Case Study: Finding an Easier Way to Accept Deal Bookings
Ray Chang, the founder and CEO of The Motorsport Lab, was excited about the prospect of running his first Groupon offer in 2010. What he wasn’t expecting was the crush of phone calls that resulted. To help decrease the pressure on his staff, Chang started using Genbook to handle online reservations. Since then, he’s been able to run three subsequent deals without overburdening his employees…
Case Study: Providence Retailer Uses Swipely to Reward Customer Loyalty
As the co-owner of Kreatelier, a retail shop that sells gifts and textiles in Providence, R.I., Line Daems is always on the lookout for ways to reward her most loyal customers without overwhelming her staff with extra work. In 2011 she discovered that she could use Swipely, a loyalty platform tied to customers’ credit card transactions, to offer cash-back rewards with zero effort on her company’s behalf…
Case Study: MomentFeed Sifts Cinnabon Data to Up Customer Engagement
MomentFeed worked with Cinnabon to merge duplicate venues, adjust inaccurate geo-codes, and update venues with correct addresses and consistent branding. The result? Cinnabon corporate communications manager Rachel Hadley says the company has seen a nearly 700% increase in customer engagement on Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter over the past eight months…
Case Study: Sunnyvale Bistro Re-Targets Customers With Fanminder
How much is a new customer worth? At Rok Bistro in Sunnyvale, Calif., owner Steve Wright decided the customers he was getting with Groupon offers and old media advertisements weren’t worth the amount he was spending. Instead, he’s decided to re-targeting existing customers using a self-service platform called Fanminder…
Case Study: Rural Town’s First Taste of Deals
Ryan DeJong, founder of the gooroo group marketing agency, used Closely to create a series of daily deal offers for the Pineapple Day Spa in Pine Bush, N.Y., (pop. 1,780). DeJong has found that small town customers are just as eager to jump on the daily deal bandwagon as their big city counterparts, and that customers are more responsive to limited-time deals than the generic discount codes spas typically send out in email blasts…
Case Study: Boston Salon Uses Privy For Targeted Deals
At Pure Hair Design in Boston, co-owner Jenny Kisiel says twentysomethings, her target market, have come to expect huge bargains, thanks to daily deals. In an effort to attract this market while retaining strong sales margins, she has turned to Privy, a hyperlocal deal platform that businesses can use to create customized promotions that run on […]
Case Study: Golf Center’s ‘Grizzly’ Check-Ins Build Loyalty
At TopGolf, a golf entertainment facility with locations in Virginia, Illinois, and Texas, regional marketing director Scott McMahon says he was able to boost the number of Foursquare check-ins in 2011 by creating a “Grizzly” special that tied in with the company’s “Fun Doesn’t Hibernate” marketing campaign…
What Merchants Want: Customers!
What do merchants want in a hyperlocal ad campaign? In our interviews with more than 50 local business owners across the U.S., there were some clear answers: first and foremost, they want to drive new customers into their businesses. Geographic targeting delivers customers who are most ready to buy.
Case Study: Sandwich Chain Becomes a Believer in the End of the Wallet
Mobile payments and loyalty program LevelUp provides Sebastians restaurant owner Mike Conley with far more customer information — like return rates and lifetime spending histories — than he could have ever gotten from a punch-card system. More than 2,200 customers are now using LevelUp to pay at his restaurant and Conley says customers who use the platform spend more per visit…
Case Study: Using Deal Sites To Fill Rooms At Off-Peak Times
Companies in the travel and tourism industry have been quick to jump on the daily deals bandwagon in an effort to boost occupancy rates in a sluggish economy. The revenue manager at Charlestowne Hotels says he’s contacted by deal companies all the time, and that he chooses which businesses to work with based on how much they’re willing to negotiate…
Case Study: A Michigan Yoga Studio’s Tips For Managing Deal Customers
When Eric Paskel ran his first Groupon promotion in January 2011, he knew it was going to be big. What he hadn’t expected, however, was to get hit with 3,000 new clients by 11 a.m. on the day his deal premiered. In the year since then, the owner of Yoga Shelter has sold approximately 15,000 daily deal coupons. But no longer with Groupon…
Case Study: Delaware Coffee Shop Sees 50% Return for Daily Deal Customers
At The Java House Café in Middletown, Del., (pop. 18,871), Cleo Clarke has run promotions with a couple of daily deals sites. She’s managed to turn 50% of those group coupon buyers into repeat customers. Clarke is now exploring Foursquare as a way to tap into her tech-savvy customer base — 90% of whom currently use smartphones…
Case Study: Southwest Airlines’ Time Limits on LBS
Platforms like Foursquare and Facebook haven’t had any trouble attracting attention from national brands, but what’s the secret to attracting interest from these brands in lesser-known start-ups? According to Southwest Airlines emerging media specialist Christi McNeill, it all comes down to persistence, innovation, and a little bit of hand-holding…
Case Study: Deals Earns Restaurant 30% Repeat Business and $120,000
In Winnetka, Illinois, chef Michael Lachowicz has strong opinions on what it takes to run successful daily deal promotions. Lachowicz has run six Groupon deals at his establishment, Restaurant Michael, resulting in more than 5,000 coupons sold and $120,000 in revenue generated in the last two years. He estimates that 30% of coupon buyers have returned after their vouchers were redeemed, and says he’s negotiated a deal with Groupon to get 90% of his payouts just two days after his deals end.
Case Study: CKE’s Own Check-In App Lends Accountability and Control
How does a restaurant group with 3,000 locations spread across 43 states manage a robust location-based rewards program without sacrificing functionality or flexibility? For Brad Rosenberg, manager of digital strategy and marketing for CKE Restaurants — which owns the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s fast-food chains — the answer was to build a mobile app that could work across multiple point-of-sale systems and still provide the accountability that individual franchise owners require…
Case Study: At Choice Hotels, a Check-In Consolidator is Key
For nearly a year, Choice Hotels has been running a special offer that rewards members of its Choice Privileges program with 50 extra points each time they check-in on Foursquare, Facebook, or Gowalla at more than 1,500 participating properties. By partnering with Topguest, Choice has been able to use LBS to build customer engagement without worrying about managing the infrastructure that a large-scale program requires…