By: Erika Stevens

At this point in time it is hard to imagine a world without daily deals. The darling of the daily deals arena Groupon has been around since 2008 when it launched in Chicago and is now competing against a number of other daily deals sites including Livingsocial (who just ran an incredibly successful deal with Whole Foods). The popularity of daily deals pushed other social sites including Facebook, Foursquare and Yelp to try and enter the daily deals market but at this time they have all abandoned their attempts. After the success of Groupon the market was saturated with startups that quickly realized there is a lot more to daily deals then just getting a few merchants to push one through your site.

In the ever-changing loyalty marketing industry these daily deals are just one of the new social marketing efforts that have been called the new trend in loyalty programs but in fact are most powerful when used along with a traditional loyalty program (I wrote about this with Foursquare as well). The first time I heard about Groupon was when I saw someone speak at the 2009 Loyalty Expo. This was back when you needed an invitation to join Groupon. Since then Groupon well publicized has had its highs and lows, but many businesses seem to have found their stride when it comes to running Groupon deals.

A couple of weeks ago Wall Street journal ran an article about Groupon and the unique ways businesses are using daily deals to retain customers which were as simple as promoting a loyalty program to Groupon customers or asking them to join your mailing list. Groupon (which literally means group couponing) was never promised to be a magic way to retain or reward loyal customers as much as a way to attract new customers to your business. Skeptics of the daily deals craze have pointed out that the type of people Groupon and other daily deals attract to a business are those who will go anywhere for a deal regardless of loyalty. Being a loyalty marketing professional I have always seen the value in Groupon as a way to introduce new customers to your loyalty program as well as any marketing promotion with targeted offers (as a consumer I have other thoughts on Groupon and other daily deals sites but I will save that for a future blog). Groupon gives you access to a whole new group of people who may or may not be existing customers. You can use this information to market and learn more about your existing and new customers, but the power is in the hands of a business to create a successful Groupon campaign.

Have you been using daily deals sites for your business? What returns have you seen?