Are daily deal sites a great way to grow your business? Or are they financial black holes that attract bargain seeking consumers who will never buy your product again?

New studies from Foresee and Performics provide some answers. The headline: daily deals bring in quite a few new and infrequent customers, plus they lead to lots of repeat purchases.

• 29% of offer buyers had not purchased from the company before they bought the daily deal. An additional 26% were infrequent customers.
• 44% say they have already made an incremental purchase from the company after redeeming the offer.
• Another 47% of redeemers say they plan to buy again soon from the company that provided the deal.

Daily deal sites are popular and wield a lot of influence.

• Roughly 60% of online consumers in the US subscribe to one.
• About two-thirds of subscribers bought an offer in the past quarter.
• 58% of consumers say reviewing daily deal sites is an important part of their online shopping process.

But, marketers need to be careful when estimating the cost of a daily deal.

• There is very little slippage: 9 out of 10 buyers redeem their offers.
• 40% of daily deal buyers were already frequent customers.

• Should we test a daily deal?
• How can we structure the deal to bring in new customers and encourage repeat purchases?