As I was reading through my morning web design news, I came across a great article called 3 Tips for Running a Successful Daily Deal Promotion Online. John Amato, CEO of MarketSharing, shares the top 3 areas that businesses should carefully consider before launching the online coupon campaign. 

Have you ever considered doing an online coupon campaign with websites like Groupon Saskatoon ? If you have or are considering it - be sure to read this article - it might just assist you in executing the online promotion successfully!

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John Amato is the CEO of MarketSharing, a premium business-to-business deals provider for exceptional business products and services. Follow @MarketSharing on Twitter for more information and the latest deals for businesses.

Recently, I stated my thoughts on why daily deal sites are here to stay, and it lead me to start thinking about the daily deal space a bit more.

We’ve all heard horror stories surrounding daily deals. A local café business goes belly up; a large restaurant becomes inundated with coupon hunters, thereby losing its regular customers. In this economic climate, such losses are not to be downplayed. However, do these stories mean that all daily deals are bad for business?

Quite simply, the answer is no, they aren’t.

As with any decision, a small business owner needs to take daily deals seriously and plan for successful execution. Just because a daily deal doesn’t require up front capital doesn’t mean it shouldn’t involve an investment of time and energy. Effective daily deals are built upon detailed planning and analysis. And when these crucial steps are carried out correctly, the effort will reap rewards.

When business owners are delving into these marketing campaigns, they should learn from three of the most common flaws of failed daily deals.

1. Know Your Margins

Daily deals discount a product or service, which can result in a serious financial plus or minus for a business. When reducing the price of a revenue generator, business owners need to know what goes into the cost of making their product and their margins. Knowing the margins will help daily dealers set their discounted price.

With the standard daily deal discount being 50%, and an additional 50% commission going to the deal site, the costs should be 25% or less of the retail price in order to break even. Granted, this equation changes based on the specifics negotiated with a deal provider. It serves more as a backbone equation to show that margins play a critical role in turning a positive promotion.

Business owners should keep in mind that by “only” breaking even, they have nonetheless used the daily deal platform to generate new customers at no cost.

2. Prepare for the Surge of Deal Seekers

One common daily deal issue involves hordes of new customers flooding one location all at once. If not managed and anticipated correctly, this rush places a tremendous stress on a business, its staff and its customers ⎯ both new and old alike.

In order to avoid this situation, the merchant should determine how much volume their business can handle with the daily deal promotion, and then cap the discounted units sold at that specific number. Ideally, the daily operations will not be disrupted. Furthermore, such analysis will work as a pseudo insurance plan if a merchant incorrectly crunches the margin numbers.

Additionally, new customer calamity can be avoided if merchants ask their deal provider for references from other local shops that ran similar deals. That way they’ll better understand the anticipated customer volume.

According to research conducted by deals site Yipit, businesses can expect approximately 25% of vouchers to be redeemed in both the first and last months of the campaign. Much like our margin equation, this data should help businesses prepare for the deal deluge. As such, business owners should make sure that staff is trained how to process the deal’s coupons, and that the facility can handle the surge of new customers.

3. Get Your Employees Onboard

It would seem that a business has the green light once it calculates margins and determines capacity. However, there’s still more to be done to drive success. Now each business owner should encourage their employees to help convert daily dealers from bargain hunters to repeat customers.

As Uptal Dholakia’s Groupon study states, the key factor in a successful campaign is employees. Workers should be educated on the intricacies and background of the deal so that the entire team knows how to achieve the desired goal.

For example, if a restaurant were to run a daily deal on a new dish, as opposed to the most popular one, the owner should tell the staff that they are doing so to highlight a new direction or strength, and that they should emphasize its selling points to new customers.

Most importantly, merchants and employees should be prepared for the increase in foot traffic, and thus, be ready to represent their company with a positive attitude. If new customers encounter a negative environment, they will ultimately connect that mood with the business, and probably decide to take the deal and run.

If merchants do their margin homework, prepare for the onslaught of new customers, and ensure that new customers encounter a positive experience, they will have created a solid backbone to generate repeat customers and avoid a daily deal disaster.

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Hello friends - on this rainy Spring day!

Found this great article on how to use the Question & Poll app on your Facebook Page to engage your fans. Use this app to ask questions that build loyalty and provide you with valuable feedback.

Enjoy!

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Facebook Questions is the in-house poll service from Facebook. Located at the top of your wall and below your profile pic, Questions lets you customize polls in a manner of ways. You can submit an open-ended question or click on the “Add Poll Options” tab to create a custom multiple-choice poll. You can add up to three options. Pro tip: You can link those responses to groups or individuals on Facebook by tagging the name with an “@” when you start typing. This is handy if you want to drive people to your various options.

While you can’t limit your question to a specific demographic (i.e., the question is broadcast to the entire Facebook community to answer), individual Facebook Pages can ask Page-specific questions. To do this, simply click on the “Questions” tab at the top of the Page’s wall. 

Poll is an app, meaning you’ll have to allow it access to your account. Poll operates a lot like Facebook Questions (above), but it has some extra options for tracking your respondents, purchasing premium features like ad blocking, and the ability to hide header tabs. It also allows you to add more than three options to your customized questions. That may not seem like much, but Poll has attracted more than 2 million active users so far, and corporations such as ABC, 20th Century Fox, Nintendo, Pepsi and Wimbledon have used the app.

Poll for Facebook is a free service with a slew of options including the ability to include a poll title, introduction text and advanced features such as creating a custom URL and privacy options. You can specify if you want answers as multiple choice, text or a comment thread. You can modify the appearance further by using HTML tags or adding a tab to your YouTube page. Premium users can add images, too. Poll for Facebook is the most customizable and easiest to use of the available options, attracting major corporate users like the Food Network, the Baltimore Ravens and Clarins Paris to the service.

Poll Daddy Polls offer another take on customization. From the “Create a Poll Tab” you can add an image, customize multiple answers, and select where you want the poll to be posted. It’s simple and to the point, even if it has just 300,000 active users, making it relatively small when compared to its brethren.

Status Updates can be used in place of the more feature-rich polling apps discussed above. If you’re just after some quick, informal engagement with your fans, consider simply asking a question via your page status.

BASIC TIPS

Once you set up your poll using one of the options above, here are some simple best practices for deciding how and what to ask.

• Ask a real question. People on the Internet are great at sniffing out when you really are interested in their response and just asking a question because it’s been a while. Don’t ask questions that are just self-promotional. Something like “What product of ours do you love the most!?” isn’t going to go over well.
• Ask question you actually want answers to. In the same vein, if you’re going to ask questions, come up with something that will help your business. Try to get constructive feedback about your products or ask what your customer would like to see more of. If you’re a musician for example, try asking what kind of bonuses your fans prefer (backstage pass, free tickets, advanced orders, etc.) and then offer the highest-voted perk.
• Ask questions that are topical or relevant. This is a tricky one. Try to find memes and keywords that are both in the news and relevant to your brand. 
• Be clear why you’re polling. Decide what you want out of your poll: Are you looking for more loyalty, honest feedback, brand exposure? Having this in mind will give you focus and make your polls more useful for your business. If you’re looking for exposure, ask yourself if your poll is something that your fans would share with their own friends. Facebook is great for spreading your message — but only if it’s a message worth spreading.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.