Taking off on the whole Facebook-initiated user personalization thing, Groupon has launched two new forward thinking features in terms of e-commerce, Groupon Stores and the Deal Feed.
Groupon Stores is pretty remarkable when you realize that merchants can now offer customizable Groupon deals whenever they want, for free with no middleman. From today on merchants can set up their own Groupon distribution presence as well as run their own offers, submit deals for Groupon promotions and perform hardcore customer retention management by getting customers to follow their individual stores on Groupon, Twitter style — a total boon for advertisers.
And just like Facebook has its Newsfeed, Groupon will now have Deal Feed for merchants, allowing casual user to follow all the individualized deals that pertain to them. Groupon’s Deal Feed lets you see a stream of deals personalized to you including daily deals in your area, merchants you follow and recommendations for merchants you should be following.
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason says that the company’s recent pivot is the most logical thing to do when thinking about its massive scale (the company is reportedly making $350 million in monthly revenue), “Today things are different – our biggest problem is that demand is so high, merchants often wait months to be featured. And while we once only had a few thousand customers per city, now we have hundreds of thousands – making it increasingly difficult to find one deal that satisfies everyone.”
With its most recent expansion, Groupon is poised to satisfy almost every merchant or advertiser who wants a slot. The new feature launches as of today in Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle, and should be rolling out to rest of us plebes shortly.
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Authors: Alexia Tsotsis