Total CX

Whither (or Wither) Daily Deals

Only a few years into its existence, the entire online coupon business is struggling. Over 800 daily deal companies closed their doors in the last two years. I turned my focus this week to coming up with strategies and enhancements to daily deal sites, and offers that might renew the excitement consumers felt when these deals first started showing up. Some of the main ideas include:

• More personalization of offers

• Wish list fulfillment

• More information on merchants

• Flexibility of offer details

• Longer window before offers expire

• Allow merchants to “own” the relationship with the customers

Facebook Enters the Crowded Daily Deal Market…but It Could Be a Winner!

As I confessed in my article, “Confessions of a Groupon Addict,” I am addicted to Groupon deals…and Social Living, Tippr, Level-up, Daily Deal, etc. deals. Oh, I no longer buy every tempting deal that comes along. I’ve learned my lesson early on that prepaying for meals and events you might not use for a year can wreak havoc on your bank account. But I faithfully read every offer sent my way, and I pick and choose the ones that really appeal to me and that I’m sure I will use.

Now Facebook has entered the fray! Lucky for me, Boston (my base of deal operation) isn’t one of the supported cities in this new launch. Facebook Social Deals, which was initially launched in Europe three months ago, became available on Tuesday, April 26 in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco. The company hasn’t committed to expanding its deals markets until it sees how it goes in these venues.

It’s too early to make any definitive statements about Facebook’s likely success in this market—after all, this is not the first time a social network has taken a stab at the daily deals market: Twitter launched its own Earlybird Offers program last year, but the program was canceled just two months later. According to ReadWriteWeb,

“Why Didn't Early Bird Work Out for Twitter? Maybe the deals simply weren't targeted well enough and not interesting to Twitter's users. Or maybe those who followed the account didn't like the constant repetition and retweeting of the same deal. With just about 225,000 followers, Early Bird was definitely not a huge success for Twitter and probably didn't bring in enough revenue to continue the program.”

This isn’t even the first time that Facebook has made a foray into the market. On November 2, 2010, Facebook Deals (now part of Facebook Check In—which is, itself, part of Facebook Places), became available. In this program, local businesses offer deals when you check in to their place on Facebook. But this program was small potatoes compared to Social Deals (now, aka Deals). Facebook is making a much grander entry into the daily deals market now.