The British Invasion of Daily Deals Has Begun

Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Michael Essany.

According to the findings of an insightful new study out of the United Kingdom, daily deals are not only a growing global phenomenon, they are particularly popular across the pond.

The latest data from British daily deal aggregator Buyometric indicates that approximately seven million people in the UK already subscribe to daily deal websites. And this segment of the British population is expected to dramatically expand before the end of 2012.

A Dynamic Daily Deal Environment

With economic headwinds still on the horizon in Europe, British households will be inclined to conservatively manage budgets at least in the near term. As a result, impulse purchasing will slow as savvy, calculated shopping becomes the British norm – especially in the realm of retail.

But even if the overall number of UK subscribers to daily deal sites does not grow, Buyometric still expects to see sector growth of at least 20-30 percent.

“Many consumers have been ‘sitting on the sidelines’ without having as yet made a purchase,” the firm’s report says. “Our research also identified that whilst only 69 percent of subscribers to daily deal websites had already bought a deal, 96 percent said they planned to make a purchase in the next 12 months.”

The British Are Coming

As it turns out, the speed with which the British are racing toward daily deals directly correlates to the simultaneous growth of ecommerce across the European continent.

Logan Tod & Co., a leading European online performance optimization and analytics consultancy, predicts ecommerce growth to fall somewhere between 18% and 22% during Christmas 2012, which would far exceed the rate of growth observed in 2011.

In fact, 26% of online shoppers in the U.K. indicate that they plan to spend even more online in December 2012. This represents the highest measurement of intent to shop online since the annual Logan Tod & Co. online shopping survey was launched in 2006.

“It is going to be another challenging year keeping up with the ever changing multi-channel consumer,” says Logan Tod & Co.’s chief executive Matthew Tod, “but retailers should continue to invest in this area as consumers are still saying they intend to spend significantly more online in 2012.”

A Bubble in Great Britain?

“There has been much talk of a bubble in the daily deals sector, with email fatigue being cited as a possible trigger, “reports Buyometric founder Paul Fisher. “It’s clear that daily deal providers need to make some changes in the way they reach out to their customers. While we don’t see any major fallout on the horizon, there will be many changes in the daily deals sector over the coming 12 months.”

In reality, it appears that the only significant threat posed to the emergent daily deals popularity is consumer fatigue born of too many offers with very little individual user relevance.

52 percent of all subscribers to online discount deal providers say they receive five or more “deals” via email on a day to day basis. Half of these email recipients say the high volume of messages is overwhelming and off-putting. But perhaps most detrimental to marketers and ecommerce companies is the daunting fact that 67 percent of those flooded with daily deals admit to not reading all of the offers.

Only 1 in 10 survey respondents (those who receive five or more offers a day) admit that the emails they received are“very targeted.”

 Sources: Buyometric, Logan Tod & Co.