Do you have a Groupon experience to share?

There are two different discussions going on right now on the ABMP and Massage Mag LinkedIn groups regarding Groupon. If you don’t know what Groupon is, check it out at www.groupon.com.

I’m not here to advocate the use of Groupon or steer you away from it.  I just know that services like this are being used by therapist with varying results. Therefore, I felt it important to open up the discussion so we can all learn more about this promotional concept from those that have used it.

Allow me to weigh in first with some input based on my observations of some of the experiences our clients and prospective clients are having:

A)     “My phone is ringing off the hook!” (This is what we are hearing from prospective clients calling looking for a solution to deal with their crazy call volume).

It seems that the response you can get from running a Groupon promotion can be very high (200 to 1200 Groupons sold in a day). Which means: That once your Groupon (coupon) is posted you can expect a flood of calls coming in. Not being prepared to absorb the increased call volume can create a problem.

B)      “All I am doing is discounted appointments!”

The other issue that I see happening is if you do not limit the times when someone can us their Groupon, you can end up giving $18 one hour massage (a $60 massage offered at $30 and then the 40% Groupon fee taken out) until  you fade off into the sunset.

Offering the ability to allow clients to schedule online and then having the criteria that all Groupons must be scheduled by the client online, can resolve ‘A’. Limiting their ability to only schedule on certain times on certain days can resolve ‘B’. We have a client that only allows two appointments per shift for 9 out of his 16 therapists to be scheduled with a Groupon. The calendars for these 9 therapists have Groupon appointments booked almost to the end of the year.

That's all I know. So please share your Groupon experience if you have one. Hopefully the folks on LinkedIn that have shared their experiences there will jump in here.