The deal was a 1 hour photo shoot, and 8”x10” print, a DVD of the images, and 20% off additional prints for $65 (approx $500 value) WOW! That deal seemed too good to be true, and as it turned out, it most definitely was. In the discussion thread that Groupon offers on the site, a user noticed that upon visiting the website of the photographer, she had been promoting her work with stolen images from other photographers and over-promising to deliver services that would be too difficult for a small company to carry out. Users became suspicious as to how a small photography shop would be able to handle the over 2,000 Groupons and a barrage of comments began flooding the discussion boards. The deal was eventually pulled and customers were refunded their money.

Sentiment before 9/1

Sentiment graph 9/1-9/17

Tag Cloud - Keywords before 9/1

Tag Cloud - Keywords After 9/1

You can see with the graphs and tag clouds on the left that there has been an increase in negative sentiment towards Groupon since the start of September. We can attribute this negativity to the issues seen over the past 2 weeks.

This calls into question whether Groupon should enforce limits when deals like this are unreasonable, which is currently on the onus of the merchant. (http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/16/groupon-photography/) Groupon states that they offer merchants to cap the deal, but when a small business like Posie’s and Donna Dawes Photography are sold in on the opportunity to gain hundreds (if not thousands) of new customers, the temptation can be too great. The question then becomes, “Should Groupon be more diligent about screening out deals offered by small businesses, or should that ultimately be the responsibility of the business owner? We will watch closely as this story continues to evolve. Let us know what you think.

Update: You can read Groupon’s response here: http://groublogpon.com/cities/too-much-of-a-good-thing/

First, customers go to 4food.com and select ingredients to make their custom burger. Next, they share their creation on Twitter and Facebook. (Remind anyone else of the Wonder-izer?!) When their friends see their creations, they can’t help but get hungry.  They make their own burger on 4food.com or order their friend’s creation which earns him or her 25 cents off his or her lunch. Smart, right?! And that’s not even the only way customers can rack up serious discounts. 4food also has an in-restaurant leader board “menu” which features the most popular burgers and helps their creators get even closer to those free lunches.

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Image: 4food.com as cited by The New York Times

The most amazing use of multitouch I’ce seen to date.

For example, a quick video showing how a product is made could be more successful than a blog post about that same thing. (People love those how it’s made-type shows.) And, as this article – “How Gatorade Brings Athletes Closer to Fans” – points out, live video can inspire real results (the U2 concert and Twilight premiere put up TV-like viewership rates) along with questions, comments, sharing and more when it’s done correctly:

Clearly, access to unique experiences not easily available in-person is what is making live video work at Gatorade as well as other major consumer brands. High-end fashion designer Burberry recently live streamed a men’s fashion show on its website, allowing users to actually click items onscreen, add them to a shopping cart-like application, and later purchase them if they so chose. (Jumping back to Ustream, the company has also seen brands like Marshall’s, Coors Light, Pacific Sunwear and Elextrolux use its platform for live video events.)

Engagement will only increase with other trends emerging in the broader tech world. With live video moving from the desktop to mobile (Ustream and its competitors all offer apps on most major platforms) and Internet-connected televisions, expect the numbers to continue to swing upwards, creating further opportunity for brands to become creators of content and experiences that their customers will enthusiastically share with others.

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The only constant with digital marketing is change.

A great article on eMarketer “The ‘New Normal’ in Consumer Shopping Behavior” outlines digital behavior trends that are showing some shifts in how consumers interact online.

With overall online activity being up across the board year over year, we are seeing some tremendous shifts in research and price comparison shopping. With these trends, coupled with the amazing growth in Social Networking usage, one could make the argument that consumers are using Social Networks for research on products and services. The ability to adapt for this shift will lead towards longevity for your social strategy and community management.

Is your brand ready for that?

We’re moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. This shift is particularly stark among the young. Some college students I know go days without talking into their smartphones at all. I was recently hanging out with a twentysomething entrepreneur who fumbled around for 30 seconds trying to find the option that actually let him dial someone.

This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die.

Check out the rest of the article. It brings up some interesting ideas about how the constant connectivity of  mobile devices, coupled with the light-touch communication style of social networks is changing how we communicate. As calls become more rare and messages become more constant, we may find that users are more open to communication, but at the same time more resistant to interruption.

As more and more business are adopting Foursquare as a marketing channel by adding incentives for checking-in, the need to track and analyze this data has resulted in the launch of a Foursquare dashboard.  In order to use this dashboard, you must claim your venue. You do not have to be the person that created the venue to claim it, but you must be available at the venue to answer a phone call from Fourquare and provide details/proof that you are eligible to manage it. You can either manage the account through your personal Foursquare account, or start a new one, as the details of the manager’s account are public.

This dashboard is a collection of venue check-in analytics including stats like:

Key Metrics: (Overview of activity)

- Total check-ins
- Unique visitors
- Percentage of check-ins shared with Twitter
- Percentage of check-ins shared with Facebook
- Gender percentages of check-ins

Top 3 Visitors

12 Most Recent Check-ins

All Check-ins (detailed list)

Time Breakdown (time users are checking in)

See Below:

Currently, there is no way to access the information by a certain week, month, or day, so for now, we are forced to record this data and move into a spreadsheet or other tracking software.

This is a great step in the right direction for a business using Foursquare. We anxiously await more detailed tracking options from Foursquare in the near future.

For me the telling number is at the bottom; whereas, 22 links appear on Reddit before Digg compared to 6 links appearing on Digg before Reddit.