Daily Deals are Kind Of a Big Deal
I’m sure Jay Weintraub didn’t envision such a turnout when he came up with the idea to host the first-ever tradeshow for flash sale sellers and technology platforms. Heck, he planned for 300 attendees to be at the Daily Deal Summit in New York. Weintraub instead yesterday had a party of about 500.
Daily Deals are kind of a big deal. Social sellers, coupon code aggregaters, deal-providers and local couponers all had a story to tell. To sum everything up, they educated each other on the benefits of new technologies that allow merchants to offer up the most relevant deals at the right time, in the right place and to the right customers.
It’s too bad traditional merchants weren’t there to listen. My ears perked up when I heard someone in the audience start a question to a panelist with, “I’m a merchant,” and figured I had one to talk to. But he continued with, “I am the World’s largest provider of New York City pub crawls…”
Merchant, yes. Merchant who sells an item, puts it in a box and ships it, no. But he did share some of the same problems as traditional sell-and-ship merchants who are in the online space: coupon codes may not work, or they aren’t being tracked properly when redeemed in a store.
Something of note to those who may have declared email marketing to be dead: Just about every panelist who spoke yesterday talked about how email is still their most powerful customer communication tool. You’d have thought with all the techies in the room that SMS would rule, but they said they could send more relevant offers via triggered emails.
Mobile does have its place, but SMS seems to be too intrusive, and most haven’t figured out how to deliver text offers at the exact time a customer would want it. Making emails readable in a mobile environment is big though, based on the must-have-it-now approach to these flash sales.
What benefit does a merchant have by selling through Daily Deal sites? It’s a good way to prospect.
These sites are not doing the fulfillment for you, they are just collecting the customer data and keeping their commission. So even if you’re Merchant X and you decide to sell 500 Widgets at 20% off retail price and you’re giving the Daily Deal site a 50% commission, you’re gaining up to 500 new names to market to.
All in all, it’s something merchants need to consider to grow their businesses.
