Bronto Software Offers Online Marketing Best Practices For Daily Deal Services To Stand Out From Competitors In Hot Market

Best practices provide guidelines for improving deal targeting, deliverability and timing

Daily deals are one of the hottest trends in marketing recently, allowing businesses of all sizes to dramatically increase sales and acquire new customers. Consumers have a voracious appetite for deals as evidenced by a recent Rice University study. Nonetheless, daily deal providers are facing challenges in marketing and differentiating their services to merchants and subscribers as new competitors rapidly enter this incredibly hot market. Bronto Software, the leading cross-channel marketing platform for retailers and other commerce-focused companies, has developed online marketing best practices based on their experience as the message delivery platform for more than a dozen leading daily deal services, including WagJag, Living Deal, Urban Dealight, and crowdsavings.

Consumers are flooded with offers from multiple services, so how do you make your deals stand out from the crowd? This issue was one of the top concerns expressed by participants at the recent Daily Deal Media Conference in Chicago where Bronto Software participated as an exhibitor and sponsor. Bronto offers ongoing strategic counsel to help daily deal services continually improve campaign results, including the following tips:

• Segmentation is key - Sending out untargeted email blasts to deal subscribers is a big mistake when it comes to the daily deal industry. Receiving too many irrelevant offers is a chief complaint from many daily deal subscribers. Ask your subscribers key information beyond their location such as gender, age and interests through a manage preferences center. You can also gain information on their interests through click behavior, or you can conduct periodic surveys of your subscribers to gather more detailed profile information over time, continually improving your targeting by providing content tailored to their interests. Using these tactics you will be able build a profile for each subscriber so you can segment your lists and provide members with deals targeted to their specific interests. Remember, the quality of the list is as important as its size.
• Deliverability is crucial - Reaching the inbox is essential in the daily deal industry. Each undeliverable email and bounceback represents a lost sales opportunity. Ensure that your messages reach subscribers' inboxes by working with a seasoned email marketing provider that has established relationships with ISPs and has transparent polices for sharing deliverability rates so you can benchmark campaign performance. Your ESP should have established partnerships with email authentication and reputation management services. Excellent deliverability is also established when marketers first begin their relationship with subscribers. Make sure to ask for explicit opt-in permission from day one and set expectations of what you will send and the frequency of your messages. Watch as Bronto daily deal client, WagJag explains the value of deliverability on YouTube.
• Timing is everything - Email timing is also extremely important for daily deal companies. If people don't open emails on time, they miss out on expiring deals and the company and merchant both miss out on a sale. When is the best time to send an email? Answering that question can be a challenge since optimal send times are a moving target based on many variables. Test your email messages to see when your subscribers are opening them. Your email service provider should offer send-time optimization capabilities for automatically monitoring and sending messages at the time a subscriber is most likely to open it. Timing is everything, so test, analyze and optimize. Given the timing competition around daily deals sends, also work on targeting inactive or unengaged subscribers by automating "win-back" messages. Test this message at different times during the day, typically later in the day, to avoid competing against other daily deal messages.

"It's exciting to be working closely with some of the leading daily deal services in North America to ensure that highly relevant deals are delivered to the right subscribers at the right time," said Emily Keye, Bronto Marketing Strategist. "We're also thrilled to be on the front end of the market's evolution from email blasts based solely on geographic data to more sophisticated campaigns using segmentation, analytics and automation capabilities."

About Bronto Software
Bronto Software provides the leading marketing platform for retailers and other commerce-focused companies to drive revenue through email, mobile and social campaigns. Over 1000 organizations including Party City, Armani Exchange, Timex, Samsonite, and Trek Bikes rely on Bronto to increase revenue through interactive marketing. The company won the Stevie Award for Best Customer Service in 2009 and in 2010 and was named a CODiE Award Finalist for Best Marketing Solution in 2011. For more information, visit bronto.com.

SOURCE: Oracle + Bronto