Posts tagged Groupon
Street Fight Daily: Local News Lost, Groupon Bundles SEO – Street Fight
Mar 22nd
 Street Fight |
Street Fight Daily: Local News Lost, Groupon Bundles SEO
Street Fight Conor Friedersdorf: State, county, and local coverage almost everywhere in the United States is now significantly worse than it was in the pre-Internet era, when local newspapers enjoyed a virtual monopoly on classified advertising and invested part of … |
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Groupon offers SEO deal to businesses – Upstart (blog)
Mar 21st
 Business 2 Community |
Groupon offers SEO deal to businesses
Upstart (blog) In a release, LA SEO Service, explains, “This innovative deal with Groupon, a multi-billion dollar global company, will allow LA SEO Service to expand its market reach as well as offer new customers the opportunity to explore all of the benefits of … Groupon Offers First-Ever Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Deal through LA … SEO Diagnostics: Proactive and Reactive Diplomacy A Case Study In B2B SEO Keyword Analysis |
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Groupon Offers First-Ever Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Deal through LA … – PR Web (press release)
Mar 21st
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Groupon Offers First-Ever Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Deal through LA …
PR Web (press release) This innovative deal with Groupon, a multi-billion dollar global company, will allow LA SEO Service to expand its market reach as well as offer new customers the opportunity to explore all of the benefits of search engine optimization without a long … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Andrew Mason ‘Fired’ As Groupon CEO
Feb 28th
Andrew Mason finally found out that running the controversial deals site Groupon was no bargain. Mason was unceremoniously ousted as CEO earlier on Thursday, following a rotten earnings report on Wednesday that capped several years of problematic performance and clashes with the SEC at the once-hot startup.
Mason bluntly told Groupon employees in a statement he apparently made public: “I was fired today. If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention.” (The text of that statement — notable for its honesty, self-effacing humor and faint echo of Conan O’Brien’s announcement following his defenstration from the Tonight Show — follows below.)
The Groupon board named the company’s executive chairman Eric Lefkofsky and vice chairman Ted Leonsis as interim co-CEOs, and said it has already started looking for a new permanent CEO. Groupon shares, which had fallen almost 80% since the company’s $20-a-share IPO in 2011, jumped roughly 8% in after-hours trading on the news of Mason’s departure. A couple of hours later, the stock’s bounce had evened out to roughly a 4% increase, up 16 cents to $4.68.
Founded in 2008, Groupon went public with a bang three years later in the company of other hot tech startups such as LinkedIn and Skype. Fevered trading its first day pushed the company’s market valuation to $16.7 billion — seemingly justifying the company’s decision a year earlier to spurn a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google.
(See also: Groupon Stock Goes On Fire Sale, But What Went So Wrong?)
Here’s Mason’s statement:
(This is for Groupon employees, but I’m posting it publicly since it will leak anyway)
People of Groupon,
After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.
You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I’m getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we’ve shared over the last few months, and I’ve never seen you working together more effectively as a global company – it’s time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise.
For those who are concerned about me, please don’t be – I love Groupon, and I’m terribly proud of what we’ve created. I’m OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I’ll now take some time to decompress (FYI I’m looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I’ll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.
If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness – don’t waste the opportunity!
I will miss you terribly.
Love,
Andrew
More to come — updating soon.
Lead image via Flickr user TechCrunch, CC 2.0
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Groupon Makes Bid To Become Local (Deals) Search Engine
Nov 19th
Late last week Groupon announced that it was going to make a growing inventory of less perishable deals accessible to consumers. Calling this the Groupon “Local Marketplace” the new functionality is live in Chicago and New York, soon to be available across Groupon cities: In the last…
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Groupon Stock Goes On Fire Sale, But What Went So Wrong?
Nov 13th
After losing 90% of its value from its IPO heyday, daily deals guru Groupon is looking more and more like one of its own deep discount coupons.
Founded in 2008, Groupon went public last fall among 2011’s flurry of IPOs from hot-to-trot tech companies like LinkedIn and Skype. Now, the company’s stock is tumbling after it failed to meet analyst expectations for the third quarter of 2012.
After already reaching an all-time low last week, Groupon is now trading at a rock-bottom $2.69 — a plummet from its early November valuation that hovered around $4.00 a share and an absolute nosedive from its $28-per-share opening price one year ago.
The company also recently laid off 80 sales employees “as part of an effort to automate the way it handles its deals,” according to The New York Times. They’ve cut 648 in the past six months. Yikes.
In 2010, Groupon turned up its nose at a whopping $6 billion offer from Google. If Groupon had gone along for the ride, it would have made history as Google’s second largest acquisition ever at about half of the $12.5 billion Motorola buy and over three times as much as the price Google paid for YouTube back in 2006.
Instead the company stayed the course, insisting on remaining independent and confident that it could continue raking in a rumored $2 billion in annual revenue. Talk about seller’s remorse.
Is There A Daily Deals Bubble?
Ask anyone who’s opted out of email alerts for half-price spa days and dinners for two: daily deals served up to your inbox every day can get old — and fast. Most of tech blogging’s upper echelons have already made a case that the daily deals phenomenon is a fad that’ll come and go with the speed of a limited time Groupon offer, and we’re inclined to agree.
Indeed the daily deals space boasts all the trappings of a true tech mini-bubble, from 2010’s sky-high early valuation to today’s ringing silence where there once was the clamor of companies scrambling to get a piece of the half-off pie. With the buzz waning, Groupon and its ilk (Living Social, Google Offers) have become little more than a fly buzzing around your inbox — and swatting it away is as easy as clicking unsubscribe.
The ultimate sign your business model might have jumped the shark? There’s a startup that exists solely to help people get the hell away from your product.
Toss systemic daily deals fatigue on a heap of flaws ranging from understandably disgruntled vendors screwed over by the Groupon model to a green CEO prone to YouTubing naked yoga sessions — and making stockholders squirm — and you’ve got yourself a hard sell.
The demise of Groupon isn’t hard to imagine. As our own Cormac Foster wrote a few months ago when Groupon made our Death Watch list:
“Ultimately, it’s likely to become the biggest fish in a much less important pond. It could easily end up as no more than an obscure division of some much larger, more diversified company.”
Groupon’s Euro-Problem
Groupon’s problems arguably run as deep as its business model, but last week CEO Andrew Mason blamed the company’s poor performance in Europe — and the European debt crisis — for its woebegone earnings report.
“We followed a different playbook in Europe, focusing on rapidly capturing market share at the cost of investing in technology and innovation and, too often, the satisfaction of our merchants and customers. With a weak European economy, we didn’t have the necessary runway to integrate our international business before reaching a plateau in growth earlier this year,” Mason said.
Can Groupon Sell Itself Again?
Groupon might be flatlining, but it’s not quite dead yet. The company did recently expand into new-ish territory with Groupon Goods, a Woot-like version of its extant group buying model that serves up deeply discounted products (Yoga leggings! Microfiber duvets! Facelift cream!) rather than less stuff-like stuff.
Just today Groupon announced free shipping and returns for any items bought through Groupon Goods — not a bad little holiday season incentive. Groupon is also gunning for Square with a mobile payments system for local vendors that promises to be cheaper than the competition.
According to Foster, “If Mason can find new ways to leverage these assets across other products and services (for example, cross-selling full-priced flights or shore excursions at the point of purchase for a discounted cruise), it could build out a convenience-based commerce system and open up new partnership opportunities and compensation structures. If it sticks to online couponing, though, right now is probably as good as things will ever get.”
In other words, let the Groupon fire sale commence.
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Is Groupon Worth It?
Oct 18th
Groupon’s daily deals are an enticing way to potentially bring crushing amounts of business to your doorstep, but you really have to be careful what you do. A few small mistakes can doom your Groupon campaign. Done badly, daily deals will aggravate you, your customers, and your employees, and even cost you money. That being [...]
The post Is Groupon Worth It? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
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Does Spam Go With That Bargain? Digital Satirists Harass Groupon
Sep 20th
British digital satirists fed up with Groupon’s daily email deluge tried to physically deliver spam to the company’s London office on British television last night. A video clip of the event on YouTube shows how questionable business practices can come home to roost at the worst moment for a struggling company.
The segment, filmed by Don’t Panic for BBC Channel 4, included Israeli performance artist Nimrod Kamer dressed in a SPAM costume trying to gain entrance to the offices.
“I’m spamming you guys for all the spam I got,” Kamer yells at a security guard who won’t let him in the office building in the 1:18 segment.
The motive for the segment, Kamer explained in a brief interview, was “to celebrate the demise of Groupon. The appropriate thing to do was to go to their offices and shove them some homemade spam one last time before they go bankrupt.”
Groupon has been on a downward financial swing lately, prompting ReadWriteWeb to put the Chicago-based company on our DeathWatch list in July. The company has been accused of proliferating spam by its American customers since 2011, prompting British entrepreneur David Maher Roberts to pose the question, “Is Groupon a great way to save or simply spam?”
The Don’t Panic segment has turned up the criticism. The description of the segment uploaded to YouTube says:
Half-price fish pedicures. Car cleaning deals. Bargain boob jobs. If you’ve had emails about any of these ‘amazing’ offers lately, chances are you’ve been spammed by coupon giant Groupon. Don’t Panic decided to take matters into our own hands, and headed down to London Groupon HQ to spam the spammers.
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ReadWriteWeb DeathWatch: Groupon
Jul 16th
When you finally turn a profit and investors simultaneously dump your stock to an all-time low, you have a problem. Groupon is the king of local couponing, but is its deal already as sweet as it can get?
The Basics
Groupon wasn’t the first local deal site, but it took the model to the masses. Buyers prepay for a discounted product or service, and when those purchases hit a threshold, Groupon splits the revenue with the merchant and the deal is on. Local businesses acquire customers, customers get a deal and Groupon gets paid.
Despite quarter after quarter of losses, Groupon passed on a rumored Google buyout and worked that model into a $12.7 billion IPO only 18 months into its existence.
But life since the IPO has been rough. Competitors such as LivingSocial moved in on Groupon’s turf, quarterly losses kept coming, and some dodgy accounting was revealed. And though Groupon finally turned a profit this year, the resulting rally was short-lived when its stock hit an all-time low last week on news of weakness in the European market.
The Problem
But Groupon’s problems go much deep than the Eurozone, all the way to the heart of its business model, for two main reasons:
1. It’s a Bad Deal for Vendors Using Groupon costs nothing upfront, but can turn out to be very expensive for vendors. Groupon takes a 50% cut of sales that typically already discount 50%. Some businesses (see GrouponWorks.com) absorb the hit just fine by selling high-margin add-ons and sparking return visits. For others, a 75% revenue hit is awfully rich, even for a loss leaser – and especially if the discounts go to existing customers or folks “just passing through.” Meanwhile, Groupon doesn’t share any customer information with vendors – not even email addresses. And many merchants worry about projecting weakness and cheapening their brand.
2. The Pie is Shrinking The barriers to entry in daily deals is terrifyingly low. That’s why the competitors keep multiplying, from Living Social to Amazon Local and even the local newspaper. Consumers have a finite amount of disposable income, and they’re loyal to the deal, not the brand. Many vendors rotate identical deals on multiple sites for maximum exposure.
The Players
With co-founder Eric Lefkosky stepping away from management responsibilities, Andrew Mason, Groupon’s co-founder and CEO, is firmly in charge.
While dedicated to the business, he’s also kind of a wildcard. He admitted to drinking too much beer during a meeting in which he said Groupon needed to “grow up.” He’s the public face of a public company, but he posts videos of himself doing yoga in his underwear:
The financial turmoil of the earnings restatement forced Groupon to bring in some financial heavyweights, including David Henry, CFO of American Express. With any luck, Henry and company can help guide Mason’s passion into productive expansion.
The Prognosis
Groupon has cash on hand, though a large chunk of it is earmarked for vendor payouts. The ongoing economic slowdown will affect the entire market, but Groupon will have to fight hard to maintain differentiation. Ultimately, it’s likely to become the biggest fish in a much less important pond. It could easily end up as no more than an obscure division of some much larger, more diversified company.
Can this Company Be Saved?
Groupon has access to a ton of customer data, including payment information. It also have some powerful applications, like Groupon Scheduler, that could be used for broader purposes. If Mason can find new ways to leverage these assets across other products and services (for example, cross-selling full-priced flights or shore excursions at the point of purchase for a discounted cruise), it could build out a convenience-based commerce system and open up new partnership opportunities and compensation structures. If it sticks to online couponing, though, right now is probably as good as things will ever get.
The Deathwatch So Far
Research In Motion: Things are hurtling downhill even faster than expected. Massive losses – more than 11 times worse than expected – and new delays in its Hail Mary BlackBerry 10 operating system update have made the company’s dire situation even harder to ignore. And over the weekend, a federal jury found RIM liable for $147 million in patent damages to Mformation Technologies.
HP: No change in status
Nokia: No change in status
38 Studios: No change in status
Barnes & Noble: No change in status
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Groupon Buys Travel Search Site Uptake Mostly For Headcount
Feb 29th
Uptake was an ambitious travel site that never quite broke through. It used social data and sentiment analysis to try and provide better travel discovery and decision support to its users. Originally called Kango, we wrote about the site in 2008 when it relaunched as Uptake. AllThingsD…
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