UPICKEM Promotion Center | Share. Brainstorm. Profit.

Street Fight Magazine highlights deals program

SourceMedia, a partnership between KCRG-TV9 & The Gazette, in Cedar Rapids continues to be a deals powerhouse. Chris Edwards, VP of sales, puts an emphasis on deals by incentivizing their sales reps to bring in high-quality deals.

An in-depth look at SourceMedia’s deals program’s evolution was recently published in Street Fight Magazine.

A prime example of their high-quality, revenue-generating deals is the recent Gary’s Foods grocery deal. They were able to secure this deal by offering an email opt-in to the merchant, who wanted a way to build up his own email newsletter list. With an 80 percent opt-in rate for Gary’s Foods email list, this deal was a win for the smaller town grocery store and gave them a way to retarget deal buyers with future promotions and offers, not to mention a huge success for the deals program.

Watch a video below of Chris discussing the Gary’s Foods deal.

Hear Best Practices on Promoting Deals on Social Media from The Washington Post

Promoting your deals on social media is hard work, but when used correctly, you can create an engaging atmosphere to share deals and converse with your potential buyers.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, are perfect for creating awareness around your deals program. Utilize your current following and keep them in the know with local deals you are running. Actively updating social media is just another touch point with your customers, which will build your program’s brand and help gain brand loyalty with customers.

Join us for a webinar “Facebook & Deals: How to Drive Engagement” as we hear from Molly Urciolo, Marketing Mananger from The Washington Post on Thursday, May 17 at 1 p.m. ET. Molly will share her insights and best practices from marketing The Capitol Deal on driving engagement around your deals program with social media.

Reader’s Choice Awards Deals Store brings in 23% more revenue than previous month

Background:
The Record-Journal is a 20K daily circulation paper in Meriden, Connecticut. They are a 5th generation family-owned paper and we recently recognized Liz White, their Associate Publisher, in our Affiliate of the Month feature.

Challenge:
The Record- Journal’s Deal of the Day program has been consistently bringing in revenue, but the team was looking for a way to amplify their deals program and re-engage their audience.

Solution:
After seeing the success other programs have been driving with seasonal stores, the team decided to run a Reader’s Choice Awards Deal of the Day Store. They approached businesses that had received an award in their annual Reader’s Choice Awards and negotiated to find a deal well-suited to their program.

Results:
The Reader’s Choice Awards Deal of the Day Store ran from March 5th through March 10th of 2012. They had a total of 18 deals from various advertisers, including a mexican restaurant, ice cream shop, japanese restaurant, florist and consignment shop.

Running this special deals store for one week generated an impressive $18,229 in gross revenue – 23 percent more than the month of February’s revenue.

Why this worked?
- Because their readers had chosen these merchants for the Reader’s Choice awards, the deals were guaranteed to be appealing.
- Multi-platform promotion: ran mobile, Facebook, print and online ads.
- Deals stores give you a new reason to promote and communicate with your users.
- A Reader’s Choice-themed store is flexible and can be run any time of the year.

Omaha World-Herald‘s VP of Digital Shares Selling Tips for Deals Success

Recently, we hosted a webinar with Omaha World-Herald’s VP of Digital, Jeff Shabram, called “The Art of Selling Deals: Strategies for Securing the Best Deals.” A big thank you to Jeff for joining us – the presentation was very informative and we hope it helps you with your deals strategy. The Omaha World-Herald‘s phenomenally successful deals program drives tremendous revenue, generates great success for advertisers, and results in a large number of new, long-term advertising relationships for the paper. Jeff shared a number of different insights into Omaha World-Herald‘s formula for success.

Below, you’ll find the top takeaways from the presentation. Leave us a comment if you have any questions.

1. Keep deals top of mind. Your deals program cannot be anyone’s side project. You must have a dedicated team to maintain a steady flow of high quality deals. If your organization doesn’t have the size or scale to have a dedicated deals staff, making deals a part of your sales team’s digital revenue goals will help make deals a greater priority. It also takes commitment on the part of your leadership to maintain that priority. The more focus you bring to your program, the more revenue you will generate.

2. Target the right advertisers. To find successful deals, you’ll need to target prime advertisers. Use successful past deals from your program, browse your competitor’s sites, use YELP! and other review sites, approach active advertisers, and use the winners from your Reader’s Choice or Best Of polls. Remember, the deals and merchants you run are a reflection of your business, so choose wisely.

3. Understand deal appeal. Create a definitive deal approval criteria, share it with your team and stick to it. Creating a checklist of the criteria can help organize your team and ensure consistency throughout your organization. Knowing what is desired and expected of deals for your program will help filter out the low performing and ineffective deal types. Another tactic is creating a deals committee that meets regularly to discuss and review deals. This can also help bring focus and consistency to your program.

4.Leverage your top assets. Local media has clear and distinct advantages over national and pure-play deals sites. As a local media company, your promotional power and high-quality audience are the keys to your success. You reach a more desirable demographic, one with higher income levels and families, than national sites do. Plus, your audience is more likely to become repeat customers. Local media are highly effective, promotional powerhouses. You’ve been doing it for years. Put that power behind deals and see your revenue grow!

5. Build long-term advertiser relationships. As media companies, you offer a breadth of products that go well beyond the deal. Deals are a great inroad to getting new advertisers to work with your company and don’t have to be a one-time sell. Lock-in top advertisers for deals throughout the year and incentivize them do so. You can also use the Advertising Conversion Model to get them into other areas of your business. Using deals to create buzz and generate revenue, you can then convert their deal proceeds into advertising credits for future branding and promotional advertising – something all businesses need.

You can view the recording and slide deck from the presentation below.

How are you capitalizing on this popular holiday?

With more than 85.4 million moms in the United States, Mother’s Day is undoubtedly a popular holiday. According to this article in Radio Advertising Bureau, spending around this holiday is expected to reach $18.6 billion. Yes, billion.

How is your media company getting your fair share of these dollars?

Consider running a “Mother’s Day Photo Contest” for your audience and target advertisers that are trying to reach the same audience. Think salons and spas, upscale boutiques, jewelry stores and restaurants.

You could also run a seasonal store that is entirely devoted to Mother’s Day. Target the same advertisers previously mentioned and negotiate a deal that runs for the first few weeks of May.

Another option would be to run a Mother’s Day-themed contest and deals store simultaneously.

Read the full story in Radio Advertising Bureau.

10 Characteristics of Top Selling Deals

Finding quality deals for your subscribers is one of the five fundamentals of deals success. With so many merchants out there, how do you know what your audience will find worthy of purchasing? To answer that question, we analyzed our hundreds of deals partners’ data and uncovered a list of common traits among stellar deals.

1. Audience Appeal. Knowing the demographic makeup of your audience will help you better understand what their interests are. Location data will also guide you to the areas of your market where your audience is most concentrated. From there, you can find businesses in those areas – a convenient location is a key selling point for any deal buyer!

2. Deal Uniqueness. By striving for one-of-a-kind offerings, your customers know they can only get that deal by purchasing it from your program. Be sure to do a little research before running a deal to ensure it isn’t a standard offer available anytime.

3. Brand Recognition. Your customers want to recognize the merchant before they purchase a deal. Pick well-known merchants in your market who are trusted and ready to produce a great deal, no matter if they are local or a national chain. Use review sites – including your own media’s reviews and Reader’s Choice Polls – to identify the most popular businesses in your market.

4. Deal Price. The key is to be sure you’re basing the deal price on the average spend per customer at that business. To ensure the best return on investment for the business, price the deal just below the average. That way, consumers are more likely to spend above and beyond the amount of the voucher – netting even more revenue in the pocket of the business owner.

5. Valuable Discount. Offer a deal your audience can’t refuse. Customers want the deal to be worth the time it took to purchase it. Consider the market value of the deal and try to have the merchant offer at least 50 percent off. It’s important to know what the market value is for your deal, especially for popular merchants that run with other deals programs in your market. Keep an eye on the competition and be sure you’re pricing your deals competitively.

6. Deal Restrictions. Remember that too many restrictions will decrease the desirability of your deal. Negotiate with the merchant and try to create as few restrictions as possible. If the merchant is adamant about having restrictions on the amount of deals they will sell, suggest running them as a Side Deal or save it for an upcoming Deal Store. You want to balance the needs of the merchant with your own revenue goals.

7. Bonus Offers. Everyone loves to get more bang for their buck, so suggest to the merchant they offer a bonus deal. For example, if your merchant is a golf course the deal is for half-off a round. The bonus deal could be the buyer taking their voucher into the pro shop and receiving 25 percent off.

8. Expiration Date. Buyers consider expiration dates before buying a deal. Work with the merchant to agree upon a reasonable expiration date. Keep in mind that the “promotional value” of a voucher can expire during the pre-determined time, but the amount paid by the consumer is valid much longer. This varies by state, so be sure to review gift card laws in your state.

9. Deal Category. Target broad deal categories that will appeal to your general audience. Buyers look for deals from restaurants, health and beauty, activities, travel- drivable distances, and retail. Deals are often used to try out new businesses or try something new, so make sure you have a healthy dose of fun and entertaining deals to keep your audience engaged and excited to buy.

10. Seasonality. Buyers want to purchase deals for what is happening now. Target seasonal merchants and create seasonal stores to attract buyers to the deals. For example, in June and July you can run a summer store and include deals for an ice cream parlor, outdoor activities and for merchants who sell summer apparel.