There has been a growth in the number of one day sales websites. Groupon is the biggest. A special offer heavily discounted, runs from midnight to midnight. The offers are provided geographically by small businesses. It is a great way to create a large database of customers very quickly, albeit at a loss.
New start-ups can find it particularly useful. I have a couple of clients who have taken part in such offers. Typically they offer a heavily discounted good or service, with Groupon taking half the offer price. If you are going to take part in such offers, then you need to have a strategy in place, to make this pay off in the long run.
You need to assess how many of the offer buyers will return and how much do they need to spend. What about the offer buyers who dont come back?, what can you offer them?
Now that you have this database of buyers, its important to communicate with them - email offers, facebook, twitter. Create and maintain that communication.
Special offers can be built around events, times of the year/month/week, i.e. flash offers which last a day - just like Groupon does. What about linking up with other non competing businesses around you - perhaps ones that also have participated in Groupon, and them offering something to your customers and vice versa. Keeping good records of customers and their buying habits will help to ensure that the investment in a loss leader can be made to pay in the long run and create repeat customers at the right price. To many rely on anecdotal evidence to assess whether their offer has been successful. See earlier post on "What gets measured, gets done"
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