Online bookings with Groupon and Checkfront
Groupon and other collective buying sites (also see: Living Social, Tippr etc) can be a great way to attract new customers and quickly drive revenue to your business.
The idea being, if you are willing to offer up a significant discount based on a minimum of number of bookings, these sites are able to deliver the traffic and buyers necessary to fill the deal.
Groupon works well for retail products, but offers a challenge when the offering is time. The problem with a schedule based product is that although the customer has already paid for the product through Groupon, they haven’t scheduled it with you, and those sales exist outside of your booking system. If you aren’t prepared in advanced for a burst of bookings, you could otherwise end up with an administrative mess, and a Groupon of unhappy customers.
With Groupon, when your deal is completed, customers receive a voucher (paid for on groupon.com) to redeem your service. They also provide you as the merchant a list of corresponding voucher codes to verify the sales.
With Checkfront, we offer merchants the ability to import voucher codes into the system, and allow customers to schedule and book online, as if they were paying with credit a credit card.
With our powerful event and discount system, you can set specific rules to control when and how your promotional rates are available.
If you’re offering a heavily discounted price, you may want to make sure everyone doesn’t show up on the same day, or all at peak times.
Once your vouchers have been uploaded customers can be directed to your website to make a booking and enter in their voucher code. This significantly reduces call volumes and starts the customer experience on the right foot.
Using Groupon vouchers with Checkfront
Importing vouchers into Checkfront couldn’t be easier. If you are familiar with our event system, you’re 80% there.
- From your Inventory / Discounts menu, click “Add new”.
- Click “upload vouchers” and supply the file (CSV) of voucher codes. If you are using a system other than Groupon, make sure the voucher code is the first column.
- Select the discount amount, generally 100% “per booking”.
- Set any additional parameters on the discount you’d like (start / expire date, rules etc).
- Select the item(s) you wish to apply the promotion to (defaults to All items).
- Save your discount, and you are done!
Checkfront will accept / schedule bookings for each voucher, and close the deal once all vouchers have been used, or when you have set the deal to expire. If the item is fully booked for the day or time, it will not allow the customer to continue, and ask that they choose an alternate date.
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FAQ
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I use a group buying site not other than Groupon. Can I still use this feature?
If you have a list of vouchers or a discount code, any group buying program should be compatible the discount and voucher system.
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How do I know what bookings have come through via a group buy vs a normal booking?
The voucher or discount code will be shown on the invoice. You can also view a report of all voucher based purchased using the Promotional Report under the reports menu.
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Can I still process group bookings over the phone?
Of course. Just login to Checkfront and process the booking internally. This will ensure the booking, inventory and customer are properly tracked.
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Can I add on optional up-sell to a promotion that isn’t free?
YES! This is a great opportunity to make up some of the revenue given to Groupon. You can add optional items from your inventory to the product (for example a t-shirt). In the event there is a balance due after the voucher code is applied, the customer will continue through the checkout process.
