Do You Know What Daily Deals Site Is

The social couponing or daily deal sites work by emailing discounts every single day to their subscribers and taking a cut of the resulting income. The technology behind them is far from cutting edge: Anyone with an email program may start a business. The key to their success is the sales people that can influence local businesses to offer a one-time deal to a huge number of consumers via the web. The top three sites are Groupon, LivingSocial and KGB Deals.

For now, the daily deal sites are thriving. Consumer research firm eMarketer explained such progress is one factor fueling development in e-commerce revenue, which is certainly anticipated to attain $188 billion in the US this year. Forrester analyst said online retail sales would certainly reach $278.9 billion by 2015, contributed to by new company models that include flash sale and daily deal sites.

Smaller sites are differentiating themselves by giving niche deals for specific market just to compete with Groupon & Living Social. For example, Gilt Groupe, which began as a luxury apparel discount site, last year set up Gilt City with 22 salespeople in six cities to offer discounts on higher end luxury goods and services. PlumDistrict is another daily deal sites with a niche: selling deals aimed at mothers. The general manager of LivingSocial said, the industry is far from saturated because there are so many more innovations to bring into the market. There is room in the market for competitors. But for us, there is only one large competitor, Groupon and a number of smaller ones.” Such sites ultimately may find themselves outdone by technology. In March, Microsoft’s Bing platform launched a “deals” service that, instead of giving a unique discounts, aggregates daily deals all over the Web.

At LivingSocial’s San Francisco office, the manager oversees a team of 16 salespeople. A typical day includes a morning meeting, where best sales techniques and practices are highlighted, followed up by a review of deals that closed in the last few days. “They will touch base with the merchants, ask how the deal went, answer questions, figure out next steps as customers begin to redeem the deals,” said the manager, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School and worked as a consultant at McKinsey before starting at LivingSocial 10 months ago. For the rest of the day, the sales force follows up on promising merchants suggested by LivingSocial staffers who work from the company’s Washington, DC, headquarters.

A scheduling team of the company decides when the deal should come out. The salesperson will keep in touch with the vendor throughout the process to keep tabs on the number of items sold and find out if the merchant is overwhelmed and at the same time do follow-ups & back-end work. One salesperson at the Atlanta location of KGB Deals who works from home, said she joined the company because she kept hearing about how hot the social coupon business was. Aside from the base salary and a commission on every deal she sells she also gets full benefits. Fees like her iPad for presentations plus a car allowance are covered by the company. Basic salaries at Groupon and LivingSocial range from the mid-thirties to mid-forties range, according to Glassdoor. The companies refused to state just how much a representative make, although both said it’s a mix of commission and base.

Tired of all the email messages flooding your inbox from the Daily Group Deal Sites with mediocre offers? Fret no more. There are now service providers that scan every daily deal site and only feature the best daily deals site, just for you. Happy shopping!

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