Deal a day works well for home and trade services, but there are some important considerations to consider, notes Cox Search VP Rhonda Hills, who has been working on Kudzu.com.. Hills spoke this week at ILM East in Boston.
Kudzu, like Angie’s List, entered the deal a day marketplace last year with tests in three cities. Instead of standard deal a day commissions of 30-50 percent, it takes a smaller percentage if customers are already Kudzu advertisers.
Besides direct revenue, it has found deal a day valuable for providing “intelligence” to other parts of Kudzu, including merchant profile pages and consumer education. “Most consumers don’t know what air duct cleaning usually costs, notes Hills. “It requires some education.”
Service deals differ in other respects from deals aimed at restaurants or salons or products. For one thing, service pros have real limits on how many deals they can accept. A window cleaner can only add 75 appointments in a given month,” notes Hills.
It also requires retraining consumers and their expectations on what to receive from Kudzu. “Consumers aren’t used to coming to Kudzu with a credit card,” she says. Conversion rates also vary widely. Not everyone wants to have their house painted” at any given time, says Hills.
