DailyDeals.com Focuses on E-Retail Offers

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DailyDeals.com, which officially launches on Wednesday, may simultaneously have the most practical and unoriginal brand name among the countless daily deals players. But its focus on Internet retailers - rather than bricks-and-mortar shops - distinguishes its business model from Groupon, LivingSocial, Google Offers, etc.

Zazzle.com, Novica.com, and eForCity.com will be the first e-commerce companies featured by DailyDeals.com, with discounts ranging from 40 percent to 60 percent. The deals can be received via email for consumers who have already signed up, while DailyDeals.com will push the offers via its Facebook and Twitter pages. With the holidays upcoming, the deals can also be purchased as gifts.

E-retail daily deals marketers like the three mentioned above have at least one advantage over an offline brand in that they can capture email addresses much more easily. E-commerce-based voucher redeemers have to type in an email address to complete that purchase. Therefore, new email opt-ins attained via DailyDeals.com or other platforms can be re-approached by the brand with other emailed offers, effectively eliminating the "one-purchase-and-gone" scenario that scares some daily deals marketers. Also, future email offers can be targeted by the purchase data attached to the captured addresses.

Bricks-and-mortar stores, on the other hand, have to verbally request an email address from customers who are redeeming the deal vouchers. Then, the addresses have to be accurately inputted into a database.

Though marketplace frontrunners Groupon and LivingSocial have run national e-commerce offers, their day-to-day operations have ultimately relied on a staple of local merchant deals. Vertive, publisher of DailyDeals.com, hopes to carve out an e-commerce niche against the likes of the industry leaders. 

The general handiness of redeeming vouchers online appears to be a key element that Vertive is banking on. Steve Schaffer, CEO of the Austin, TX-based company, quipped in a prepared statement, "Let's face it, there are only so many personal grooming services a person can use in a month."

Meanwhile, a Vertive spokesperson told ClickZ News that the firm purchased the DailyDeals.com URL in May 2009. "We've been holding it since then, while assessing the marketplace and building a quality web site," the rep said. "We've been in [soft launch] since summer. And if you Google 'daily deals,' you'll see that we are already showing up No. 1 for organic search."