If you remember in early July we told you Why Groupon Sucks – and Why LivingSocial is Your Best Bet. Our offer ran last week, so we’re following up to share what we learned and how you can use it to craft your own LivingSocial offer for your shop.
Debbie from LivingSocial came to visit us exactly 1 business day after we emailed her. She gave us all the details we needed to construct a good offer.
Debbie shared some key stats that helped us make our decision:

• There are approximately 180,000 email subscribers in the Milwaukee market.
• We could run an offer that expired in 4, 6 or 12 months from the date of our offer.
• We had to offer at least a 50% discount off our list price, and LivingSocial would take half of the deal price and we’d get half the deal price. (Example: If our deal was for a $100 oil change, the deal price would be $50, and LivingSocial would get $25 and we’d get $25.)
• No upfront cost. This is the same for everyone. We asked for a discount. Nobody gets a discount.
• We could offer 1 option or multiple options for purchase.
• We could limit how many deals people can buy, or you can let them buy as many as they want to.
• You can not limit how many you sell, but your deal does have to reach a certain threshold before the deal is on.
• There is normally a 30-45 day lag from  the time you talk to your account rep to the time they ran your deal.
• LivingSocial will write your advertising copy, and you have to respond with edits or approve what they’ve written within 24 hours or your deal is on hold and they’ll go on to the next business looking to make a deal (which may or not be your competitor).

Oh yeah: One other thing that is VERY important: Payment!

• LivingSocial pays in 30 days (or a little less). Groupon typically takes 90 days.
• And LivingSocial pays all the credit card fees. Groupon takes those out of your profits. And you know what the percentage on credit card transactions is!

So here’s what folks got in their email (click the image to make it larger):

Our offer was an oil change at up to 62% off, with 2 options, with redemption of the offer within a year, and folks could buy as many as they wanted to.
We sold 372 deals at a minimum price of $30, a maximum price of $59, netting us $5580-$10974. Not too shabby for 2 days running a deal, though we do have to make good on all those oil changes. We’re expecting about 50% of people will actually redeem their coupons, but time will tell.
And about 4 days before our LivingSocial ad was set to run, Groupon sent us a standard, form rejection letter, making our choice for LivingSocial our only choice.
Here are 3 reasons why we love LivingSocial and how you can use this in your shop:
1) Very prompt service – Debbie called us within an hour of our initial email, and visited us within 24 hours of our phone call.
Lesson: Make sure your team is communicating promptly with your customers so they’re never left in the dark wondering if you’re taking care of them.
2) Very professional, personalized service – Debbie was our contact for most of the process, owning most communication, using our names, and she even remembered having brought a car into the shop for Sam (our president) many years ago. The other people we worked with were similarly personal and professional, making us very comfortable about this new program.
Lesson: Slow down and take time to make connections with your customers. Ask questions to find out more about them, and chances are, they somehow know someone that works for or with you. People like to do business with people they know like and trust, and you can uncover a lot if you ask questions and pay attention.
3) Don’t nickel and dime us – 50% is 50%, so the fact that LivingSocial ate the credit card fees made our profit estimates much more clear for us, and eliminated our concerns about what this might cost us beyond our 50%.
Lesson: Make your pricing open and honest and charge only what you say you are going to charge, even if it costs you a little more.
We can’t recommend LivingSocial enough for their outstanding value and service, even though we don’t know yet exactly how big our check from them will be. They treated us like valued partners, and we will likely do business with them again in 6-12 months when the opportunity arises.
What do YOU think? Would you like to try LivingSocial? What questions do you have?
If you want to try LivingSocial, you can sign up your business at http://livingsocial.com/getfeatured We’d love to hear what your results are! And if you’re already used it, let us know that too!