It’s always sunny in Chicago! At least during the summer it is :-)

Chicago skyline

It’s been a week of many firsts – first week of my internship, first time living in Chicago, first time living completely on my own – no roommates, no nobody. I have to say seven days ago I was pretty anxious about how this adventure is going to turn out but so far so good!

My first week at Groupon went by fast – I actually cannot believe 10% of my internship are already gone between learning about the company, getting to know my team and getting back into work mode. I feel really lucky that the culture at Groupon is pretty laid back, people are extremely friendly and welcoming, willing to help and yet giving you the freedom to go explore on your own and define your own adventure, which makes the school-work transition pretty seamless.

I am a part of the Marketing team and more specifically the Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) team which is mainly focusing on consumer activation. For perspective, Groupon has about 40 million subscribers out of which only about 30% are active users (meaning they buy Groupons) at any given point of time. And that’s when the CRM team comes into play – the goal of the team is to get as many subscribers as possible to become active users and also to reward our best subscribers for their loyalty. 

As you can imagine, like any online business Groupon has no shortage of data, however the big question is how to organize and synthesize these data in a way that’s meaningful and allows people to make better-informed decisions. That’s what I will be tackling this summer – identifying KPIs (key performance indicators), thinking about consumer segmenting and then designing and working on implementing a reporting system. But before I can do all that I have to learn Groupon-speak. It always amazes me how many acronyms people use at every firm!

Outside of work, I’ve been exploring Chicago. I have to say before coming here I didn’t quite understand why all the people who’ve ever spent a summer in Chicago say it is so amazing but a week in I am starting to understand. There are so many events and festivals organized by the city authorities! Just this past weekend there were at least three festivals – an arts fair, a blues festival and a ribs fest. How amazing is that?! I am really excited for what’s yet to come and I’ll keep you all posted.