#LivingSocial Launches New Merchant Tools

LivingSocial announced on Tuesday that it is rolling out new tools for merchants, a larger deals inventory, extended-length deals and new coupons.

A spokesperson for the company tells WebProNews that LivingSocial is “moving towards being more of a marketing partner for merchants and an online marketplace destination for consumers.”

“The new enhancements were developed after listening to feedback from merchants and customers and trialing the solutions with merchants over the past few months,” they said.

Through the LivingSocial Merchant Center, merchants can respond immediately to feedback from customers after they redeem a deal, and will have access to enhanced deal metrics including deal exposure and user engagement, purchaser highlights and payments information. Merchants will also have access to a tool letting them monitor social media campaigns and two new promotional product options – Amplifier and Stampede – which the company says “are outside the traditional deal structure.”

With Amplifier ads, the merchant’s promotions receive “premium distribution” on LivingSocial’s channels. The company says this results in “vastly increased exposure and incremental purchases.” With Stampede, brands promote offers that customers can claim with no upfront payment required. They can claim an offer, and get email confirmation with a redemption voucher, then can pay later when they redeem the voucher.

“In the past three months we have quadrupled the number of LivingSocial deals available,” said CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy. “We have moved from simply being a daily deal company to a real marketing partner for merchants by adding effective and custom solutions to improve their bottom line. Simultaneously, we are giving consumers broader inventory and more ways to get great products, experiences, events and escapes.”


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Daily Deal Site Alternatives for Your Business

By Ekaterina Walter at Mashable: 
Daily deal sites have become incredibly popular, at least with consumers. But many businesses are pulling back from Groupon, LivingSocial, and other similar companies.

That’s because, as early as 2010, researcher Utpal Dholakia found that about a third of Groupon promotions lost money for the companies that participated. There have also been numerous cases where a daily deal has actually driven a company out of business. Rachel Brown, a bakery owner, lost an entire year’s profit as a result of a Groupon that sold too well. For a business, losing money on any marketing campaign is rough. The whole point of such campaigns, after all, is to lure more paying customers.

It’s not impossible to improve the chances of success for a daily deal, but for business owners who don’t have the resources to sit and tweak a daily deal campaign, there are better options available.

Focus on Loyalty

One of the biggest concerns with daily deals is that many buyers watch carefully for good deals, but have little interest in paying full price for a service or a product. These buyers don’t come back after they score that one great deal. But loyal customers are the most valuable for most businesses.

Depending on your demographics, check-in programs can prove to be more effective at creating a customer base that keeps coming back. While Foursquare is one of the better known options, there are several different check-in tools that will let you reward frequent visitors, as well as draw in new customers who are more likely to return. For example, Angelo and Maxie’s Steakhouse saw an ROI of approximately $18,000. Industry and demographics both matter in how effective this sort of campaign can be, but there are a variety of ways to create loyalty programs that appeal to different audiences. There have been a number of studies into how to create the most effective loyalty program, given different factors.

Offer Targeted Deals

One of the biggest factors that can drag down the success of a daily deal is that many of the purchasers will be deal hunters who scour the web looking for coupons and other opportunities. This is not really the ideal demographic for your business. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use a similar structure to reach out to the buyers who really are the best fit.

If you’re offering targeted deals on your own or through a more specialized company, you’ll have more control over the terms. An example is AppSumo, which deals primarily in software and informational products. Many of AppSumo’s partners actually create small products (like e-books or videos) specifically for AppSumo in order to introduce buyers to their more expensive product lines. That’s not always an option, of course. A clothing line doesn’t have the same sales options as an e-book seller.

But there’s also the option of creating your own deal, such as offering a special gift certificate for purchase through a local organization. An accountant could offer initial consultations through the local chamber of commerce or a clothing retailer could sell discounted gift cards through a local social organization.

There are plenty of opportunities out there to offer deals that don’t rely on using daily deal sites that may not be able to offer you an equitable deal themselves.

 

VIDEO: Top 5 Television Ads for Social Media Sites

By Devon Glenn at Social Times:   
On Sunday, Twitter aired its first-ever television commercial during the 2012 Pocono 400 NASCAR race. It was a first for Twitter, but not a first for social media. Other sites, including Groupon, LivingSocial, and Google+ have also put their money on big-ticket ads during major television events.


5. Twitter’s commercial features professional racer Brad Keselowski, who first went viral on the micro-blogging site after tweeting a picture of a fiery car crash at the Daytona 500 in February. The ad shows Twitter’s power as both a news source and as a second screen for behind-the-scenes extras.




4. The daily deals sites were among the first to test the waters with television’s biggest commercial event of the year: the Superbowl. Groupon’s 2011 Superbowl ad juxtaposed social causes with social savings in a manner that rubbed many viewers the wrong way.




3. Groupon competitor LivingSocial also aired a Superbowl ad that sparked controversy. This commercial features a cross-dressing discount shopper who says daily deals changed his life, as well as his footwear.




2. The company’s next ad was much friendlier, not to mention gorgeous.




1. In December 2011, Google+ released a trio of television commercials featuring their new video chat tool, Hangouts. The company managed to pack in a lot of celebrities while assuring the rest of us that we can enjoy the tool, too. This one shows the Muppets rocking out to Queen and David Bowie:

PayPal to Challenge Groupon in Daily Deals

By Todd Wasserman at Mashable:
EBay’s PayPal unit plans to take on Groupon in early 2012 with a new service that will offer coupons based on users’ buying habits and mobile phone locations.
PayPal has partnered with 200 U.S. merchants for the offering, says Anuj Nayar, a PayPal rep. The service first reported in Bloomberg, will launch in the first quarter of next year. Nayar declined to say who the merchants are.
Though others, such as Facebook and Yelp, have attempted and failed to compete in the daily deals segment, Nayar says PayPal will use the knowledge of its 103 million customers’ preferences and mobile technology from the recently acquired Where to make the offers more relevant than what Groupon, LivingSocial and Amazon (which is also a LivingSocial investor), currently offer.
“As a 40 year-old male, I don’t think I’ll ever use a coupon for 50% off bikini wax,” Nayar says, referring to irrelevant deals from competitors. Nayar says the goal is to use laser beam-like targeting to make sure the offers are germane.
PayPal’s entry could shake up the daily deals category, which is estimated to more than double to $4.17 billion in 2015, according to researcher BIA/Kelsey.
The report comes after other recent attempts to grow PayPal’s estimated $4.7 billion total payment volume, including a Facebook app designed to send money to friends unveiled in November and a mobile payment system that made its debut that month.
Meanwhile, PayPal’s parent company, eBay, has been offering online daily deals for years, Nayar says.

LivingSocial Raises $176 Million in $400 Million Private Offering

By by Lauren Indvik at Mashable
Daily deals startup LivingSocial has raised $176 million in a private offering.
The funds were raised from a mix of new and existing investors, including Amazon (which invested $175 million in the company in late 2010), U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Capital Group and AOL founder Steve Case’s venture fund, according to a SEC filing.
The Washington, D.C.-based startup is trying to raise $400 million in total. A source says the company expects to close additional rounds of funding in the coming weeks and months, which will be used to finance operations for continued expansion. None of the funds will be used to pay out current investors.
Last month, rumors began circulating that the daily deals startup was raising $200 million in a deal that would value the company somewhere between $5 billion and $6 billion.
JP Morgan Asset Management’s new Digital Growth Fund, as well as existing investors Amazon and T. Rowe Price, were among those rumored to be contributing to the round. LivingSocial was also allegedly discussing a $100 million revolving credit facility with JP Morgan that would allow the company to draw funds without signing a loan for each withdrawal in the future. As far as we know, those discussions might still be on the table.
The funding does make one thing clear: LivingSocial isn’t likely to IPO any time this year. LivingSocial’s main competitor, Groupon, went public in early November, and it’s been a tumultuous ride ever since, to say the least. Shares were trading at around $21 per share in after-hours trading Wednesday, up about $1 from the initial offering price.
The additional capital should give LivingSocial an opportunity to catch up — and continue differentiating itself — from its rival. Both companies have launched new offerings recently. Earlier this week, LivingSocial unveiled a restaurant delivery service in the Washington, D.C. region. And Groupon announced an appointment-booking tool that lets customers independently book appointments with small businesses online, regardless of whether those appointments are associated with a Groupon deal.
The company raised $400 million in its last fundraising round in April.
The news was first reported by Bloomberg TV’s Emily Chang on Twitter.

Facebook Deals Being Shut Down, 4 Months After Launch

Facebook has announced it is shutting down Facebook Deals, 4 months after launching the feature in select U.S. cities. The announcement comes just 3 days after we reported that Facebook Places, which was closely linked to Deals, is being shut down.
“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” a company spokesperson told Reuters. “We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.”

DealBurner Notifies You Of Groupon, LivingSocial, Scoutmob Daily Deal Info When You Check-in With Foursquare

With a vast number of daily deals companies vying for your attention, it is often easy to miss out on deals that you are interested in for places that you visit regularly. To try and solve that problem, a service called DealBurner has been launched that lets you know if there are any daily deals at a venue you have checked-in to using Foursquare or Facebook Places.
DealBurner is a relatively straightforward service that sends you a text message when you check-in at a location that is currently offering a daily deal.