Groupon and on and on and on

a while back we talked with a lady from groupon.com about featuring NCT sometime after their Phoenix site launched...

groupon.com is kind of like woot.com, every day they offer a different discount deal on something, usually entertainment related like restaurants, shows, spa treatments and the like. the deals are always really good, and they only last one day.

we discussed, deliberated, waffled and went back and fourth over what kind of deal we should offer and finally decided on a $6.00 ticket. the cheapest ticket ever.
we also got to decide on a minimum number (like, if we set the minimum at 10 and only 8 people wanted the tickets, the deal wouldnt go through) and a maximum.
really, there were alot of choices to make.

and finally the day came that our groupon would go live.
the minimum was set at 25 and, to be honest, i was wondering if we would top it by much. the maximum was 500, which i thought was a ridiculously high number. suzanne, from groupon, had warned me to stick close to the phones on the day our groupon went out for sale because people would be calling with questions.
the first call i got was at 8:00am, from her.
"good morning, this is suzanne with groupon.com, how is it going today?"
"good. everythings good. no problems, no calls yet."
"have you looked at the website?"
"yeah... i did. first thing this morning, it looks really good. we're very happy with the ad and the layout and the whole thing."
"you havent looked at it in a while."
"no." i said, now wondering if i should feel guilty for some reason?
"ok. no problem. right now you're at 68 tickets sold, so the deal is definitely going to go through. give me a call if you need anything!"

i think i actually said, holy cow.

there i was wondering if we would hit 25 the whole day and we were well over 60 after a few hours.

after that we were pretty much glued to the phone and the computer for the rest of the day. constantly hitting 'refresh' and delighting as the number went up and up. people started calling to make reservations with the groupons they had just purchased. we had to tell them to wait till the next day because we hadnt gotten any information back from groupon yet. man alive. it was kind of exciting, if you get excited about things that aren't really, on the whole, exciting... which i DO!

when the 24 hours of our groupon ended we were at 469 tickets sold.

the next day our phone started ringing at 8am with people wanting to make their reservations. i took over 40 reservations, just for groupon members, before 6:00pm.

and i took more than a few phone calls from people wanting to know how they could buy the $6.00 tickets... totally missing the general idea of the thing.

and i took a whole bunch of phone calls from people in a panic and a huff that the groupon expired on september 4... till i pointed out that they expire on september 4 2010.

and i took at least one call from someone looking for a guy named rodney, but i dont think that was anyhow related.

it seems like alot of groupons were used and in the audience this weekend, until i remind myself that there are still somewhere around 400 out there waiting for us.

viva la groupon.

-nct.