DM Confidential Presents ‘The Dealies Awards’ Winners

Earlier this fall we announced The Dealies Awards, a program meant to recognize companies doing noteworthy things in the local-commerce industry.

After considering a number of submissions for awards in various categories, we’ve carefully selected six winners for the inaugural edition of The Dealies.The winners are listed below, along with which award they’ve won and a brief description.

Best Content: UrbanDaddy Perks
UrbanDaddy Perks is the e-commerce arm of UrbanDaddy Enterprises, a lifestyle media company. According to the company, UrbanDaddy Perks “brings a masculine, enticing and extremely luxury aesthetic to the digital sales space that reflects the quality and caliber of the products and experiences that our sales team has curated for our members.” Each offer includes a witty headline and copy produced by the company’s editorial team. The company points to the quality of its offerings its sales team curates as the foundation of its strong content written by its editorial “tastemakers.” The copy for each offer is professional yet fun, restrained yet inviting. It does a good job of making readers feel like they’re reading about something exclusive and, for lack of a better word, cool. “Our Perks copy team writes about our Perks with the knowledge of the insider set that’s on top of the latest restaurants, the must-have bespoke leather jackets and once-in-a-lifetime events,” the company says. UrbanDaddy members receive daily emails reminding them about the Perks available for purchase.

Best Deal Website: Steals.com
DM Confidential profiled Steals.com back in early October with a Q&A with its co-founders, Jana Francis and Rett Clevenger. “Steals.com is home to four niche daily-deal sites that spoon feed shoppers curated, brand-name products for women, babies and kids that are rarely discounted online,” Francis said. The company was started in April 2008 with the launch of BabySteals.com, after Francis couldn’t find a website that could guide her to and teach her about great name-brand products for her boys. As of October, Steals.com had more than 900 vendors and sold more than 4,500 “steals” with its four sites. Steals.com is worthy of this distinction for a number of reasons. For one, it clearly exhibits its understanding of its audience and succeeds at offering a network of targeted deal sites. It also highlights one brand at a time on each site, giving them center stage when they run a deal with Steals.com. It also means each brand gets to feature a number of photos of its products, not just one or two (the photos and videos on the site are produced in-house). The company also buys all inventory up front and handles all the shipping for orders. In short, Steals.com offers brands an opportunity to market their products without some of the headaches and limitations they might encounter on other sites. With its four niche sites, Steals.com also enables brands to target specific communities of consumers, which ensures that they’re marketing to the right set of shoppers. Each site hosts two offers each day, one at 9 a.m. MST and another at 9 p.m. MST.

Best Email Service Provider: Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an expansive multiplatform marketing company that focuses on what it calls “engagement marketing.” It offers a suite of tools for merchants looking to run deals, and one of those tools is its email marketing platform, which is currently used by more than 500,000 small businesses. Constant Contact says it addresses the problem of one-time deal hunters by helping small businesses bring in customers who will return and may become brand ambassadors by ensuring that current loyal customers know about the deals being run. “After the logistics of the deal are finalized by the business, they can provide a direct link in their next email newsletter, or choose from any of over 400 fully customizable templates to create a specific email blast promoting the deal,” according to the company. Constant Contact operates under a strict opt-in policy for subscribers, which means businesses are sending emails to customers who have already expressed their interest in or loyalty to the company