Lately it seems healthcare is all over the news, from questions about whether the Supreme Court will make a ruling on the recent healthcare legislation to stories about how consumers use healthcare related daily deals to fill gaps in their own coverage.  As a deals provider we started thinking about the ethics of providing healthcare related deals.  Is it what is best for the consumer and for the deals provider?

We haven’t really decided yet but if you plan on sourcing health-related deals for your subscribers remember these three keys:

Reputation
Just like with any deal, picking a reputable merchant is key.  No one wants to go see a doctor/dentist/etc. with horrible bedside manner, poor reviews and a general bad reputation.  Pick someone who is respected and well reviewed on sites that review medical/dental professionals, it’s not just their reputation on the line here but yours too!

Location
As always, location is key.  Pick practices that either have multiple redemption locations or are geographically close to your subscriber base.

Price & Value
We all know healthcare is expensive but the whole point of these deals is to provide good quality of care and service at an affordable rate.  If you question whether the healthcare provider is inflating the value of the service, call around.  Find out what the generally accepted costs/value of similar services and treatments are.

At the end of the day sourcing quality deals is always important but even more so when it comes to how it can affect someone’s health.  Source good quality services and providers and your subscribers will be well served.

As we start to plan our travel we wanted to share a wrap of all the events we’re seeing for the shape up for the early part of 2012, are you going to be there?  Are we missing any?  Let us know!

ILM East/Interactive Local Media East: March 26-28, 2012 in Boston

Daily Deal Summit East: April 17-18, 2012 in NYC

Search Starts Here: April 21-24, 2012 in Boca Raton

On the heels of a holiday season with spending that was better than forecast we wanted to take a look at how those numbers impacted us.  As we found, it really was the season for daily deals! 

While we aren’t trying to toot our own horn what we saw was definitely mirrored by others.  E-commerce as a whole benefited from the increased consumer spending online (up to $32 billion this year according to Daily Deal Media), but as we saw so did group buying.

We all work to better ourselves with the New Year, whether those resolutions are for your physical or mental well being or just to get up earlier, we want to push you to think about how to be a better friend to your merchants in 2012.  We’ve all heard the negative press, stories about salon’s going under or bakery who couldn’t cut the cake after a daily deal, here’s your chance to be a good steward and ensure that your merchants are running deals that are good for them because in the end it’s good for you too!

Make the math work!  DealMix put together an excellent single-sheet graphic on how to structure a deal that makes financial sense for everybody.  Key elements from the DealMix graphic will be familiar since we preach very similar things:

1. Pick a day that works for your merchant.  Pick a day that is traditionally lower in traffic if you’re specifying a redemption day or give a wider window for redemption so the merchant isn’t crushed under the weight of the foot traffic your deal will generate.

2. Pick the right audience, going with the biggest group buying site might not attract the audience best suited to become return customers.  As we’ve seen, the niche deal sites provide the best audience and bring in customers who spend at a rate that makes the financials work, check out our Tomlinson’s case study for more details.

3. Understand a merchant’s margins, one of the key items in the DealMix graphic is a calculation using the cost of goods sold and average customer spend to determine how to price as well as what to sell.  Get specific if it makes the most sense, structure a deal for a specific line of goods if it is in everyone’s best interest but remember the more specific you get the narrower your audience gets.

Beyond the basic logistics of the deal be there for your merchants, answer questions, provide them best practice information and FAQs so that you set them up for success.  How will you structure better deals this year?

For the last month of so we’ve posted a lot about ways to leverage the holidays as a merchant, publisher or even just a marketer, not shockingly so has everyone else.  So as we near what is likely going to be a well deserved vacation for most we wanted to pull together a good round-up of the articles and posts we’ve found useful this holiday season.

First on our list, Hubspot’s 5 Examples of Awesome Holiday Marketing Campaigns this post is a great place to start for inspiration next year, it’s never too early to plan right?  From Small Business Saturday to the Red Starbucks cup there are always innovative campaigns to get your creative juices flowing.

Second, GetElastic provides 8 CopyWriting Tips for the Holidays, while some of these feel obvious (like offering gift certificates) it’s still important to remember things like testing your pages to make sure you are ready for the masses!

Third, we highly recommend the posts from Return Path’s 12 Days of Christmas Series, they cover everything from how to leverage your already good email reputation to mobile email and re-engaging your subscribers.

Finally, not to be outdone, we of course have authored a few posts on the holidays that can be found under our Holiday Season 2011 tag. While you’re probably on the verge of mistletoe-d out and riding the sugar cookie high we want you to remember it’s never to early to plan for next years programs!

With services like Presentify.me making voucher giving prettier than ever it seems we aren’t the only ones out there wondering whether consumers are more likely to gift daily deal vouchers.   According to a recent study of LivingSocial New Zealand users, consumers felt pretty good about gifting vouchers with 50.3% saying they would give them to a family member.    Does the same hold true in the US?  Definitely, according to Yipit there is an even greater acceptance of gifting deal certificates, with over 90% of consumers polled saying they are likely to buy a deal as a gift this year.

With Yipit projecting that consumers could spend anywhere from $80 to $100 million on daily deal gifts between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’re pretty excited and have seen some excellent holiday traffic.  Between the excellent value a daily deal provides and the crunch people feel at the holidays daily deals offer easy holiday gift options.  Recent research from PriceGrabber is showing that 27% of consumers will make a lot of their last minute purchases on daily deal sites. Make it easy for your audience this holiday season, as a publisher or deals provider:

1. Offer a gift guide!  We did it a bit tongue in cheek but you can use whatever style suits your market.
2. Create a holiday store ala Grouponicus.
3. Bundle deals to benefit your consumer. Maybe a pampering day is in order with spa, hair do and a wine and dine, or if adventures suit your audience more how about sky diving or exotic auto rentals?  Either way, give your consumer a package that suits their interests and their wallet (and makes a great gift)!

No, we usually don’t post deals on our blog, but we enjoy sharing the fun, kitschy stuff we do sometimes. So, without further ado, here is our gift guide for this year, enjoy!

‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the land,
Holiday gift-buying stress was getting out of hand.
So few ideas! So many presents to provide!
Take a deep breath and browse the Tippr Holiday Gift Guide.

Inspired Silver offers jewels from the heart,
and MacSlaps sells cool skins for phones, laptops and more while MG Direct is the top accessory for an iPhone 4.
Bottles of ONEHOPE Wine benefit a good cause,
and a Beer Connoisseur subscription is sure to draw applause.
Heads Up Puzzles crafts magnet puzzles from pics.
Enjoy these six options from Tippr’s bag of tricks.

Cross a few names off your list of gifts to buy.
(Vouchers are way cooler than a recycled fruitcake or tie and you can dress them up for free with Presentify.me!)

We hope your celebrations are merry and chipper,
Happy holidays to all from the crew here at Tippr!

From delayed IPOs, to buyouts, layoffs, and more, 2011 proved to be a volatile year for the daily deal industry. The business model for profitable group buying is still eluding many, and everyone in the industry is scrambling to figure out where to place their bets for growth and avoid being road kill. Publishers, merchants, marketers and business owners want to know what’s next in the social commerce space.

Last year Tippr founder and CEO Martin Tobias released a list of predictions that all proved true in 2011. Martin believes 2011 was just Phase One of group buying. Phase Two begins in 2012, and will be marked by a new paradigm ushering in programs that merge content with a seamless deal delivery experience.. Here’s a list of the daily deal guru’s 2012 predictions.

1. LivingSocial Will Be Purchased

The Amazon-funded daily deal site has patiently waited in the IPO shadow and has learned a lesson or two from its rival’s bumpy road to Wall Street. Tippr predicts that LivingSocial will not stay independent long, despite their IPO plans. Instead, the deal provider will jump to the head of the group buying pack by combining assets with a major e-commerce player. By merging with a company backed by both a large Rolodex and bank account, LivingSocial will be poised to successfully leapfrog Groupon and render it a mere also-ran in the daily deals landscape.

2. 200 “Groupon Clones” Will Bite The Dust As Consolidation Mode Takes Off

With more than 600 companies currently operating in the group buying space, industry consolidation is going to become a very real threat to many daily deal sites. According to Yipit.com, over 170 deal sites failed in 2011. Next year the trend will continue as large companies purchase smaller rivals and other generic deal brands go belly up. Tippr forecasts that over 200 of the ‘me-too’ deal sites will close their doors within the first six months of the New Year. Meanwhile, sites that have found a way to integrate daily deals into their existing content, rather than just photocopying Groupon’s model, will not only survive but thrive.

3. 2012 Is The Year of the White Label

White-label providers will reign supreme in 2012. According to Yipit research, this year white label exhibited a transaction volume of 5-10%, but next year Tippr expects it to double to as much as 20%. Need further proof? Just how the SaaS industry and companies like Salesforce and Concur cemented their position as market leaders by enabling other sites with powerful consumer-facing CRM and expense management applications, so will the winner in the deal commerce game be the player who perfects the infrastructure behind daily deals and makes it available to many. Media companies, niche bloggers, and digital content creators have credible brands, local sales forces, and engaged audiences–critical components that large horizontal sites spend hundreds of millions to grow. The only piece these companies are missing is the technology on which to build a deal site. In the year ahead, white label technologies will allow publishers to prevail after the Groupons of the world have exhausted their resources acquiring new customers and finding new merchants.

4. Big Branded Sites’ Futures Lies In Instant Contextualized Deals

Tippr believes 2012 will be the year big brand sites, which source hundreds of deals to large audiences with diverse interests, establish a profitable business model. But profits will only follow the ability to tailor content, matching the right customer with the right merchant. Simply put, the daily space will be dominated by the players who understand how to effectively merge content and commerce into a seamless experience, allowing consumers access to relevant deals anywhere and at any time. In 2012, Tippr predicts Groupon and LivingSocial will make massive investments in their mobile capabilities, while Google, Facebook and other major audience aggregators will extend their commitment to the integration of location, advertorial, mobile, and contextual commerce.

5. Lacking Loyalty, Groupon Goods Will Come To A Dreary Demise

From the operational challenges associated with maintaining a physical inventory to heavyweight competition from highly efficient retailers like Amazon, Gilt and eBay, Groupon Goods has faced an uphill battle from its very beginning. Tippr predicts that fatal flaw in Groupon’s product arm will be the lack of loyalty and repeat customer opportunity. In fact, recent Forrester research already suggests that 51% of customers who buy the heavily discounted goods said they would’ve purchased those goods or services at full price anyway–but took the discount instead because it was available. Merchants, lacking the customer acquisition required to justify the steep discounts, will opt out of the site’s partnerships.

Since the beginning of November we’ve been sharing great ways for merchants and publishers to use daily deals to amp up their holiday business and subscriber numbers, but what about consumers? Are consumers ready to use daily deals as everyday gifts?  Survey says….yes!  According to Business Week consumers will spend from $80 to $100 million on daily deal gifts between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  With that much money on the table for daily deals alone it’s no surprise that more than 90% of 10,000 recently polled by Yipit were likely to buy a daily deal as a gift this year.

What have we seen here at Tippr?   Well, we’ve noticed the same thing, that people aren’t holding back when it comes to buying.   What we categorize as ‘arts & entertainment’ was the top pick from Black Friday to Cyber Monday.  This category jumped 50% over its sales during the same time last year, we think people are looking for opportunities to get out and share experiences with friends and family this time of year.

Given how willing consumers seem to be to give daily deals as holiday gifts, it’s no wonder that services like Presentify.me are gaining ground.  Presentify.me is a neat little site that lets daily deal purchasers select a holiday themed look for their certificate.  It has an easy to use wizard interface that lets the user ‘gift wrap’ their voucher.   Best of all?  It integrates with your Tippr purchases!

Apparently even a tryptophan induced haze couldn’t stop Black Friday shoppers this year, Forbes is reporting  a record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites last Friday.  While we eagerly await the results of today’s Cyber Monday shopping we wanted to share a great post by Hubspot full of fun Black Friday infographics.

One of our favorites from the article is this history of Black Friday by todayifoundout.com

Happy Cyber Monday and enjoy some fun graphics!