前不久，我们刚刚提到了一则社交游戏通过团购网站团购服务进行营销的案例《社交游戏公司playfish通过Groupon团购交易进行营销》，inside social games提供了另外一则与之相反的案例，团购网站通过社交游戏获得新的用户。

事实上，除了邮件营销和大量在线广告推广以外，团购网站越来越发现其实社交游戏大量的用户群体为他们提供了相当可观的潜在用户。

groupon social games

TrialPay公司联合创始人兼首席产品架构师Terry Angelos表示像farmville这样用户群庞大的社交游戏正在消磨用户白天大量的上网时间。社交游戏以其庞大的用户群体和高度的用户粘性以及游戏的持久力成为了产品和营销的新渠道，而越来越多的产品形式诸如电影、团购、快消、汽车等正在追逐社交游戏用户的品牌告知和消费能力。社交游戏玩家通过groupon或者其他的团购平台实现的交易可以获得相应的虚拟交易货币可以用在游戏相关支付中。

据了解，诸如Tippr、Mertado、LivingSocial和Groupon这样的团购网站最近一段时间正处在爆炸性般的增长中，特别是Groupon在成立21个月以来已经贩售出980万件商品，总共为用户节约了近4亿2000万美元。

Group buying startups, which let consumers get deals with local businesses en masse, are finding a new route to customers beyond the e-mail newsletter and prolific online advertising campaign.

They’re tapping into social games, in a marriage of two of the most lucrative revenue models to emerge off Facebook’s platform. Social gamers earn additional virtual currency by buying Groupon or LivingSocial deals while they’re playing.

“Farmville’s been called the new daytime TV,” said Terry Angelos, a co-founder and chief product officer of TrialPay. “Rather than spending time watching ‘Days of Our Lives,’ people are playing Farmville and seeing ads for local restaurants.” Indeed, many of TrialPay’s supported titles attract women aged 35 to 50 — a prime demographic for online shopping.

TrialPay, which started partnering with Facebook earlier this year to serve offers in exchange for the social network’s virtual currency Credits, has been working with group buying companies including Tippr, Mertado, LivingSocial and Groupon for the past six months. These companies have flourished over the past year, scoring valuations north of $1 billion. Groupon alone has sold 9.8 million coupons, with about $420 million in savings, in a mere 21 months of existence.

TrialPay gone from serving one deal a day to gamers in each city to providing up to 20 different deals per metro area. The consumers who follow through on the deals TrialPay serves in games like  Happy Aquarium, Sorority Life and Mobsters buy one about every two months, according to data the company analyzed over the last 60 days. (TrialPay wouldn’t say exactly how many transactions the company has facilitated over the last two months, except to say that its sample size was in the thousands.)

Some players are coming back to games every day to look at deals; one even purchased a deal every day for an entire month. TrialPay keeps a cut of the overall deal value or gets a fee for every customer they drive, depending on the partner. Angelos says the company’s commissions are “much better” than standard affiliate fees, which range from 4 to 20 percent.（source：inside social games）