'Net Features : daily deal

Groupon Offers Merchant Impact Reports

Allison Howen — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:30:00 GMT

Groupon has launched a new tool to help merchants measure the performance of their daily deals.

The Merchant Impact Report is a free feature built into the Groupon Merchant Center that provides users with data that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of Groupon promotions. After a successful trial of the tool, the Merchant Impact Report is now available for U.S. and Canadian merchants who have a Groupon Merchant account. Check out some of the capabilities of the new tool below:

Marketing Analytics – Reveals the total number of Groupon subscribers who received a deal via Groupon as well as analytics on which subscribers purchase the offer. These analytics are also broken down by geography, gender and age.

Customer Insights – Shows the percentage of customers new to a business or reactivated as a result of working with Groupon. Additionally, merchants can view the estimated percentage of customers who are expected to return within 90 days.

Profit Calculator – Helps merchants estimate the cost-effectiveness of each promotion, including payments from Groupon, overspend above the value of the Groupon, revenue generated by returning customers and the merchants’ costs.

“The Merchant Impact Report was created as a result of our merchants’ feedback and is designed to provide a clear, concise view into the effectiveness of their Groupon promotions,” said Amit Koren, director of merchant products, Groupon. “Until today only the largest companies had access to this kind of information, and now we’re providing these powerful analytics to every local business that works with Groupon.”

Say Hello to the New eBay

Allison Howen — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 16:43:00 GMT

eBay has released a series of design and general experience updates intended to improve user engagement and also compete with the popular daily deal site, Groupon.

The changes include a site redesign, a new daily deal section and a tool that will help one of eBay's largest customer segments – collectors. Learn more about the updates below:

eBay Feeds

It seems as though eBay is embracing change, because the company’s recently updated logo is now accompanied by a redesigned website. The most prominent site change is the eBay Feed, which is a personalized page of items that are displayed in a Pinterest-style layout of image tiles. The Feeds are completely customizable, with the displayed products being tailored to the categories or items that users choose to follow. It is safe to say that the new image-oriented design focuses on usability, because it provides users with a simple way to quickly discover new products.

Lifestyle Deals

While the eBay Feeds take a page out of Pinterest's design handbook, the auction site’s new daily deal feature takes a page out of Groupon's business model. The new service, which is called Lifestyle Deals, currently runs offers in a limited number of cities, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The deals are arranged through a partnership with a company called Signpost, which assembles deals with local merchants and posts them online. In the past, eBay has focused on offering deals for products, so jumping into the deal industry with a focus on services is definitely a big step for the company.

Setify

Aside from the new site design and daily deal venture, eBay has also launched a new tool that focuses on helping one of the company’s most popular customer segments – collectors. To many people, collecting is more than just a hobby. However, the collection process can be very time consuming because it requires a lot of research, tracking and even at times, some networking. This is why eBay has made the collection process a little easier with the launch of a free tool called Setify. Currently in beta, Setisfy helps collectors track the items that they own, share their collections, build wish lists and shop for additional collectibles. Although Setify currently only supports comic book and coin collectors, support for more categories is expected to come in the future. Those who are interested can request a beta invitation here.

Word-of-Mouth Drives Successful Daily Deals

Allison Howen — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:05:00 GMT

When it comes to advertising, word-of-mouth is still the key to success.

This is especially true when it comes to the daily deal industry, at least according to a new study from Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey. The study not only reveals that word-of-mouth is a key factor in running successful daily deals for small businesses, but also found that more than one third of consumers are likely to buy a deal from a local small business rather than a national chain.

However, one of the most surprising statistics from the study shows that a good deal experience doesn’t automatically result in loyalty for nearly 60 percent of consumers, even though most consumers think that deals are a good strategy for local businesses to attract new customers.

“It’s very clear that proximity matters, and that local merchants have an advantage over big brands. More than a third of consumers are more likely to buy deals from local businesses,” says Dave Gilbertson, general manager, SaveLocal. “However, for nearly 60 percent of deal buyers, a good experience does not automatically translate into loyalty. It’s absolutely critical that merchants stay in touch after the deal. Amazingly, many deal vendors sabotage this effort by refusing to give merchants the contact information of their buyers. The true value of running a deal for a small business is bringing in new, repeat customers, not one-time deal seekers. Without the tools to follow up, unfortunately, that’s what many of them become.”

Other findings show that more than twice as many consumers share deals via email compared to social networks, while deals for restaurants and entertainment are the most common types to be shared. The study also found that recommendations from friends make half of consumers more likely to purchase a deal from an unfamiliar small business, and that personal endorsements drive deal purchases, especially for women.

“Two of the more important findings in this research were that word-of-mouth is key for the success of a deal and that personal endorsements drive deal purchases. This falls right in line with what we heard from merchants when we were developing SaveLocal: they wanted a tool that brought in new customers through word-of-mouth,” says Gilbertson. “Half of the survey respondents said they are more likely to purchase a deal if it is recommended to them by friends or family – and that’s why merchants are more than happy to reward people who recommend them and share their deals on social networks or through email. In fact, with SaveLocal we’ve seen that merchants who include sharing incentives in their deals increase their audience reach by 138 percent over those that did not use the feature.”

Could Facebook be the Daily Deal Killer?

Allison Howen — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:25:00 GMT

The Web’s largest social network is taking a jab at the Daily Deal industry with its newest launch of Facebook Offers, which is a tool for engaging with and driving new customers to businesses.

Offers are free for administrators to create and share, however only a small number of local business Pages are currently able to take advantage of this new feature, with Facebook claiming that it plans to “launch Offers more broadly soon.”

The offers are created from the sharing tool at the top of a Page’s timeline. Users must click on the Offer, Event + button, and then create an offer headline, upload a photo, choose a limit for the number of claims, add terms and conditions, preview and post the promotion. Although Offers is a free service, Facebook suggests that businesses run an ad or Sponsored Story so that the offers receive more visibility.

Consumers can redeem offers from brands that they have liked. The “liked” brand’s offer will show up in the consumer’s news feed, which is where the consumer can click “Get Offer” to receive the promotion. Then Facebook sends a follow-up email to the consumer, which needs to be shown to the business in order to receive the discount.

It seems as though Facebook is the perfect platform to launch a service like this, especially since small businesses tend to be hesitant to sign up with daily deal services. Not only is Facebook a familiar platform, but the offers are completely free to run, and business owners are given complete control over their promotions. Match made in virtual heaven? – only time will tell.

Volusion Offers Daily Deals for Ecommerce Sites

Allison Howen — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:00:00 GMT

It’s not a big secret – everyone loves a great deal. In fact, according to BIA/Kelsey, consumer spending on daily deal offers is predicted to reach $3.9 billion in the U.S. by 2015.

So why not take advantage of this industry and display a daily deal directly on your ecommerce site? Ecommerce provider Volusion has announced a deal-of-the-day feature that allows merchants to do just that by providing merchants with the ability to set up daily deal offers directly from the administrative panel of their ecommerce stores.

To launch a daily deal, a merchant simply needs to enable the daily deal feature and then pick the desired product to be promoted. Then, the merchant needs to enter a discounted price as well as timeframe of the promotion for the selected product. After the previous steps are completed, customers should be able to quickly find and purchase the deal within the ecommerce site.

The new feature also gives merchants the choice to either set up one deal or multiple deals a day, as well as schedule promotions that can span multiple days. Furthermore, merchants can draw attention to their deals through built-in social marketing capabilities in the Volusion platform.

One-stop Shop for Daily Deals

Allison Howen — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:00:00 GMT

Recently, daily deal sites have been the topic of conversation for many reasons — from headlines about the oversaturated market to rumors about the death of daily deals.

But through all the speculation, one thing remains certain — everyone loves a good deal.

However, according to a Bing/Impulse survey, even with the more than 600 daily deal sites in the US alone, consumers are still having a difficult time finding deals that are actually relevant to them. Additionally, consumers are overwhelmed by the abundance of deals and sites to choose from.

So, because finding a relevant deal can be a part-time job, sites that aggregate deals together into one place, such as Bing Deals or Yipit, may be the bright light in the future of daily deals.

Bing Deals, a recently launched deal aggregating site, provides users with deals from major providers and retailers, such as Groupon and Living Social.

The site aggregates more than 200,000 deals from across the US. It also organizes the deals, so filtering and comparing deals is much easier. Users can browse by retailer, location, keywords or categories.

Another deal aggregator, Yipit, collects daily deals from 688 services, including Groupon, Yelp and LivingSocial.

Yipit recommends the best daily deals for a user’s particular city, and is currently available in 70 cities. However, Yipit Nation is also available for consumers that want to view the best daily deals, no matter where they might live.

These daily deal aggregators could be a huge help to consumers, and at the very least — these sites can free up some room in a daily deal junkie’s inbox.

TIPPR Expands Affiliate Network

Michael Garrity — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:00:00 GMT

The white-label daily deal platform creator TIPPR has recently announced an expansion of the TIPPR Affiliate Network, which attempts to drive incremental sales for publishers who use their platform.

The company's affiliate network helps to increase the exposure levels of merchant daily deals beyond their existing publisher audiences; the network includes about 1000 different websites in the United States, inlcuding blogs, deal aggregators and social media sites.

Their platform is currently the only white-label daily deal technology that is able to provide publishers with amplified exposure for their offers, free opportunities for customer acqusition, technology innovation, deal sourcing and distribution.

TIPPR's Affilite Network is in place to act as a "megaphone" for their users by broadcasting offers through websites and apps to over 100 million unique visitors every month, allowing publishers to earn up to 15 percent or more in incremental revenue. The combination of TIPPR's white-label platform and affiliate network means advertisers have the ability to reach targeted new customers and turn them into loyal subscribers at a reduced cost, which provides an advantage over more expensive direct branding initiatives.

According to a press release by the company, "The value of white-label platforms is bypassing that of the branded, deals only sites, due to the extended offer reach and unique connections with loyal audiences."

Among the many publishers currently using the TIPPR platform and leveraging their Affiliate Network are companies such as Belo Corp, FOX and Univision.

Driving Daily Deals With Email Marketing

Allison Howen — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:00:00 GMT

The daily deal market is clearly saturated, with more than 600 sites in the U.S. alone.

It is nearly impossible for all of these sites to be successful, and one report claims that 33 percent of daily deal sites have been shut down or sold in 2011.

So, how can a daily deal or a flash site differentiate itself from the hundreds of like-sites in order to achieve success? One of the most influential tools that these sites can use is effective email marketing.

A recent study called “Special Report: How Daily Deal Sites Capitalize On Email Marketing” from StrongMail analyzes successful email strategies, especially for daily deal and flash sites.

Successful daily deal sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial, Google Offers and DealSwarm, as well as successful flash sites like Zulily, Rue La La, HauteLook, Ideeli and Gilt Groupe, have all implemented a strong email marketing presence into their marketing models. However, many of these strategies can be improved upon in order to obtain and maintain the maximum number of consumers possible.

Using email marketing effectively can not only drive business for many of these sites, but also build brand loyalty with consumers, which will increase user engagement.

Here are a few tips from the report that will help take an email marketing program to the next level:

• Get the right offers to the right people at the right time. A daily deal has a much better chance of being successful if it is relevant to a consumer. Additionally, deals that aren’t relevant may lead to a loss of subscribers.

• Gather behavioral information from consumers. This makes the job of providing relevant content to customers much easier.

• Be consistent. Messages that arrive within the same 10 to 15 minute time frame everyday create a sense of urgency amongst subscribers. It will also increase open rates, clicks and your bottom line.

• Give subscribers choices. Do they want content separated into multiple messages or a single all-inclusive message?

• Draw attention, but not too much attention. Since most recipients scan email instead of reading it, you have about 3 to 7 seconds to convey your message and capture attention. Keep things simple, use good spacing, attractive headlines and even bullet points to get your point across quickly to subscribers.

• Optimize the pre-header for conversion instead of notes like, “add to address book” or “view in browser.”

• Use catchy subject lines. These need to be short and to the point. Think of something that you would see on a billboard that would capture your attention.

Group Buying for Affiliates/Publishers - Get Your ChompOn

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:59:00 GMT

White label daily deals (group buying) platform Chompon last week launched an “Adsense platform for daily deals”. That’s right – affiliate functionality for publishers/affiliates to include a deals widget where an advertising unit would normally be shown. This will enable publishers (websites) to monetize by selling targeted deals instead of advertising and capitalize on the group buying trend.

ChompOn publishers can embed group buying and “flash sales” into their existing sites through a set of customizable widgets or by white-labeling the service. If you’re aiming to dethrone Groupon, ChompOn is really an elegant and robust platform that will set you on the right course.

The service features social widgets (enabling users of your service to like you on Facebook and share deals on Twitter) with tipping points which encourage users to spread the word in order to hit the minimum, analytics (performance and conversion), daily deal email and certificate automation, secure payments, branded iPhone apps and more.