Coupons… two-thirds of American households use coupons to save money and try new products or services. Until recently most of those coupons came from newspapers, newspaper inserts, and direct mail.

As the amount of direct mail and number of pages printed in newspapers and magazines shrink, printed coupons are moving online or going mobile.

Way back in 2001, Frank Romano authored a report called Printing in the Age of the Web and Beyond, in which he described innovations that would take coupons out of the traditional print stream.

The delivery methods predicted have all arrived, in some form or another: coupons printed on demand on the backs of register tapes, coupon clearing house websites, downloadable (printable) coupons, and "codes downloaded from electronic media to PDAs." A perfect description of mobile coupons!

Frank didn't predict an entirely new way of delivering discount promotions – Groupon.

Groupon's Public Offering

In early 2010, consumer research firm, The Nielsen Company, suggested that couponing will remain strong as the economy improves on the back end of the recent recession – if "retailers and manufacturers know exactly who to target and how to leverage established and emerging coupon delivery vehicles." (Editor's emphasis.)

The key here is knowing exactly who to target! Groupon is both an emerging coupon delivery vehicle that specializes in the "deal of the day" and a system that can deliver deals targeted to different subscribers in the same market based on personal preferences.

Late 2010, Yahoo was considering a $2-3 billion offer for the company, and Groupon made headlines by rebuffing a $6 billion offer by Google. On June 2, Groupon filed with the SEC to make an initial public offering that caused heads to turn on Wall Street!

What Does Print Have to Do With It?

In a word: Eric Lefkofsky…

That would be the Eric Lefkofsky who founded Innerworkings (Nasdaq: INWK), the print brokerage that finished 2010 with revenues exceeding $482 million and net income of $11.2 million.

In August 2006, Innerworkings completed its initial public offering (IPO), and a little over two years later, November 2008, Lefkofsky and Andrew Mason launched "a side project" called Groupon.

In just three years, Groupon has grown from $94,000 in sales in 2008 to $713.3 million in 2010. This year, 2011, looks like it will be another year of explosive growth. Revenues for the quarter ending March 31, 2011, were $644.7 million. The bad news? Net loss for 2010 was $413.4 million and for Q1 2011, $117.1 million.

The Links Between Innerworkings and Groupon

Way back In August 2007, WhatTheyThink mapped the "inner workings" of Innerworkings and dug into the relationships between and among the various companies and organizations to which the company executives and Board of Directors were connected. For more detail see: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon – Three (or fewer) Degrees of InnerWorkings.

If you take a close look at the Groupon S-1 filing, you will find a lot of familiar names.

Groupon had the same kind of agreement with Echo Global Logistics that Innerworkings did: sharing office space in Chicago. And the same close relationship with investors and directors.

The list of investors who were able to cash out prior to the IPO include a number of individuals and entities with close connections to Innerworkings: