The Anatomy of Running a Great Daily Deal Promotion

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Marc Horne.  Marc is a co-founder of DailyDealBuilder.com, provider of daily deal software, solutions, and training.

From an outside point of view looking into the daily deal industry, it seems that the equation to run a successful daily deal promotion is simple; however, many times someone loses out in the equation.  Running a highly successful daily deal promotion is not a simple cut and dry equation.

Often times, the merchant miscalculates numbers, sets a price too low, or fails to set a maximum number of vouchers.

Or the customer has an awful experience and ends up writing terrible Yelp reviews.

Other times, the employees are left working their tails off to simply benefit the employer.

And of course, we’ve seen many other times where the daily deal website puts itself in a situation where they can’t cover expenses and run business efficiently and ends up shutting down.

In order to find out the anatomy, or ideal equation of a great deal promotion, we need to imagine a picture perfect world – and what a picture perfect daily deal promotion actually looks like…

Restaurant XYZ decides to offer a coupon for dinner on a daily deal website in order to fill more seats in their restaurant.  They either get in touch with a site, or are directly marketed to by a deal website and decide to give it a try.  The restaurant works closely with the deal website in coming up with a great promotion (that won’t put them in the red and bankrupt). 

At this point, the daily deal site proceeds to write incredibly compelling copy to lure prospects, members, and visitors into purchasing the promotion through the use of humor and comedy, reaching out to the adventurous side, or the savvy side – - and the customer just can’t resist the urge to order the discount. 

Immediately after ordering the coupon, the new customer is invited to share the deal with their friends and they know that their good friends Sally and Bobby would love to join in on the dinner deal so they give them a call and have them order 2 vouchers also.  The deal site also enticed, incentivized & compelled the new customer to share the deal with their entire network of friends on Facebook – so of course they pressed the button and shared the great deal.

The whole group visits the restaurant and is overwhelmed not only by the fantastic food, but just as importantly – by the superb service.  They end up spending and drinking much more than their coupon allowed, thus further adding to the restaurant’s bottom line, and they also tipped and rewarded the server very well because of such a job well done. 

It doesn’t stop here…

The restaurant knows the importance of proper follow up and the power of getting contact information from the new happy clients by having the server ask them if they want to be put on their mailing list to get 20% off the next time they dine there as well other great promotions and discounts.

The follow up entices the group back to the restaurant, they fall in love with it, and post about what a great time they had on Facebook, and end up becoming regulars at restaurant XYZ.

The end.

Now in the real world, daily deal promotions typically do not go that smoothly and often times one party involved does in fact lose out.  In order to construct a great daily deal promotion (whether you are on the deal site end or the merchant end), we need to carefully consider the groups that are involved.  From our above contrived example, we easily see 4 distinct groups that play a vital role in providing the great deal promotion.

• Merchants
• Customers
• Employees
• Daily deal sites

To construct a home run daily deal promotion you need to take all 4 groups mentioned above and have a plan of action for the purchaser of the voucher to become a new raving fan.  If, say, the server in our above situation did a poor job, the customer would not tip well, would definitely not recommend them (but would be more likely to post negative reviews), and, of course, they would not be visiting the restaurant again.

Deal providers or websites and merchants must work closely together to come up with a great promotion (that won’t put them in the red), as well as a great game plan to ensure the customer has a fantastic experience. 

Whatever side of the fence you are on be sure to carefully ensure that the employees of the merchant are also well aware of the promotion and importance of making an impact and providing a great experience to the customer.  Strategic relationships are everything in this industry, and in order to have a great daily deal promotion, it’s very important to keep partnerships and relationships growing and on the up and up.