Why the Groupon concept simply works
If there is a second really big trend on the web right now besides location based services it is an e-commerce concept introduced by the US company Groupon. Groupon offers a single deal each day for a variety of cities. This deal is sold with a highly reduced price, often you get 50 percent off or more. Usually there is a minimum number that have to be sold before everyone can get it. You pay directly online and recieve a voucher into your mailbox that you can use during a specified period of time.
Not even two years after Groupon launched it is valued at about $1 billion and said to make $350 million in annual revenues. The success of the company has led to the rise of Groupon clones all over the world. Only in Germany more than 5 group buying sites were launched, and even there they are becoming popular at a rapid pace, partly due to heavy advertising.
For some reason, Sweden didn't become infected with the Groupon virus. At least there is no such site to my knowledge (which means no site is really trying to woo new customers). But that changed recently when Germany based CityDeal launched its Swedish site MyCityDeal.
Now if you are not convinced yet that the idea of giving away one product/service a day at a huge discount to a group of people is a real killer, listen to that: When I visited MyCityDeal for the first time one or two weeks ago, I spent about 10 seconds on the site and signed up to their newsletter directly, which informs me each morning by mail about the daily deal.
That's the wet dream of every merchant and marketer: Potential new clients are coming to the website or store, have a quick look and leave their contact details. It's an extremely important step in the relation between customers and stores, and it's something that many entrepreneurs never figure out how to achieve.
And then there comes MyCityDeal where people like me not even hesitate a second to sign-up for the newsletter.
The promise to get discounts on interesting products or services is simply too strong to ignore.
So far, I haven't seen a deal that really made me think about purchasing. Although today's 50 percent discount at an Italian restaurant in central Stockholm sounds pretty nice.
Lesson learned: Help people save money and they will give you their attention immediately.
