Daily-Deal Study: Good for Customers, Bad for Businesses

By Carol Tice edited by Dan Bova Oct 08, 2010

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Groupon started this trend snapped up by Amazon.com daily-deal offers were unprofitable wouldn’t do a daily deal again
  • Design your deal so that it will appeal to new customers and not cannibalize sales to existing customers.
  • Know whether your business type is well-suited to benefit from a daily deal — the study found restaurants and education companies fared the worst, while salons and spas were the most successful.
  • Offer the deal on merchandise you’re looking to unload or underutilized services you want to grow
  • Design your deal to build a customer relationship. Make it good for $20 off on each of your next three visits instead of $60 off the customer can spend all at once.
  • Avoid offering a discount off the total bill — you may end up giving away too much margin, as you aren’t in control of the size of your discount.
Groupon started this trend snapped up by Amazon.com daily-deal offers were unprofitable wouldn’t do a daily deal again
  • Design your deal so that it will appeal to new customers and not cannibalize sales to existing customers.
  • Know whether your business type is well-suited to benefit from a daily deal — the study found restaurants and education companies fared the worst, while salons and spas were the most successful.
  • Offer the deal on merchandise you’re looking to unload or underutilized services you want to grow
  • Design your deal to build a customer relationship. Make it good for $20 off on each of your next three visits instead of $60 off the customer can spend all at once.
  • Avoid offering a discount off the total bill — you may end up giving away too much margin, as you aren’t in control of the size of your discount.

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Carol Tice

Owner of Make a Living Writing
Longtime Seattle business writer Carol Tice has written for Entrepreneur, Forbes, Delta Sky and many more. She writes the award-winning Make a Living Writing blog. Her new ebook for Oberlo is Crowdfunding for Entrepreneurs.

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