Spreets is first major site to drop out of group buying market
The Spreets email to consumers
Deals website Spreets this week told its subscribers it is moving to a new business model which effectively sees it leave the group buying market.
The move – which sees the Seven West Media-affiliated Spreets the first major casualty of the brutal group buying war, comes just two years after Yahoo!7 bought it for $40m.
Instead, Spreets will become a list broker – emailing consumers on its database with offers from elsewhere. The customers will deal directly with those businesses.
Read “Now we can bring you the best in tanning, massages and pedicures from everyone else”
Wow, so they spend all that money building a DB, and now they’re going to send other people’s deals to it. There’s a long-term business model…..
Good luck to Dean and Justus – sell at early market maturity stage and then get the hell out of dodge….
M
A shame, but unsurprising, and actually a decent opportunity if they do this right. Like most others, I’m fed up of thousands of emails each day, most of which don’t appeal to me. If they could email me exactly the type of deals that I like, based on a combination of what I click on, and my preferences (ideally with keyword searches to alert me with specific interests), then it’s a service I’d use.
Having said that, not worth $40m.
Ugh, I hate this sort of marketing double-speak. “We’re making some exciting new changes to the way Spreets works” when what they mean is “We’re closing down and will be emailing you lists of stuff from other companies!”.
I’m all for putting a positive spin on things, but this is just silly.
Companies like Catch of the Day and Grays Online are cleaning up in this market at the moment, especially Catch.
Group buying please GO away…
I have never subscribed to a daily deals site. Am I weird?
but spamming a million people a day with non-targeted and non-relevant offers with tabloid copy was always going to end in tears.
Not a million a day!
Only a quick check and I can’t see any other audited deal-a-day sites in Nielsen so can’t compare this but…
Spreets had 22,784 daily UBs in November,
down 17% to 16,793 in December (Christmas?)
down 19% to 12,667 in January
small drop to 12,209 so far for February.
@ Ann – you clearly work for Catch – how do your figures compare?
I’d signed up to Spreets and Cudo but now the offers are the same things in high rotation. They seem to only have 10 merchants that they re-run on a consecutive loop. I wasn’t interested in a Harbour jet boat ride or facial in Blacktown the first time around, why would I be interested the 100th time? I’ve since unsubscribed….
I’ve been dealing with various group buying schemes for several years. On the rare occasions that I have had a problem with a retailer, we have generally been able to solve the problem. The only exception has been Spreets. I suggest that one reason for this latest announcement is the poor level of customer relations
Wow, what an awesome use of investors’ money at Yahoo and Seven!! The investment was clearly a much better use of cash than prioritising its use on usable products and meaningful content in the rest of the Yahoo business… Does that also mean that some of the people involved in the early days of incubating Spreets who have traded off on their “genius” ever since should get back in their box?
@Roger
They are geniuses: 2 years ago they sold something for $40m which is now worth nothing.
Writing was on the wall for a while, but wow another failed venture for the former internet heavy weight.
Must be tough going for some of the smaller sites that still remain.