Groupon Case Study
Written by: As a follow-up to my blog posts on Groupon I thought it would be helpful to hear from some local businesses that have used Groupon and other social coupon websites. Let’s find out about their experiences.
Summer Bikes
Offer: $17 for a Weekend or Full-Week Rental (worth $35) from Summer Bikes
Ad: Summer Bikes rents out its fleet of brand-new quality cycles to vacationers craving fun, convenient transportation to numerous beach attractions. Accommodating staff deliver and pick up beach cruisers to any location along the shore from Seaside Park to Belmar, where gallivanters and their borrowed wheels can enjoy jaunts to nearby restaurants or beachside sea-turtle nuptials. Children’s bikes include helmets ($5 rental for adults), and all bikes come adorned with a combination lock and a basket for the front, ideal for carting groceries, souvenirs, or conch shells with the sound of a bicycle horn echoing from inside.
A welcome package chock-full of maps, information on local businesses and attractions, and local bike-riding laws helps acclimate riders to the area and avoid arguments with police over the potentially tangly issue of bicycle-octopus collisions.
Groupon Experience
Adam Chiappano from Summer Bikes talked with Austad Productions about his experience with Groupon and the type of results he saw from creating a social coupon.
How did you hear about Groupon?
Adam: Groupon is all the rage these days, we hear about Groupon deals via email or Facebook. Once a friend posts it on Facebook is typically when we will check into it.
What made you decide to promote using Groupon?
Adam: It is much easier to use Groupon as a marketing tool without having to pay anything upfront. The amount of money it costs to advertise on Groupon is only relative to how much we sell…..so we don’t get stuck spending more on marketing then we have earned.
What results have you seen since launching your Groupon Campaign?
Adam: You only get 25% of your typical sale price, so if you sell something for 20 bucks, you take 5 and Groupon takes 5 and the remaining 10 bucks is passed on to the customer. We sold 40 units, but just from an exposure standpoint it really helped us out.
Would you use Groupon again?
Adam: Yes, no doubt about it. Timing is everything though and next time I would do it in the heart of the summer rather than leading up to it since we are a very summer driven business.
Was the process easy? What did you like or dislike about it?
Adam: Process could not be any simpler. We had no problems with it whatsoever. Once they chose us, we send them out company info, worked out the pricing, the amount of products, and finalized the description and dates it would run. Super easy.
Chocolate Lovers’ Club
Offer: $25 for Ice-Cream-Making Class ($50 Value) or $12 for $24 Worth of Sweets at The Chocolate Lover’s Club
Ad: Chocolate Lover’s Club keeps mobs of sweet teeth at bay with a wide assortment of palate-pleasing treats, imparting the wisdom behind its creations to interested consumers. Two-hour classes task up to 28 trainees with crafting their own ice cream from the time-honored ingredients of cream, ice, and syrupy love. An ice queen’s buffet—complete with chips, crackers, dips and spreads, and freshly made ice cream—eagerly awaits graduates at the end of the session, proudly unveiling its wares for the critical eyes and palates of the class. Class sessions meet from 3 p.m.–5 p.m. every Saturday, with reservations recommended for all sweet-teethed students. Students can extend the experience with take-home chocolate that can adorn further ice cream creations.
Switching gears from fact snacks to real snacks, Chocolate Lovers’ Club’s shop bombards the senses with a wide assortment of treats that draw preternatural power from all-natural, pure, Belgian chocolate (starting at $2 per piece). The on-site café massages away hunger pangs with a selection of more elaborate desserts, including ice cream specials, shakes, and floats ($4+), plus a variety of Aztec chili ($9+) and mole dishes ($13+) that awaken the taste buds faster than an alarm clock glued to a rooster.
Groupon Experience
Joanne Reilly from Chocolate Lovers’ Club talked with Austad Productions about her experience with Groupon and the type of results she saw from creating a social coupon.
How did you hear about Groupon?
Joanne: Through media and marketing news sources. I try to keep up. My daughter asked me if I had heard of Groupon and suggested I try it but that was after I had already signed up for my first offer.
What made you decide to promote using Groupon?
Joanne: The reach and exposure for my new business. I knew I had something unique and anticipated a good response from the promotion.
What results have you seen since launching your Groupon Campaign?
Joanne: It’s a new business so I can’t give you comparisons or percentages but we sold out on our offer. It drove traffic to the website, Grouponers joined our chocolate club mailing list, shared links with friends, family and co-workers; we increased sales of non-Groupon products. We doubled our Facebook fans.
Would you use Groupon again?
Joanne: I just completed my second offer. Same excellent results. Groupon has sold out my chocolate classes both times we have offered the deal.
Was the process easy? What did you like or dislike about it?
Joanne: The process was easy. If there is a downside for me it is that the revenue share is steep. It keeps me from offering other products with less margin. The numbers don’t make sense. I would suggest they (Groupon) offer alumni with a proven track record a better revenue split for x amount of offers per year.
Hot Sand Glass Studio
Offer: $15 for a Glass-Bubble-Blowing Session or Quick-Cast Session at Hot Sand Glass Studio in Asbury Park ($30 Value)
Ad: Hot Sand Glass Studio promotes the art of glass by allowing students to make their own molten-sand creations. Blowers in training—all of whom must be at least 9 years old—can peruse the gallery of works by professional glassblowers for artistic inspiration. After selecting a suitable hue, glassblowers-in-training hunker down on the gaffer’s bench with an experienced glass-smith to huff and puff a large clear bubble into existence. Instructors will demonstrate how to gather molten glass from the furnace, blow air into it at the end of a pipe, and use jacks and water to break off the fully inflated bubble. After the orb cools, studio artisans will process each finished piece to remove any sharp edges and irksome personality traits before bubble blowers pick up their masterpieces after 3 p.m. on the Friday following the session.
A QuickCast allows budding artisans to make either a handprint or footprint in a small box of sand before a team of extremity preservationists pours molten glass into it, eternally protecting the print. The cast is slowly cooled overnight, and by the 3 p.m. the following Friday it’s ready to be picked up, taken home, and shown off to appliance repair people. Whether making a QuickCast or bubble, it only takes about 20 minutes to give a creation life, but the satisfaction it will bring and the terror it will strike into the hearts of villagers will last a lifetime. For an additional charge, colors, design elements, and engravings may be added to either creation ($6–$12 each).
Groupon Experience
Thomas Stevens from Hot Sand Glass Studio talked with Austad Productions about his experience with Groupon and the type of results he saw from creating a social coupon.
How did you hear about Groupon?
Thomas: Their rep contacted us.
What made you decide to promote using Groupon?
Thomas: Just thought we’d give it a try!
What results have you seen since launching your Groupon Campaign?
Thomas: Our first Groupon went out to the newly formed Central Jersey region in Novemeber. They had 7000 subscribers and we sold 200 Groupons. We were pleased and Groupon was pleased: They offered us Preferred Merchant status. This lets us choose the date that our upcoming Groupons run. For out last Groupon, in spite of a technical glitch, we sold over 1000! We were super pleased!
Was the process easy? What did you like or dislike about it?
Thomas: Yes. I liked that Groupon has a webinar ready for prospective merchants that explains the entire process: What to expect on the day of the Groupon drop, how to redeem, etc.
What other Social Media have you tried and have they been successful?
Thomas: We continue to use Facebook to encourage interaction with our customers. They love to post their fun pictures and comments on how much fun they had. We’re also on twitter, but that seems less successful to me, maybe because I’m not a tweeter.
