Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on our launch of Personalized Deals – we’re so excited it’s finally in the wild!

We’re receiving enough repeat questions to dictate the creation of an FAQ. We’ll add to this post as more shared questions surface.

What do I see if Groupon doesn’t have any personalization information about me?

There will continue to be a city-wide “spotlight” deal for when we know nothing about a subscriber. If we know a little personalization information, subscribers will see their personalized deal instead (we’ll also show them the city-wide spotlight deal if it’s different).

Will I be able to see all the deals running in my city?

Yes and no. There won’t always be a full catalog of deals, but if someone receives a different deal than you, they can share it and you can still buy. Plus, everybody will still always be able to see the deal designated as the “feature” for that city and we’ll highlight a number of additional interesting regional deals on the Groupon homepage. This is our way of trying to maintain the simple “yes/no” decision of one deal a day that’s made Groupon so popular while running deals that fit the interests of more customers. If we do a good job with our personalization targeting, we don’t anticipate customers “missing out” on deals they would have wanted but weren’t sent to them; we’re excited to hear what people think once they start receiving personalized deals, and as always, the site will evolve in the direction dictated by our customers.

I love Groupon because it helps me discover new businesses that I didn’t know I’d like. Will that go away with personalization?

Not at all – we realize that discovery is a core part of Groupon. Personalization on Groupon is mostly about removing the most egregiously offensive deals while continuing to provide your daily dose of serendipity. This also allows us to feature more businesses than before. You will start to see more deals in your email and on the homepage over time, which gives you exposure to even more new businesses.

I often buy Groupons as gifts – how will I do that now that I’ll only see deals that are personalized for me?

If we get personalization right, you’ll still see plenty of deals that will make great gifts, both as the one that we feature for you and also in the area where we show more great deals nearby on the side.

I’m a merchant – does this mean that less subscribers will see my deal?

No – in fact if we do our job right, more subscribers will see your deal. As we get better at sending people deals they care about every day, we think overall engagement will increase, growing the Groupon pie and benefiting all businesses.

How can you know what deals I want based on just my ZIP code, gender and age?

That’s not all we care about, we’re just asking for these first because they are really important.  For example, people generally spend most of their free time close to home.  All else equal, a deal near where you live will be preferable to one way across town.  The other things are also fairly predictive in a lot of cases.  At the same time, we will get better as we learn more about you whether by seeing the things you buy on Groupon or as you fill out your “My Profile” page (located under “My Stuff” if you’re signed in) with more information.

What do you do with information about me?

We take your personal privacy very seriously.  This information is being used expressly to help us give you deals that suit you better.  Related to this, we recently became certified by TRUSTe.  Earning certification involved a review of what information we gather, how we keep it secure and how we make use of it.  We think it confirms that we’re protecting you extremely well and following best practices here.

What if I don’t want a personalized deal to replace the city feature I’m used to?

Even when we give you a personalized deal, you will always still get to see the city spotlight deal. This will give you a choice of the deal we think you’ll want most, plus the usual feature (if that’s different). We’ll also sometimes promote a few others that are available in different parts of your city. In other words, you still get to see the deals you would have seen before — and often will see more.

The printing press. The steam engine. The personal computer. In the pantheon of revolutionary inventions, these once-impressive breakthroughs seem embarrassing in the wake of the most important, most momentous, and most important breakthrough ever broken through: Groupon Personalized Deals.

Launching today in six cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle), Personalized Deals represent a fundamental change to the way that Groupon works. Instead of a single daily deal across an entire city, Groupon subscribers will begin seeing a different deal personalized to their likes, dislikes, whittling ability, and number of pole-dancing classes needed to reach the medically advised minimum. Login to Groupon and click “My Profile” to enter your preferences so we know enough to send you deals that match your tastes, and grant ourselves power of attorney.

Like a baby, Personalized Deals will start out dumb, but like a baby dipped in some sort of mutating ooze, Personalized Deals will get smarter quickly. As Groupon gets to know you better, we’ll target your inbox with scarily accurate deals and scarily accurate hand-drawings of you. Soon, you’ll look back at the Groupon of today like the outdated steam engine of savings it is.

For somewhat useful details, read our press release. For a lot more, read this post about why we decided to build this feature.

Edit:  we’ve added a Personalized Deals FAQ to answer some of the questions that are coming up a lot below.

Personalized Deals is the biggest thing we’ve done since we launched Groupon. While Groupon won’t look much different, sending different deals to different users transforms Groupon in four big ways.

1. Customers Get Relevance

Over the next several months as we bring more and more merchants into the Groupon family, you’ll start receiving deals tailored to your location, preferences and buying patterns. Unfortunately, “try it before you knock it” wasn’t a convincing response to our male customers complaining about mani-pedi deals.

2. Merchants Get Access

Groupon has become so popular with merchants that we can’t keep up with demand. Over 35,000 merchants are queued to be featured on Groupon, and with 97% of our merchants wanting to be featured again, that list is only going to get longer. As a response to unmet demand, Groupon has become one of the most prolifically copied websites in the history of the Internet, with over 500 worldwide Groupon knockoffs appearing in the last 12 months.

Now, by intelligently matching businesses to their most coveted users , we won’t have to turn merchants away – Personalized Deals lets us grant access to any business that meets our quality standards.

3. Merchants Can Throttle Volume

Groupon has forced some merchants to contend with an entirely new problem: what happens when you have too many customers? We’ve created otherworldly events like sushi places running out of rice, or twenty-somethings lining up around the block to see the ballet. We’ve actually had to develop formulas that help merchants plan capacity and limit their Groupons.

With Personalized Deals a merchant can run a deal to different segments of customers over several months, giving them the Groupon goodness without the risk of being overwhelmed by a horde of new customers.

4. We Can Move Away From City Centers

In a city like Chicago, 90% of our deals are in the 10 miles or so surrounding downtown – but millions of people live in the surrounding cities. Now we’re targeting deals by location, creating better deals for customers outside the city center and delivering a more relevant audience to suburban businesses.

We couldn’t be more excited about Personalized Deals. We think you’ll look back six months from now and wonder how you ever got by without it.

A few weeks ago when we launched a revamped version of our iPhone app, we got a ton of requests for an Android app. We are happy to announce that the Groupon Android app is now available for download in Android Market for phones running 1.6 and up.  You can buy deals, access your purchased Groupons and find the ones that are nearby.

You can also redeem deals from the app and view side deals by selecting the “More Deals” option in the deal page menu.

We are working on adding features such as the ability to browse Discussions forums and a widget to the app.  We would like to get your input- post your comments on what you want to see next.