Last Thursday, General Mills became the first large consumer packaged goods company to offer a deal on a daily deals site. The company’s promotion on Groupon gave consumers in Minneapolis and San Francisco the opportunity to receive more than $40 of General Mills products (e.g. Cinnamon Toast Crunch) and a $15 coupon book for the price of $20 – General Mills will ship the goods directly to the shoppers’ homes. The deal had sold out by about 11am in both markets.
Groupon’s market share of visits on Thursday, 21st April was up 18% over the prior Thursday (14th of April). Despite the increase in market share, the DMA distribution of visits to Groupon remained steady for top areas. San Francisco and Minneapolis are consistently in the top twenty markets for Groupon.

Due to the nature of the deal, Groupon and General Mills were able to benefit from its promotion across many coupon and rewards sites.

On the day of the deal (21st April), Groupon’s share of Rewards and Directories traffic had a 20% bump in comparison to 14th of April. This indicates that both Groupon and CPG companies could benefit from similar promotions, as Groupon will profit from increased traffic and the CPG companies win further audience exposure.

General Mills‘ market share of visits remained unchanged week-to-week. While the Big G is testing the efficacy of daily deals, part of the benefit to the company is the opportunity for have a direct line to their consumers. In the days to come it will be interesting to see how they apply this opportunity for engagement across their digital strategy and leverage the increased knowledge they have about their e-consumers for effective online audience segmentation.
Thanks to Margot Bonner, Analyst on the Custom Data & Insights team for today’s analysis.