Posted in Deal Current, Marketing, tagged Artistic Hub, contest software, design contest software, photo contest platform, photo contest software, self-setup contest on August 4, 2011 | 3 Comments »
We are excited to announce the launch of the long awaited self-setup version of Artistic Hub’s Contest Software. Artistic Hub is the official contest engine of the Deal Current Network. Our past and current clients which include the Oakland Raiders, Warner Bros Records, Active.com, and Wiley publishing have enjoyed Artistic Hub as a premium product but we are now excited to open this to the world.
Check out www.artistichub.com to launch your first contest.
Posted in Deal Current, tagged buywithme, Deal Current, group buying sites, groupon, Living Social on August 1, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Daily deal sites were once thought to be another fad to hit the internet. Some still feel that way about trendy sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, and BuyWithMe. One thing that cannot be ignored however is the fact that digital media is changing the way consumers shop online. It’s easier to get a great deal or discount now than it ever has been. Personally, I’m a huge fan of the social group buying concepts. I’ve seen it work for businesses trying to increase awareness for their restaurant and I’ve seen friends flock to a great 60% deal for something fun they’ve never done before. What has been interesting is seeing how the daily deal market has exploded over the past 6-8 months.
The market has been truly flooded with daily deal sites in every niche and market across the country. If your city doesn’t have a daily deal site, you soon will. Many of these sites started with the hopes and dreams of being as large as Groupon someday. What they’re soon finding out though is that it’s not like the ‘Field of Dreams’ in the daily deal group buying world. If you build it, they will not always come. Fly by the night companies trying to create their own brand and identity as a hyper-local daily deal provider are soon realizing that it’s difficult creating a cult-like following from scratch.
The operational costs to run a daily deal site are minimal but there does come a time where these new daily deal sites are realizing that it’s much more difficult than it looks, and a once unattractive acquisition offering now becomes their main option for survival or exit strategy. Recently there has been significant acquisition activity in the daily deal space. The common trend you will see in these acquisitions are, in most part, is a strategic play for market share by the purchase of group buying email lists and existing consumer data.
Sugar Inc – Acquires FreshGuide
This acquisition makes sense because Sugar Inc. is a lifestyle, entertainment, fashion and shopping network for trendsetting women and FreshGuide.com is an online women-focused city guide that provides access to exclusive daily offers. Their challenge will be with the local penetration it plans to get. I assume their website traffic is significant, but I’d be interested to find out exactly where the majority of those viewers reside. I’d estimate that it would be in a trendy city like New York or Los Angeles. I doubt they’ll have success in local areas in middle America. National brands adopting a hyper-local approach will learn just how hard it truly is to complete.
Tippr’s acquisition of FanForce is somewhat different than Sugar/FreshGuide in the sense that Tippr is positioning themselves as not only a daily deal site for consumers, but also a platform for companies to host and run their own daily deals. One would think that powering your own daily deal sites and offering the ability for others to build their own platforms would cannibalize the market. Strategically they probably won’t have dueling daily deals in one market, but you never know.
Tippr also recently bought ChiTown Deals:
Tippr also purchased Chicago based ChiTown Deals. This purchase was listed as an undisclosed amount, but my prediction is that it was relatively low considering the limited reach ChiTown Deals has. They were averaging only 20-30 sales per day (if that), so they couldn’t possibly have that many email addresses. A local start-up like that in Chicago is challenging in itself, mainly because that’s where Groupon started. What should be interesting is what happens to their sales after the acquisition of Tippr. Will the sales increase? Will the deals get better? Only time will tell.
CitySteal now a part of DealOn
A smaller acquisition was announced several months ago, that being DealOn’s purchase of St. Louis’s CitySteal group buying site. They were again relatively smaller in size only averaging about 50-60 sales per day. Now they’re branding and technology is powered by DealOn. In the article above it also mentions that as part of its strategy, DealOn will continue to acquire daily deal sites.
In the foreign market, acquisitions seem to be heating up as well.
Sources estimate that a capital investment of $3.5 million was also a part of this deal. One thing is for sure and that’s once a group buying site is solidified and consistently pumping out sales – their evaluation is significant.
Posted in Deal Current, Marketing, Uncategorized, tagged Business Insider, Daily Deal Software, Deal Current, Groupon's Biggest Threat, Jim Moran, Media Daily Deal Programs, SDNN Daily Deals, Yipit on May 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
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:
The article covers some great points, but here is the most important part in my opinion for our clients and other media publishers.
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.
Posted in Deal Current, Marketing, Uncategorized, tagged Daily Deal Software, Deal Current, Deal Current in the press, Kiplinger Mag on May 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
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, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, tagged daily deal platforms, daily deal programs, Daily Deal Software, Daily Deal Solution, Deal Current, Dealcurrent.com, group buying software, how to compete with groupon, how to start a daily deal site, turn-key daily deal software on May 13, 2010 | 51 Comments »
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.
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, Marketing on April 24, 2010 | 3 Comments »
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
Jimmy Hendricks
kevinbeatty
patrickdillon