Have we hit rock bottom yet? - Daily Deal Websites

I'm asking the question to establish whether or not NZer's will require a Daily Deals Rehabilitation program developed for us to enter over the next twelve months if things continue on the same growth (or persistence) trajectory….of course!

Not only are they dominating our inboxes but the topic is being journo'ed up the Wazoo lately and the general consensus from the public is that you either love'm or hate'm and all that seems to divide these two choices, is time. If I'm to personally comment on the phenomenon, I'd suggest that Daily Deals serve a purpose but debatable areas of improvement, I've listed below -

• A lack of choice and segmentation – campaigners in this area are still generally following a load and blast mentality

• Potentially some of the offers are morally questionable – case in point Grab Ones special Vasectomy deal…really…and if it goes wrong???

• Copy and content of the campaign – check the credibility of what you are emailing and google terms of words if you are uncertain – case in point the very same aforementioned email referred to "Dingleberries" as a euphemism for Testicles when the actual meaning is unfortunately a "dag" (of the sheep variety but located on a human….nasty and hard for the minds-eye not to engage).

• List washing - deal deployers are automatically removing customers or email recipients who have not purchased within their defined timeframes – this style of marketing offers the customer to look everyday and buy when relevant, preferencing relevant offers would be better than simply ejecting individuals from a list.

• Ruining global ability to deliver html emails to the inbox – subscribers are hitting the SPAM button vs the unsubscribe. Hotmail has identified this as a concern and implementing measures, but are today the only ones. ISP's are bulking and rate limiting emails from certain domains as a result.

• Lowering customer engagement - benchmarking statistics for marketers and being affected greatly making the channel appear as if it underperforms. We used to relish in the average open rate world of 30-35%…now we have to carry out a massive spiel on how 18-20% is the average but depending on the quality of the data and how qualified blah blah blah….

• The sheer volume of them – as published by loveonedaysales.co.nz there are 73 current offering various experiences from retail to travel etc, 18 on the horizon and 36 that have been abandoned. The best thing about this site is that they do all of the research and you can fine-tune your picks based upon their recommendations rather than signing up to the lot. The downside is that their researched kinda sucked.

• Shane Bradley – he slags off all of his competitors which is generally just uncool, it used to be 1-Day now GroupOn are copping his wrath, ironic when he ripped off the concept from them.

My predictions – Shane B will lose his knee caps after slagging off a Daily Deal Site owned by the Mafia, Grab One will develop a bad case of dingleberries and Napalm will be the only solution and Kiwi's will get back to their old buying behavior of walking into shops and buying 10kg bags of Chinese chupachups.

~Amanda