Internet

Daily Deal News

I came across some interesting updates regarding the daily deal industry. Not exactly all intertwined, but at least all to do with the growth in the daily deal arena. Firstly it’s now estimated that there are 482 of these sites in North America  alone and they have just been joined but a heavyweight in the form of Amazon. They recently launched AmazonLocal in response to the growth of Daily Deals. Amazon are no strangers to the market as they already have an investment in Living Social. Where they might have an automatic advantage is that Amazon has 144 million active customers who can be notified of any deals at a moment’s notice. They recently drew on their own resources with a $10 Amazon voucher for $5 and managed to sell over a quarter of a million of them (I’m unsure as to the email target bases on that deal – if it were all its active users it would be pretty poor redemption!) . That’s expensive customer acquisition at $5 a go, but the depth of that pockets there is not an issue. Definitely one to watch. Continuing on that vain, a bit of potential enlightening data flashed onto the screen of late - the number of Daily Deal sites that are available in each European country. Now it has to be said that these numbers are not exact and should only be seen as indicative of the actual numbers. Nobody yet, to my knowledge, has anything that can be classed a concrete for each county. According to the data we lie #9 in Europe with 34 sites offering...

Multi-Channel Marketing

A bit of research fell into the email inbox this morning that’s worth airing. On the back of an earlier article about trying to maximise the impressions of a print ad it was interesting that this research looked at the channels used in the marketing mix and how those channels are tracked.  The research was conducted by SkyIQ , part of BSB Sky. Of the 12 channels used, the most predominantly used channel was online being employed by 76% of the marketers surveyed. In my own opinion that figure struck me as being on the low side. Given that the survey had canvassed One hundred senior marketing professionals working within large organisations in the UK  I thought that online/digital would have been used by the majority, if not certainly the vast majority of all the companies.   Some of the ‘traditional’ media were next in line with print being used by 71% of respondents, email by 66% and, greeted with a broad smile from An Post, direct mail came in at a healthy 61% usage. TV was last only employed as a marketing channel by 36% of the respondents along with mobile also on 36%.     You could get the impression that some channels were not employed for the sake of a “safer option”. Given that we have a 117% penetration of mobile phones in the Republic the figure of 36% usage in the marketing mix strikes me as particula...

Daily Deals and Coupons, some interesting research

There have been some very interesting studies conducted recently into the world of the ‘Daily Deal’ and coupon redemption. Perhaps one of the more interesting of these was conducted by Rice University in September of last year and again in June of this year. But.... if you've been tempted, have a look at something we cooked up, a daily deal calcutator  Their research findings are a fantastic guide to any business tempted by the lure of a daily deal. Whilst many of the business running these deals are very satisfied with the outcome, many are not. There are some parts of this fairly intricate equation that businesses can influence and some are completely out of their control. There are so many elements involved in these Daily Deal promotions that it’s really very difficult to isolate and pinpoint one or two key factors. In their September research, Rice University maintained that the two key drivers to success or failure of a Daily Deal were Employee Satisfaction and the coupons effectiveness in attracting new customers. Employee Satisfaction is a massively important element. These promotions will (should) increase the workload of your staff or they may face extra hours. If there little in the way of recompense for the extra work, then it’s going to be an uphill struggle to succeed. Another element that makes these promotions work is the number of new customers that return to an establishment and spend at full rates and your staff have a vital role in...

Daily Deal and Coupon Calculator

In an effort to try and bring some reality as opposed to hype Daily Deals, we've put together an interactive spreadsheet sheet to try and help you get to the bottom of the numbers. There are so many variables it can really be a bit of a nightmare. But hopefully below will at least give you an indication of how a potential promotion might do. There are a few items that you can fill in with certain levels of confidence and others that are very much picked out of the ether. One those, it’s best to try and err on the side of caution. Face value is as it says; the normal price of the goods or services you are going to offer. Voucher value is the promotional price. Discount is worked out automatically. What percent will be new customers What would, on average, be the spend of a regular customer What are the costs of the goods sold (specifically the voucher good) Number of vouchers sold and the percent redeemed Number redeemed – we’ll default that at 15% not redeemed “Sales above voucher” is trying to estimate the number of people that will buy more that simply what’s on offer. Change the % there The percent of new customers that will come back again The Daily Deal site cut The cost proportion of the deal. From the face value, what’s the cost portion as a percent Fill in these and see what you get at first pass. Then you can move some of the subjective elements...

News 2.0?

I stumbled across broadsheet.ie earlier this morning as I was looking at what has been called, in particular grandiose terms it should be said, News 2.0. The term gives the impression that News has moved on, we have reached a new Golden Era. The News is Dead, Long Live the News (2.0) Perhaps a more apt term would be Parasitic 2.0. If copying and pasting stories you find in your selection of bookmarks passes for News 2.0, then we’re all in serious trouble. Wikileaks becomes Wik-CtrlC-CtrlV. Back to the story of broadsheet.ie: This morning in a fairly puerile attempt at what they obviously think passes as humour, they added their own ‘sub heads’ to story regarding the questioning of Louis Walsh about an alleged assault in a nightclub. All very, very childish. Long live News 1.0

Taco Bell Facebook coupons

Taco Bell, the Mexican/American fast food chain, recently got itself into a spot of PR bother. A customer took offence to the amount of beef contained in her beloved Taco and so offended was she that she took a class action suit against Taco Bell - as you do. The law hired firm came out blazing and claimed that the mixture was only a paltry 35% beef, the rest was "other ingredients". The people at Taco Bell (I’m at pains not to use the initials of “TB” as I think they have suffered enough in the publicity department) were not impressed and responded that it was in fact 85% beef. Jumping to the end of that particular story, the Law Firm are cowering under a bed somewhere as they as much admitted the 85% was incorrect and they got it wrong. Taco is considering counter suing. Taco defended their patch rigorously and took out full page ads asking (aka veiled threats) the law firm to publicly apologise. But during the height of “beefgate” they decided to turn to social media and, more specifically, their loyal Facebook customers. They assumed ‘Loyal’ because 5.5m of these would be worriers had ‘liked’ Taco Bell on their individual pages. It was only natural to assume that these people would now lay down their lives and come to their aid in Taco's hour of distress. In order to curry favour with these folk, Taco offered them coupons for a free ‘Crunchy Taco’. As the retail price of each offer was $0.99 there was some $6m potential downside for Taco, if it all went to plan. Amazingly, only 3% of the 5.5m fans liked the company (or offer)...

Ireland Facebook Statistics

Some very interesting Facebook statistics are available at Social Bakers. So we put a few of these together here, just to give you an idea of what’s happening on Facebook as we write. Firstly we will look at Facebook penetration worldwide. There’s really two ways to look at this; absolute numbers or penetration as a % of the population. In numbers, the United States is, naturally, way ahead of the rest of the field with over 150 million Facebook users or the equivalent to half of its population. Ireland’s figure is always going to be low in comparison and we have 1.9m Facebook users, or just shy of half the population. When looking at the numbers, it’s worth remembering that Facebook was originally only in the English language. It wasn’t until early 2008 that it began to translate in to French, Spanish and German. So some countries may only be beginning to adopt the Facebook format as it becomes localised in their language.

independent.ie internet figures

Nice to see some updates on the electronic side of some of the media with Independent Digital giving stats for their properties for March 2009. In the chart the blue line is independent.ie and the red are, collectively, the other sites. The average for the month was 113,256 the newspaper site and 26,800 for the others combined. I would point out that the figure for March 7th look a little spurious, but it's the one published in the report. The spike on March 23rd can be put down to primarily to a sporting weekend of the Grand Slam and the boxing, but there also could be a secondary factor in the passing of Jade Goody over that weekend which was a much searched news story that day. It's broken down into two distinct areas- independent.ie and their other properties : www.loadzajobs.ie, www.herald.ie,...