One critical component to the success of a deal or coupon website is the size and responsiveness of their audience. For the most part, deal sites use daily emails to get in touch with their audience and let them know about their offerings. Companies also use social media outlets like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn to keep their folks up to date on new deals.
Two questions every deal site owner should be asking themselves daily are “What can I do to make my audience more responsive?” and “what can I do to grow my subscriber base?” Folks get tired of receiving too many daily deal emails and getting unsubscribes on every email you send is pretty much inevitable.
A 100 Million person user base is more trouble than it’s worth if the subscribers are not responsive. One easy way to improve the response rate and get your current audience engaged is to provide world class support. Putting the extra effort into supporting your current customer base will help ensure those customers keep coming back. Your subscribers should know that they can get in touch with you and will deal with a real human being who is there to help them.
Another solid way to improve the response rate from your existing audience is to offer relevant, recommended, and smart deals.
Take your subscribers clickthrough and purchase history into account. If someone on your list only opens and clicks through on travel deals, work on delivering more relevant travel deals to that subscriber. If someone buys a flight to Paris, the next deal they should be offered should be a rental car service, a boat ride, hotel accommodations, Louvre tickets, etc. Each deal that is purchased can be followed up with a related service that makes sense for that customer to buy.
Amazon is absolutely brilliant with their recommended offers. Every time I log into to Amazon, they show me products that I actually want. Take a lesson from Amazon in this aspect because they are leading the pack in this manner.
Improving response rate from your subscribers all starts with email deliverability and your relationship with the ISP’s. Work closely with your email delivery company and do everything in your power to ensure your emails are actually being delivered and not getting caught up in spam filters.
Response rates are one side of the spectrum. The other component to always take into account is to focus on replacing your unsubscribes with new prospects. In my opinion, the easiest way to dramatically grow your user base is to hold contests. Folks absolutely love winning, and if you can offer a prize that your target market really desires, you can potentially have a contest that goes viral and enables you to increase your user base by leaps and bounds.
There are many ways to grow a list of fans, but from all of my testing and research – the most effective route is by simply holding contests.
Marc D. Horne
Originally posted on Daily Deal Media
