Anyone that’s followed this blog over the past few years know that I am dubious when it comes to the business models of Groupon and Living Social.   Since Andrew Mason Groupon’s now ex-CEO has been forced out, it appears both Groupon board members and investors feel similarly.    Despite the questionable business model, the daily deal business remains a good value for the customer.  

I will guess that like me, many people have used one of the daily deal coupons to visit an establishment that they’ve been to before.   I still don’t understand how at a substantial discount, bringing me back to a place to which I might go anyway is good business.   Rarely do I begin to frequent a place based on having used a daily deal coupon.   I simply purchase what I want for less money.   For other reasons I cannot understand, the frequency of daily deal offers in my email inbox has jumped in the past few months.   Have you noticed this too?

There used to be emails in the morning from the various platforms.   Now I seemingly receive multiple versions from all of them constantly throughout the day and night.    The content is often simply repositioned so as to lead with different offers at different day parts.   That’s no surprise and well within best marketing practices.    However in the process since I receive emails from all three platforms and am registered in different locations for offers, I might receive as many as 12 communications in a day!    I realize that I can control the frequency (if I had the time and desire to go into my account and change my settings – which I don’t and bet I am not alone here) or simply ignore and delete them.    

That’s what’s happening to me as I have become desensitized and am now deleting many of the daily deal emails without even reading them.  I suppose the platforms expect that a certain amount of people will jump off the boat and unsubscribe or, like me, quit looking at them.   It must be good business for them to deluge the rest of the subscribers at an increasingly alarming rate, or so one would deduce from the evidence.     

Another issue is that I see the offers on both my phone and in my email so sometimes if I neglect to immediately delete the offer on my phone I see it again when I view my emails on another device.    I do have a viable and customer-friendly solution to the problem.   Each of the daily deal sites sends me an email asking me to update my preferences.   Would I like just one email a day?  Two?  More?   One a week?  One a month?   

Giving me the choice as to how I’d like to design the flow in one SIMPLE email would keep me on the line and I have shown that if the offer is right I engage,  sometimes even with brands I’ve never had interaction with prior – which is the whole point.    How likely do you think that is to happen?   

Do you have any tips?   I’d love to hear how you are handling the daily deal deluge.