The #1 Key To A Successful Daily Deal Is Treating Your Merchants Right

With over 300 daily deal programs throughout the US alone, competition is heating up in major markets.  How are you going to differentiate yourself from other daily deal programs in your market. Here’s a few quick tips on ways you can do just that.

It’s commonly said that daily deals provide a win/win/win partnership between customers, merchants, and the daily deal company.  What’s not commonly said is how important small and medium business owners actually are in this equation.  As a daily deal company you should constantly be looking at ways that you can provide more value back to your merchants.   Just like any business you should be aware of what your customers think of your brand and product.  As a daily deal provider, your customers are truly the merchants.

Share the Wealth: As a white label provider of daily deal programs, we’re constantly looking at ways we can improve our technology to help better support our partners and merchants.  After extensive research in the market we identified that the traditional 50/50 pricing model does not work in all instances.  At Deal Current we created the industry’s only tiered revenue structure which benefits the merchants.  The more sales that occur on any given day the more revenue that is distributed back to the merchants.  We encourage daily deal companies to be more flexible on the % commission back to merchants.  Try to develop a commission structure in which the higher percentage a merchant offers up, the higher commission rate you’ll give them.  Mashable recently posted an article that discusses how as Groupon grows, they’re leaving small businesses left behind to fend for themselves – check it out here.  The Mashable article is a great lesson that each daily deal program should take note from.  Groupon reportedly sent a contract to a local business owner who agreed to the terms and sent back the contract.  Shortly before the date of the promotion Groupon reached out to the business owner with disturbing news that they weren’t going to run the deal because it didn’t make sense for them financially.  Try to avoid this situation at all cost because it’ll give you a bad rap.

Preparing Merchants: Preparing businesses for what to expect out of the daily deal promotion will ensure a pleasant experience. If they’re not satisfied with how the deal copy presents their business, then re-write it until they are satisfied.  Does the business know how they should prepare their staff for this promotion?  Upon completion of the deal, ensure that they know how many vouchers were sold and what they can expect over the next few months.  This educational lesson will go a long way in terms of satisfying your merchants.

Converting Customers:  Turning merchants into repeat customers should also be a goal of your program.  Merchants should make several efforts to convert a daily deal customer into a long-term customer.  Employees should ask for the daily deal customers’ email address for future promotions.  Users of daily deal programs are typically very social in nature, so collecting email addresses gives additional ways to generate multiple sales.  Suggest to merchants to also setup a follow-up deal for those specific customers that come into their business.  This gives the customers incentive to come back.

Again, with as many competitors in the marketplace today – it’s crucial that your daily deal program finds ways to treat merchants right.  Share your knowledge with merchants you work with so they can maximize the effectiveness of the daily deal promotion.  And remember, at the end of the day – keeping the merchants happy and excited to work with you again should be a core focus of your program.

Best of luck.