It looks like The New York Times has shifted from testing the market for digital subscribers to aggressive marketing.The Gray Lady made an appearance yesterday on Groupon, offering an 8-week trial subscription for $1.

The newspaper/news site did some things right with this offer. Most notably, even though the sale was for an online subscription, they included a “tangible-ish” product by including their smartphone app. They also smartly excluded their premium crosswords and e-reader editions, making these a great upsell for Groupon-takers.However, our sister site Subscription Site Insider has a number of warnings for other subscription and membership sites looking to get on Groupon bandwagon. First and foremost, merchants do not receive credit card numbers through Groupon deals, meaning you’ll have more trouble retaining trial takers.Secondly, Groupon usually takes about 50% of the deal’s revenues. So The New York Times is almost giving away these trial offers. And lastly, merchants don’t receive email addresses and other customer information.Still this may not be a bad deal for NYT. They’re still qualifying their prospects (even if they’re only getting 50 cents per trial). And their sign-up page will likely ask for an email address and other information (though Groupon forbids merchants from asking for a credit card when users cash in their coupon — it appears more like a bait-and-switch than a best practice to Groupon).If you’re looking to grow your online subscriptions exponentially (and your Web server and site can handle the influx of traffic you’ll get), then Groupon deals can be cheaper than other marketing tactics. Just make sure you know all the pros and cons.