Are you a Singapore deals site addict?

Daily deals are all around us these days with the likes of Groupon.sg, Deal.com.sg, Singsale.com.sg, Streetdeals.sg, Outlet.com.sg and others sprouting all over this island republic. It is almost difficult to not notice them particularly once you sign up to be a member of their mailing list.

My inbox has never seen such popularity since the days of spamming. I even get 2 emails in a day from the same site. Honestly, I am torn between being annoyed at getting inundated with these emails and wanting to know what is the latest and greatest deal out there today.

For consumers, it’s a great way to grab deals at sometimes fantastic prices but this means you are at the mercy of sites that come at you every day relentlessly. For businesses, it’s a means of very quickly pushing their brands to market and moving inventory or services.

Small businesses, with limited marketing funds, now have the opportunity to make their brands more visible at a low cost, and also gain credibility through these established websites.

Businesses that I never knew existed in the far corners of the islands have jumped onto the bandwagon. What would typically be paper flyers stuck into the mailboxes of heartlanders has now become what I would describe as a digital flyer, taking the prospective customer to a web site telling them more about the business and the offer, and most importantly, a sale. Voila! Would I though, take advantage of a rock bottom deal but at a part of Singapore that I would probably never have any reason to go? Probably not.

Almost all these daily deal sites would highlight the number of deals sold for each deal and the total amount of money saved. With such astounding numbers, it’s no wonder why many businesses are taking to these marketing models, and some even repeating their deals.

The main success quotient for such a model is exactly that it caters to the today’s societal desire for instant gratification. And in particular to this market, the “kiasu” Singaporeans.

However, the perception of such deals and perhaps also the reason why some businesses just will not be any part of this is the “low price” image it brings to the brands. Few businesses would want to be the deal just below the deal for bikini wax or hair removal.

If you found a deal and wanted to compare prices online, chances are, you’ll find the very same deal across the different daily deal sites. What does this say about the brand? What kind of consumer habits could be formed when they know that the deals could come back again and therefore decide to wait, or that deals for that brand will be widely available?

Many of these daily deal sites have little differentiation. There’s no difference for a consumer where they choose to buy since the deals are the same and there are no loyalty programs in place to incentivize consumers to buy from the same site.

For small businesses, this marketing model is a game changer for how they can now reach out to consumers. The convenience of getting deals right in your inbox and sometimes great ones at that, will prevail for the foreseeable future until the next marketing model surfaces. Or when you start seeing email fatigue. In the meantime, I think I just saw a deal for 50% off Chilli Crabs.  

Gary Chin, Managing Director - Singapore (PH, VN & HK), Admax Network