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This month, we are thrilled to honor Liz White from the Record-Journal Publishing Company for her success with her deals program.

Who: Liz White
Title: Associate Publisher for New Media and Vice President
Media Company: Record-Journal Publishing Company

Job Description: I oversee new media strategy for our three companies, which includes two daily newspapers. I am the fifth generation of our family business and I feel lucky to have a career I love and have the opportunity to help shape the direction of the company for the future as I work daily with my dad, our president and publisher. In addition to Deal of the Day, my new media role also includes digital initiatives such as R-J All Access, which we launched in January and is our new all-inclusive digital subscription offering access to our content through our website, iPad app, e-edition, archives, mobile site and email news alerts. Our companies are fortunate to have many dedicated, hard-working people and I am excited to work with all of them to continuously change and grow our company as the industry evolves.

Keys to Deals Success:
As Second Street advocates, two of the main keys to success with deals are high quality deals and a large email audience, so our sales reps, managers and new media team put a lot of thought and effort into those two aspects. To support the deal program efforts further, we have a Deal Team that meets regularly to review deals and plan initiatives for our program. The members of that team include our publisher, advertising director, digital sales director and myself.

Three recent projects that the team planned were a Cyber Monday deal store, a Readers’ Choice deal store and a Little Caesars free pizza giveaway and contest. We feel that putting a lot of effort into creating excitement around our deal site through these types of projects contributes to the growth of our Deal of the Day brand and in turn helps attract quality deals from advertisers and helps grow our email audience. For these projects, in addition to getting many high quality deals, a key factor in the success has been using every single promotional tool we have to get the word out everywhere and create a buzz, so we promote them in our daily newspaper (including a very prominent spadea on page one), TMC products, weekly newspapers, websites, mobile sites, Facebook pages and emails. The results have been exciting. For the Readers’ Choice deal store specifically, we knew we were approaching businesses that were voted as the favorites in our community, so by definition we were getting high quality deals and businesses to participate as requested by our readers.

What impact has Deals had on your overall digital revenue? How have you made it a priority within your organization?
Deals are a growing component and we expect them to be about 10 percent of digital revenue this year. We’ve made deals a priority through the deal team that I mentioned and by training our sales reps and targeting businesses that are a good fit for deals. Our salespeople are glad to now have another tool to help local businesses through deals, which are especially attractive for businesses who don’t want to pay money upfront for marketing, but who would still like to draw new customers and benefit from free print and online promotion that accompany our deals. We have also asked many people throughout the company to participate in the growth of our deal program by constantly talking to people about the benefits of signing up for deals so we can grow our email audience, whether they’re talking to customers on the phone or in person or at events where we’re promoting our company.

Let’s Get Personal:
I live in Meriden, CT with my husband Mike. We’ve been married for a year and half and have been together more than 14 years since high school. I love spending time with my husband, friends and family, including three nieces and a nephew. I am on the executive board of our Meriden YMCA and I am a member of a local chapter of BNI (Business Network International). I have a passion for traveling, aerobics, soccer and food. And I’m a die-hard fan of the New York Yankees.

Target Merchants that Resonate with your Audience

A key factor to your deals success is the appeal of the merchant offering the deal. Buyers want to feel as though they are being treated with a deal from a trustworthy merchant. We’ve seen media companies secure revenue-generating deals from a wide variety of merchants. Below you can find three key characteristics a merchant should possess to be considered for your deals program.

• -Brand Recognition: Any well-respected business is a strong candidate for running a deal. Think about merchants who have a strong local presence, both offline and online, because any business you promote is also a reflection of your company’s brand and image; be sure to choose wisely. Successful deals don’t just have to be the big regional or national brands to make an impact. In fact, the more locally-focused your deals and merchants are, the better.

• -Location, Location, Location: There are two ways of looking at how location can impact merchant appeal: number of locations and geographic area. People will purchase deals based on how close a merchant is to where they work and play. Merchants with multiple locations are more appealing because their deals will appeal to a larger audience. A single-location merchant should be in an area of town that is located near large concentrations of people or in an area where people frequent for social gatherings.

• -Capacity: The ultimate goal is to find a merchant who has the bandwidth and resources to handle a high-volume of deal purchasers. It is essential to identify early on in your discussions what volume level each merchant can reasonably manage. Holding an honest, straightforward discussion with your merchant will show that you have their best interest in mind, plus this will help you filter out deals that won’t meet your revenue goals. If you encounter a high-quality merchant that insists on an inventory cap, suggest that they would be a good candidate for a Seasonal or Category Deals Store.

As your sales team is hitting the streets securing deals, keep in mind that you only want to work with the best of the best. Be sure that everyone understands what characteristics a merchant needs to qualify for your deals program. Know that you might have to negotiate for a while to secure those high-quality merchants, but when deals are successful and you have strengthened the relationship with your merchant – whether an old or new relationship – you’ll know your time was well spent.

Spring Deals Store Ideas

Today, March 20th is the first day of spring. To kick off the warm weather seasons, consider running spring and summer-themed stores to maximize deal sales in the coming months. As you begin building out your store, make sure to read Ten Tips for an Outstanding Deals Store.

Here’s a few store and deal category ideas to get you started.

Home and Lawn: “Spring Cleaning”
Store Timing: mid-March through end of May (depending on local weather)

Deal Categories:
• House Cleaning Services & Products
• Landscaping Services & Products
• AC Maintenance
• Retail: Home Decorations
• Retail: Nursery
• Painting Services
• Closet Redesign

Deal Categories:
• Rounds of Golf
• Private Club Memberships
• Retail: Golf Supplies
• Driving Ranges
• Golf Instructions
• Swing Analysis
• Regional Travel with Golf Package
• Restaurants Near or at Course

Deal Categories:
• Flowers
• Restaurants
• Retail: Gifts
• Massage
• Spa Treatment
• Regional Travel with Spa Package
• Photos on Canvas or Online Photo Services
• Gift Baskets
• Retail: Beauty Supplies
• Cooking Classes

Are you running a spring or summer themed deal store this year? Share your ideas with us, we’d love to hear them.

Make your Seasonal Deals Store a Successful Experience

Running a seasonal deals store is a great opportunity to provide shoppers with a variety of relevant deals. Seasonal stores (think Valentine’s Day, Golf Specials, Mother’s Day Stores) get buyers excited to purchase deals for the upcoming holiday or season you are promoting. Optimize the potential of the seasonal store by keeping with the theme from the deal, to the design and even with your potential advertisers. Let’s look at 10 ways you can strengthen your seasonal deals store.

• 1. Make sure the deal categories align with the store theme. Go the extra step by running a contest with a similar theme to create awareness and drive additional sign-ups. A potential grand prize for the contest winner? Present them each deal in the store!
  2. Plan your stores at least 90 days ahead of time and have at least 12 deals lined up for your store to ensure variety.
  3. Strive for deal diversity, including: deal price, location and category within the store grouping.
  4. Add “flair” to your site to give it the seasonal look and feel you wanted. Theme your promotions using the same design elements from your seasonal deals store site.
  5. Seven to 10 days is the ideal time frame for your deals store to run. Try to schedule your store to maximize weekdays and minimize weekends, as more deals are purchased during the weekdays.
  6. Give merchants flexibility to have capped inventory to give you a chance to get more deals but remain vigilant about deal quality.
  7. Promote, promote, promote! Advertise your seasonal store in the appropriate section of your medium. For example – advertise your golf store within the sports section of your publication or during the on-air sports coverage.
  8. Have your sales team submit target merchant lists ahead of time and get approval for those prospects. Also, create special bonuses for your representatives tied to deal stores sales. Bonuses for reps who bring in the most deals from the target list, new advertisers or who lands the biggest revenue deal have been the most effective.
  9. Review upcoming core media promotions and create stores that tie-in with offline promotions or special sections and ad groupings.
  10. Leverage your Featured Deal email and include a promotion for the top deals of your store.

Beth Wiggins and Joelene Sherman from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Today’s Deal program joined me to share their experiences driving revenue with seasonal stores. Watch the webinar below.

KCRG-TV9 and The Gazette run a Model Retail Deal

Background:
For more than a year now, KCGR-TV9 and The Gazette have been teaming up to provide local deals to the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area.

Challenge:
The Cedar Rapids/ Iowa City area is a market that is flooded with deals programs like Groupon and LivingSocial. KCRG-TV9 and The Gazette needed to find a way to break through the clutter and make their deals stand out. Gary’s Foods also was looking for a way to build up their own email database in order to start emailing them regular in-store offers each week.

Solution:
KCRG-TV9 and The Gazette worked with a local grocery store in Mount Vernon, Gary’s Foods, and crafted a deal with two valuable price points giving users a choice for what met their needs. They decided upon a $25 for $50 deal and a $48 for $100 deal, making the higher priced deal even more attractive. During the check-out process, they added an email opt-in for Gary’s Food to help with their database. In addition, *here’s the deal offered to manage the follow-up email campaign to those who purchased the deal and opted-in for future emails from Gary’s Food.

Results:
When the deal was first went live, there wasn’t a limit on the number of deals that could sell. Due to the popularity of the deal, they worked with Gary’s Foods throughout the day and decided to put a limit on the deal and have it run for only one day, rather than the initially agreed upon three days. The $25 deal was capped at 1,000 selling out by 8:30 p.m. and the $48 deal hit its limit at 1,500 sold out by 4:30 p.m.

Because of the appeal of a grocery deal, this deal was promoted by their subscribers, with a 25 percent referral rate. A survey conducted by *here’s the deal showed that 60 percent of deal buyers spent more than the certificate was worth when redeeming a deal.

Why this worked:
From Gary’s Foods perspective, they hoped the deals would attract attention from shoppers in the larger metro areas of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City who would not typically travel to a smaller-town grocery store.

Gary’s Foods not only gained these customers for the one time sale, but had a 80 percent opt-in rate to receive future deals from the store and make deal buyers return shoppers. In the first of a series of follow-up emails (after customers redeemed their deal), 500 customers received an email with coupons/promotions at Gary’s for the upcoming week. The open rate was for this first email was 22 percent.

Their promotional campaign includes a premium position in The Gazette, five 10-second commercials on KCRG-TV9, banner ads on all of their websites, social media mentions and eblasts. The sales reps that sold this deal did additional promotion to get the word out about this deal; they also printed flyers to distribute around the town, including a college campus.

Below we shared the top 10 individual deals and the top 10 deal sites on our platform from February 2012.

Some of our top deals this month included higher priced items. Buyers, especially for the Schuckers Oyster bar & Grill deal, didn’t mind paying the higher price because the deal aligned well with the average ticket at the restaurant. Be sure to offer a multiple price points to help give buyers more choices.

And, don’t forget that golf season is just getting into the swing of things. Be sure to include the ever-popular golf deals in your mix!

Top 10 Deals by Total Revenue
1. The Sacramento Bee’s Winchester Country Club Golf Deal
2. News and Observer’s Shuckers Oyster Bar & Grill
3. The Washington Post’s The Greenbrier’s Two Night Package
4. Lincoln Journal Star’s Patty’s Pub Voucher
5. KY3-TV’s B & B Theaters
6. New York Daily News’ Diamond Vision
7. WCHL-AM’s The Meat House
8. The Sacramento Bee’s Timber Creek Golf Course
9. The Washington’s Post’s TheCityTour
10. KCOY-TV’s Pajaro Valley Golf Club

Top 10 Deals Sites by Total Revenue
1. The Washington Post
2. The Sacramento Bee
3. HalfPriceCincy
4. KY3-TV
5. Omaha World-Herald
6. News & Observer
7. Lincoln Star Journal
8. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
9. New York Daily News
10. Quad-City Times