Entercom Digital – Another Awesome Photo Contest Blog

July 16, 2010 by Jimmy Hendricks

We want to thank Entercom Digital for posting an amazing Artistic Hub photo contest testimonial and blog.

We had the opportunity to use Artistic Hub’s photo contesting software again for a Pet Pageant in market, and it was another runaway success. I thought I’d share the stats and the process again on our last day of submissions, in case anyone wants to check them out further.

We basically work directly with the provider, Artistic Hub, and I design on top of their contesting templates. They then slice up my design and place it on their software. We work out a contest timeline (submission deadline, winner date, etc.), fill out the auto-email copy, and then hit the ground running on our specified launch date. Easy, no hassle, and they are great to work with.

As of today the contest has a little shy of 90,000 pageviews for about a 2 week period, accounting for around 52% of our total site traffic for 98.5 KRZ. We have had 1,053 submissions with a total of 948 images in voting, and a total of 1.6 million votes!

We still have another week or so of voting, but this has really been a tried-and-true solution for us as far as rock solid photo contesting goes. Our sponsor for the contest, EasyPetStore.com, was a perfect fit. They offered free shipping on orders over $50 for all WKRZ listeners, and tossed up a grand prize of $500 to the winner.

Great sponsor, solid stats, phenomenal social media integration (Facebook referred back about 15% of our total traffic) and the best photo contesting software I’ve used, this is a definite win for us here. Check out the contest for yourself!

Happy Friday!

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia | Tagged Artistic Hub, Entercom, Pet Photo Contest | Leave a Comment »

Keys to Launching a Daily Deal Site…..the Right Way!!!!

June 12, 2010 by Jimmy Hendricks

As our product Deal Current is being implemented in the market, the biggest thing we have realized is that there is a right way and wrong way to launch a daily deal program.

Just like every website on the web the statement, “If you build it they will come”, is never true. It takes marketing and promotion. The viral aspect is like the icing on the cake an effects the velocity, but marketing is the initial driver.

Thursday of this past week our 3rd Deal Current client, Morgan’s Deals in Austin, launched and I wanted to share a few key things about their immediate success.

Highlight: Morgan’s Deals – Day 1 – 323 Sales – $3,230 in Revenue!!!!!!

Keys to Day 1 Success

Good Email List – Having a great email list to start with is super important. Morgan’s Deals launched with a good opt-in email database that they built from paid advertising in their market. They sent direct mail pieces to thousands of households and invested in Facebook ads. Building a true opt-in email list takes money, but its worth it. We recommend that a site launches with a minimum of 10,000 opt-in emails for a given market to ensure success.
A Great First Deal – Morgan’s Deals launched with Mangia Pizza. Mangia Pizza is a very popular and award winning Chicago style pizza place in Austin. The deal was $10 for a medium pizza with 3 toppings valued at $22.45. Not only was it a great location, but also a great value. This combination drove consistent sales from 8am to 12pm.
Great Branding – Morgan’s Deals has an awesome sense of style and brand. They didn’t just put up “City + Deal of the Day”. This model is boring. People are endeared to brands that have personality and style. For this we give Morgan’s Deals an A+.

So for all of the potential daily deal sites launching. Whether you work with us or not, make sure you do it the right way. The daily deal opportunity can be very lucrative, but if you don’t run your program you the right way you will be lost in the crowd.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Daily Deal Software, Morgans Deals, Daily Deals Austin, Keys to Daily Deals, Launching a Daily Deal Site | Leave a Comment »

Talent + Passion = Success

June 1, 2010 by Jimmy Hendricks

As an entrepreneur, the hardest thing to be is patient.

One of my favorite bands the Doors sum it up in “When the Music’s Over” with the famous quote:

“We Want the World and We Want it Now”

This one statement is all we think about and what drives us, but with every overnight success there are hundreds of companies we never heard of until year 5, 10, or more. This is actually more often the fact that not.

I was reminded of the need for patience and passion to create something great this last week as I made a new, incredibly amazing friend, Linden Wolbert. Linden is one of two real live professional mermaids in the world. She has had ups and downs and left a successful career to start her company Mermaids in Motion and pursue her passion for the sea and helping kids.

It hasn’t been easy, and as we know as entrepreneurs, you have to love what you are doing to keep going many times. Well as a spark of inspiration for all of us, she has been recognized and rewarded for her hard work and passion this evening on ABC 20/20′s Super Humans.

Just watch the video and you will be inspired. This is the recognition we all shoot for and what drives us to get up each day and keep going!

Congrats Linden and keep swimming. Your “Shell Phone” as you love to call it is going to blow up

Real Live Mermaid Linden Wolbert on ABC 20/20 Superhumans

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Tagged Linden Wolbert, Real Live Mermaid, ABC 20/20 Superhumans, Professional Mermaid, Mermaids in Motion, Mermaid for Hire | Leave a Comment »

Four Keys for Publishers

May 25, 2010 by Jimmy Hendricks

I just read a great article about media publishers entering the daily deal market on Business Insider written by Jim Moran at Yipit.

The article title reads:

Groupon’s Biggest Threat? Local Publishers

The article covers some great points, but here is the most important part in my opinion for our clients and other media publishers.

Four keys for local publisher success

Focus on email. A page on a publisher’s site may fall short in effectiveness compared to a dedicated email subscriber base. Local content creators should drive dedicated email subscribers and leverage their existing email lists in their crafting their deal experience. The ones that already understand this, such as email newsletters, may have an easier time entering the fray. To this point, on the online sample front, DailyCandy already operates Swirl, and Thrillist recently acquired JackThreads. We may soon see these companies and others enter the local daily deal space as well.

Leverage legacy content. Local newspapers and magazines have a library of restaurant, bar, shop and service recommendations they made in the past. Just as studios leverage their film and television assets through DVDs, local publishers can point to past reviews in their daily deal offerings. Focusing on previously reviewed business may facilitate the sales process – local business who received sales boosts around their initial review would jump at the opportunity to be featured once more. Most importantly, utilizing historical endorsements maintains separation of editorial and commercial content.

Outsource. Some publishers face major internal hurdles to reorienting their web experience and marshaling their sales staff to roll out a full service group buying solution. Hosted group buying solutions, such as Group Commerce and others, who provide technology and/or sales solutions to publishers looking to present daily deal offerings to their consumers. Many of the publishers above pursue partnerships with existing deal services (such as four of the six above). Those may be an effective solution, but owning those email addresses for the long term will be key.

Present exclusive offers. As we mentioned in our analysis of Gilt Groupe’s daily deal offering, exclusivity can be a compelling aspect of a daily deal. Local publishers can present their offers as exclusive to their readers, reinforcing the value of the publication and adding excitement to their offer.

Groupon's Biggest Threat Local Publishers

Posted in Deal Current, Marketing, Uncategorized | Tagged Daily Deal Software, Deal Current, Business Insider, Jim Moran, Yipit, Groupon's Biggest Threat, Media Daily Deal Programs, SDNN Daily Deals | Leave a Comment »

Deal Current is mentioned in Kiplinger Mag

May 24, 2010 by Jimmy Hendricks

We haven’t focused on any press, but we know the word is getting out about our daily deal software, Deal Current.

Kiplinger, the personal finance magazine, recently mentioned us in their article “Online Daily Deals Help Firms Gain Traffic“

It’s exciting to see our team get recognition for their work along side some of the more well known daily deal companies like Living Social.

Posted in Deal Current, Marketing, Uncategorized | Tagged Daily Deal Software, Deal Current, Kiplinger Mag, Deal Current in the press | Leave a Comment »

How To Start A Daily Deal Site

May 13, 2010 by Jimmy Hendricks

This title of this post is the first Google search people make when they come across our daily deal software product Deal Current.

I love the fact that Groupon, Living Social, and the hundred other daily deal sites are starting to pop up. From a business stand point the market is definitely being flooded, but I personally love it because Groupon has sparked entrepreneurship. It is obvious that most people are copying Groupon, but people are capitalizing on a new business model. This is pure capitalism. Some will succeed and many will fail, but the best practices will be defined through this process.

As a company we are focused on serving one market niche with our daily deal product Deal Current. As a result, we turn away some incoming leads, but I wanted to share my knowledge with people or companies looking to start a daily deal program.

First! – Running a daily deal site is much harder than most entrepreneurs realize. The software and website are the easy part. The operations, systems, and brand are the most important.

Second, here is a list of questions and things you need to think about when deciding if you should start a daily deal site or if you are interviewing a daily deal software provider.

What is your distribution or marketing plan? The number one thing once you have a brand is distribution. How many emails do you have? What partnerships can you put in place? Do you have a marketing budget?

What is your daily deal brand? Are you going to center your site around a niche? Are you going to tie into local city culture? Think hard on this. It will define your future.

Are you going to build or license software? We license our software. This is great for media partners and large organizations who want to plug a program into their existing organization. If you are an entrepreneur, it means you don’t own the proprietary platform. So you should probably invest 10-15k into your own software. This takes more time and commitment, but entrepreneurship is not easy.

If you are working with a software provider, what other services and support do they provide? Here is what we provide to clients as a reference of services for you to ask about when you talk to vendors.

Technology, management center, and reporting
Design support (paid)
Sales training and sales collateral
Merchant agreements
Customer support
Merchant payment and accounting
Credit card processing
Writers
Market research

Lastly, what research have you done? We researched 50+ competitors in 66 markets and interviewed over 100 merchants who ran a daily deal with various sites to develop our daily deal software. To run an effective program and be successful you need to invest time and money in research. Do you have this commitment and patience? In a very competitive market, knowledge is key, so do your research.

Posted in Deal Current, Entrepreneurship, Marketing | Tagged Daily Deal Software, Daily Deal Solution, Deal Current, Dealcurrent.com, how to start a daily deal site, how to compete with groupon, daily deal programs, group buying software, daily deal platforms, turn-key daily deal software | 2 Comments »

Daily Deal Success Stories

April 24, 2010 by Jimmy Hendricks

As we start to work with merchants and publishers on a daily basis with our daily deal software, one of the things we didn’t know is how merchants measured success.

We wondered whether we needed to generate 50 sales or 300 sales to make a merchant happy. Last week our question was answered. It really is just more customers. Small businesses felt the economic squeeze just like all of us and every customer is valuable.

Here is a review we received in third person from San Diego News Network after they ran a deal for Club Pilates San Diego. As a team it made us love what we do even more.

I just got a rave review on SDNN Daily Deal from a very satisfied Merchant, Allison from San Diego Pilates. She informed me that her 16 new clients from Daily Deal have already come to some of her classes and are absolutely loving it.

Some of her clients were so pleased with the class, they let Allison know they would be letting their friends and family know what a great class it is.

Allison went out of her way to let me know how pleased she is with the Daily Deal, and that she would be interested in doing another one in the future. On top of that, she had two walk-ins come in and pay for the Deal based on what they read about it on SDNN.

Allison is insisting we take a commission from these two of $30, because according to her, they would not have come in and joined had it not been for SDNN Daily Deal. This is a story of success that I know will be happening more often as our Daily Deals continue to grow!

~ Brandon, SDNN