Groupon Mobile Campaign: Inside the Data

Groupon Mobile Campaign: Inside the Data

A Mobify Enterprise for E-commerce client recently ran a Groupon Campaign. The results were interesting and we thought we’d share them because no one else has shared real results from a Groupon campaign on mobile.

Groupon may be controversial in their fundraising numbers, wallowing in a trough of disillusionment and may not be right for your business, but it can be a powerful driver of exposure and revenue for many businesses.

How Groupon drives mobile traffic

Mobile Visitors

On September 27, a Groupon for a fantastic deal was released. What happened next?

Traffic on the mobile site exploded.

- Visitors spiked up 150% in the first day.

- Visits quickly dropped to half that the day after, and half again the next day, but then stabilized and declined at a rate of ~5% day over day for the next 3 weeks.

- Three weeks after the Groupon deal ended, traffic was still double what it was prior to the deal.

What does this mean? The lingering awareness brought on by a front-page Groupon deal can still drive traffic, even after the Groupon expires.

How Groupon drives mobile revenue

Mobile Revenue

How did the traffic spike translate into mobile revenue?

- Mobile revenue quickly spikes within the day, matching the traffic spike.

- Revenue explodes, up 6000%.

- Revenue is sustained for two days, unlike traffic, which dropped off after one.

- Revenue slowly trails off and stabilizes but is still appreciably higher than pre-Groupon levels.

From this data we can extrapolate that people bought their Groupon coupons via the Groupon site and then redeemed them on the vendor site over the following days.

Key Takeaways 

Like every marketing initiative, the challenge is matching the right tactics to the right context.

For this vendor, the Groupon was a success, at least in terms of gross mobile revenue and traffic. We cannot speculate on how much total money Groupon took from this deal, or on the margins on the products sold.

However, we can say with certainty that this particular retailer was happy with Groupon. How do we know?

They have since run two more Groupon campaigns.

Looking for more Groupon intelligence?

Here’s 7 Reasons to Use Groupon for your Small Business that apply equally to any size business. Also, check out the Groupon ROI calculator for Excel to track the numbers.