SourceMedia Brings in the Bread for Gary’s Foods
KCRG-TV9 and The Gazette run a Model Retail Deal
Background:
For more than a year now, KCGR-TV9 and The Gazette have been teaming up to provide local deals to the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area.
Challenge:
The Cedar Rapids/ Iowa City area is a market that is flooded with deals programs like Groupon and LivingSocial. KCRG-TV9 and The Gazette needed to find a way to break through the clutter and make their deals stand out. Gary’s Foods also was looking for a way to build up their own email database in order to start emailing them regular in-store offers each week.
Solution:
KCRG-TV9 and The Gazette worked with a local grocery store in Mount Vernon, Gary’s Foods, and crafted a deal with two valuable price points giving users a choice for what met their needs. They decided upon a $25 for $50 deal and a $48 for $100 deal, making the higher priced deal even more attractive. During the check-out process, they added an email opt-in for Gary’s Food to help with their database. In addition, *here’s the deal offered to manage the follow-up email campaign to those who purchased the deal and opted-in for future emails from Gary’s Food.
Results:
When the deal was first went live, there wasn’t a limit on the number of deals that could sell. Due to the popularity of the deal, they worked with Gary’s Foods throughout the day and decided to put a limit on the deal and have it run for only one day, rather than the initially agreed upon three days. The $25 deal was capped at 1,000 selling out by 8:30 p.m. and the $48 deal hit its limit at 1,500 sold out by 4:30 p.m.
Because of the appeal of a grocery deal, this deal was promoted by their subscribers, with a 25 percent referral rate. A survey conducted by *here’s the deal showed that 60 percent of deal buyers spent more than the certificate was worth when redeeming a deal.
Why this worked:
From Gary’s Foods perspective, they hoped the deals would attract attention from shoppers in the larger metro areas of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City who would not typically travel to a smaller-town grocery store.
Gary’s Foods not only gained these customers for the one time sale, but had a 80 percent opt-in rate to receive future deals from the store and make deal buyers return shoppers. In the first of a series of follow-up emails (after customers redeemed their deal), 500 customers received an email with coupons/promotions at Gary’s for the upcoming week. The open rate was for this first email was 22 percent.
Their promotional campaign includes a premium position in The Gazette, five 10-second commercials on KCRG-TV9, banner ads on all of their websites, social media mentions and eblasts. The sales reps that sold this deal did additional promotion to get the word out about this deal; they also printed flyers to distribute around the town, including a college campus.
The group commerce space continues on a dynamic and exciting path of growth and expansion. More and more, we are seeing deal sites take cues from traditional ecommerce sites and create shopping environments – more deals, deals organized around a theme or season, and deals running beyond a single day. Ultimately, high deal quality and solid promotions will continue to drive the most revenue, but by enhancing your current site with a new approach, you can maximize your revenue and growth potential in 2012. 