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We spoke with Shannon Dunnigan, CEO of RadarFrog.com, on the ongoing launch of DailyDeals programs at GateHouse newspapers across the country.
| You started launching DailyDeals sites early this year. How many sites have gone live so far? |
We’ve launched14 sites representing 22 papers plus multiple titles in New England. On Monday, Norwich Bulletin will launch their daily deals program, and we’ll also launch DailyDeals NEPA, which covers four titles in Pennsylvania; Wayne Independent, Carbondale News, News Eagle and Moscow Villager. That will take us to 16 sites representing 27 papers and multiple titles in New England next week. |
| How many sites do you expect to be live by the end of the year? |
Ideally we'd like to have everyone launched by the end of the year, but there are a few things that have to happen first. We do training and support on the corporate end to get everyone set up and ready to go, but a lot is in the hands of each individual site. Keep in mind that there are two magic bullets each site must have in order to launch -- one is having a critical mass of emails in your database (at least 1,000 opt-in emails, sometimes more in a big market), and the second is that you must have a full calendar month of deals committed by merchants in your area. These are both critical numbers. You want to ensure that you have enough local merchants to present a deal every day, and enough interested parties to buy into those deals before you go live. |
| What is the launch process like? |
We have two stages of the process: launch and live. Newspapers in the launch stage go through a six-week training process where they are given all the tools, collateral, training and materials necessary to go live. We want to empower and encourage folks to promote their own sites, capture email addresses and build relationships with local businesses. A site is considered live when it has displayed its first deal. In order to go live, a site must reach the required number of email addresses and committed one month of local merchants. Going live is really dependent on local execution of these two things. We don’t want to move a site from launch to live until they are absolutely ready on both fronts. |
| Why is social media important for DailyDeals? |
During the launch stage, sites need to focus on not only gathering emails, but creating business opportunities as well. Social media can help a site on both fronts. One of the best examples we’ve seen on this is from Heartland DailyDeals Facebook page, which is run by folks from The Register-Mail, Journal Star, Times Record, Daily Ledger, The Geneseo Republic, Star Courier, McDonough County Voice, Daily Review Atlas, Pekin Daily Times, Daily Leader. They have a great combination of both running great promotions and building community on their page. They recently used the Facebook questionfeature to poll their users on where their favorite pizza places in town are. That’s a great thing to do for a few reasons. One, it lets you know what your buyers are looking for, what they’d like to see a daily deal for in the future. Two, it gives you ammunition to take to the local merchants that were favored and say, “Hey – we have all these people who love your pizza and are fans of DailyDeals. Why don’t you sign up for a DailyDeal with us?” Email is still the most effective purveyor of DailyDeals, but social media platforms can help to publicize deals, find new local email addresses and reach out to interested merchants. |
| Do you see any new trends for social media and social buying? |
After the sites are live, they still need to focus on building their email database, and one way to do that is through social media, which can help increase user engagement by building audience and page views. We are looking at ways to use Facebook contests and integration with our DailyDeals websites. One we’ve been looking at recently is called “like-gating.” "Like-gating" is something you’ve probably seen before on Facebook. It’s a page that pops up asking you to “like” the fan page before you are allowed to see the content. It’s a way we can potentially build email addresses, increase engagement and get more opt-ins to receive DailyDeals. |
| What’s next for GateHouse and DailyDeals? |
We should be looking at targeting deals that meet specific consumers’ interests. We should also target geographically to meet people's preferences in certain zip codes. The more you learn about consumers -- where they live and what their preferences are -- the better you are able to meet folks’ interests and demands. We also need to become more relevant to local businesses. We can help develop loyalty and rewards programs that keep them coming back to DailyDeals. |
