Slurp sells out of wine with email voucher campaign

Published: 18 November, 2010

Online retailer Slurp made 4,000 sales in less than 12 hours following an email voucher campaign with Groupon.

Groupon, a special offer website, offers discounts on local goods, services and events, and emails 1.6 million subscribers with deals specific to their area. Once a specified number agree to the deal, the offer is activated.

Slurp.co.uk offered a price of £9 for a £30 voucher to buy wines on its site for 48 hours, and forecast with Groupon that once sales reached 2,000 the offer would be activated. But when demand hit 4,000 within the first 12 hours Slurp decided to suspend the campaign early, for fear it would not be able to cope with the demand.

Slurp promoted three mixed cases of 12 in the campaign which were selected specially for the offer. It expects final demand for these cases to run "into the thousands" once the voucher starts to be redeemed on Monday.

Managing director Jeremy Howard said because it has a minimum order size of six bottles, the price of the order would be "substantially above £30", ensuring they wouldn't lose money on the £21 discount deal.

"Our experience of using vouchers is that customers tend to load up, so although they might have a £30 voucher, they will spend substantially more, baskets of £150-£180 aren't unusual. Our average order is £118."

"In the internet space you have to acquire new customers quickly. We're good at looking after and retaining new customers once we get them, and the aim is to encourage regular spending."

Asked whether he expected all the vouchers to be redeemed, Howard said: "I think with Groupon the vast majority are taken up, but there's always a small percentage that don't. But that really wouldn't be the reason to do it."
"Groupon is our target demographic, affluent young people - the next generation of wine drinkers."