MxMIndia

Tag: Groupon

  • With rise of e-commerce, deal or coupon sites such as Coupon Dunia and Groupon see revenue rising around 500%

    Deal sites make hay as e-comm rises

     

    By Payal Ganguly & Aditi Shrivastava

     

    The fierce rivalry among ecommerce sites to snag new customers through massive discounts has expectedly led to burgeoning sales at couponing sites that enable users get products and services online at a steal.

     

    With the rise of e-commerce, deal buying and couponing sites, such as Coupon Dunia, Groupon and several others, have seen revenue rise as much as 500%, most of it attributed to the bigger players – Flipkart, Amazon India and Snapdeal.

     

    In a couponing website, a customer can search for a particular discount voucher and use that code to get a discount or cashback on an etailer’s website. “I see couponing as a less exploited marketing tool as of now. Going ahead, as ecommerce grows, we will see more and more success for these sites,” said Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail advisory firm Technopak.

     

    A majority of transactions for these portals still come from the bigger ecommerce sites like Flipkart, Amazon India, Jabong, Fashionara and MakeMyTrip, among others.

     

    “A lot of online shoppers start their shopping journey from these (couponing) sites, and we do get a healthy share of business from them,” said Darpan Munjal, co-founder of Fashionara.

     

    The couponing sites get commissions that vary across merchants and categories. For electronics, it is 2-5%. For clothing it’s between 10% and 15% or even higher. Travel sites usually pay about Rs 100-300 per flight booking. Some ecommerce partners like RedBus pay fixed amounts per transaction regardless of cart size.

     

    “At Myntra, we are working with several affiliate networks for more than two years, directly or indirectly. Affiliates drive about 10-15% of our overall transactions,” said Deepak Srikumar, head of digital marketing at Myntra.

     

    “The coupons on ecommerce site are usually directed at customer acquisition and ensure that the customer revisits the site the next time to redeem the coupons,” said Rachna Nath, leader of retail and consumer at advisory firm PwC.

     

    In 2012, Amazon entered in India through price-comparison and lead generation site Junglee, which it bought years earlier. Mature markets like the United States, have seen some couponing websites including Coupons.com, RetailMeNot.com, even go public in the past couple of years. Japanese ecommerce giant recently bought couponing site Ebates to enter the US market.

     

    The opportunity in India is also huge. Indian ecommerce market is expected to reach Rs 50,000 crore by 2016, according to Crisil. Going ahead, these sites are betting on mobile to drive its revenue. “We expect our mobile app to be a game changer,” said 30-yearold Sameer Parwani, who started CouponDunia from Boston in the United States in 2010. The company, which has now been acquired by Times Internet, is expanding its offline restaurant coupon business and expects to earn a revenue of Rs 40 crore in fiscal 2016.

     

    “With a higher discount range in all the online stores, people are completely involved in shopping online, mainly due to the cash on delivery and return policy features,” said KR Murle, founder of Getextrabux, a cashback, deal hunting and price comparison portal. The company, which was set up with an investment of about Rs 45 lakh, pays around 60-90% of the commission it earns to the customers as cashback.

     

    The tech-based companies have consciously chosen to stay away from the local-deals model. “Working with local retailers could be tricky as sometimes the deals get oversubscribed and they run out of margin,” said Swati Bhargava, cofounder of Cashkaro. “For us, online was a better way since it’s a volume game we are targeting.”

     

    Cashkaro said its sales have gone up 500% in one year. “While I don’t mind paying to (these couponing sites) to get new customers, if I had to pay for a repeat customer, I wouldn’t be very happy,” said Praveen Sinha, managing director of Jabong.

     

    The mobile-first has worked well for Mydaala. com which is one of the few surviving deal sites for local businesses. “We were one of the first to tap into analytics which helped us user-specific deals every time they logged in but presently no one seems to be working with local merchants,” said Anisha Singh, founder and CEO of Mydaala. com, which introduced couponing for all major telcos last year.

     

    However, local-deals space remains niche with few players venturing into it. “When we entered the market in 2011, there was a lot of competition in India and none of these sites curated the merchants who were a part of it. As a result, once the customer has a bad experience, he would never come back to the coupon or deal site,” said Ankur Warikoo, CEO of Groupon India.

     

    He said that Groupon has evolved to accommodate a mix of transactions keeping in mind the growing ecommerce industry. While local deals contribute to 60% of Groupon’s business, 25% comes from manufacturers who list directly with the site to sell and the remaining 15% is driven by travel deals.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2014, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Licensed to republish

     

  • I would urge their ad agency to push the insanity envelope even harder. And the team should enjoy all the fun while it lasts. It's not every day that creative people land up with such hot 'deals'

    Debrief: Groupon: Craziness pays off

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    I like all the madness in the new Groupon commercials. The online portal needed such sharp clutter breakers in order to get noticed.

     

    The positioning is that Groupon offers a wide array of deals. This is not an exciting proposition, but the creative treatment gives it the much needed punch. The idea is that Groupon offers really crazy deals, and this makes the TVCs quite humorous. One ad talks about karate lessons. A granny is shown peppering a couple of thieves with killer karate chops. In another one that hawks an unlimited buffet lunch, a pot-bellied man sets off chaos inside the restaurant as his under pressure belly button (of the shirt) takes off like a bullet. And there are more such rollicking ads.

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”220″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9BYxUIwMqg[/youtube]
    [youtube width=”400″ height=”220″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwfmzuR3rBQ[/youtube]
    Rating: (On a scale of 1-5): 3. Correct strategy. Fun ads.

    Good one. In the television medium that’s booming with ads, a new entrant has to create a splash immediately. Especially if the ad budgets are limited and there’s no scope for a long-term brand building idea. And once it’s decided to go with the humour route, the idea should be to go all out. More the ads get bizarre, better will be the noticeability. And Groupon ads meet that expectation. They are entertaining and will lead to quick brand recall.

     

    In fact, I would urge their ad agency to push the insanity envelope even harder. And the team should enjoy all the fun while it lasts. It’s not every day that creative people land up with such hot ‘deals’.

     

  • Indian music service Saavn has announced the launch of its new advertisement platform, Impact, which enables brands to identify, connect and engage with its users

    Saavn launches new ad platform

    By A Correspondent

     

    Indian music service Saavn has announced the launch of its new advertisement platform, Impact. This platform enables brands to identify, connect and engage with its 10.5 million users in India and across the globe.

     

    Impact is an innovative approach to digital and mobile advertising that gives brands 100 percent share-of-voice. Using Impact, brands get complete and exclusive access to all advertisement units on the Saavn web site and mobile apps for a set time period. These include Custom Skin, Web Display, Web Audio, Mobile Spotlight, Mobile Display, and Mobile Audio. Impact is a powerful model that allows brands to build positive associations with their products and services through music. The model has proven to create strong brand awareness, shape brand preferences and increase purchase consideration through undivided mindshare of listeners of Saavn across platforms.

     

    “In India, we all know that music plays an integral and meaningful part in every individual’s life. Impact is a powerful solution that enables the advertisers to build an emotional connection with their target audience during a passionate, social and engaging musical experience,” Vinodh Bhat, co-founder and CEO of Saavn, said. “The Saavn Impact model is based around engagement, curation and social sharing rather than the archaic click-through. Brands are able to measure ROI in meaningful ways, such as increases in perception, awareness, recall and purchase intent. The byproduct of our strong focus on the consumer experience is helping brands grow their businesses.”

     

    Some of the major brands utilizing Saavn to reach million of engaged users in India include: Samsung, Lay’s, Pantene, Pepsi, Nokia, Vodafone, Airtel, Hyundai, Domino’s Pizza, 7Up, Nielsen, MakeMyTrip, Max NewYork Life, Google Plus, Nokia, Vanish, Groupon, Intel and several others.

     

    Saavn delivers a comprehensive catalogue of Bollywood, Indian and regional South Asian music, licensed from more than 200 content providers. Saavn users can search, browse, and play a catalog of more than 1 million tracks; create and save their own playlists; and share their music tastes seamlessly via Facebook.