Daily, deeply discounted deals are a huge trend these days in e-commerce.

Group coupons that give you access to deeply discounted products and services are exploding (e.g. Groupon, LivingSocial, HomeRun, TownHog, etc.). Groupon has raised over $170 million in funding and has over 20 million users (and is apparently worth up to $3 billion). LivingSocial has raised over $50 million.

Lots of money are being invested in these area because customers are loving the daily deals, and like the “social commerce” side of them (e.g. sharing the deal with some friends on Facebook or Twitter).

Can you take advantage of this trend? Yes, you can.

Leveraging other marketing tools
Check out these two Practical eCommerce articles for some ideas on tools you can use to run this type of marketing campaign:

• Group Coupon Companies for Purely Online Merchants
• Deal of the Day Coupons Help Merchants Attract Customers 4 Tips

Doing it on your own: expiring coupons + scheduled mailings
In ProductCart, you can create one-time coupons that have an expiration date (e.g. they could expire tomorrow). You can set them up in advance and use them to provide daily (or weekly) specials, then send scheduled mailings to customers by using an e-mail marketing system. Learn more.

Bottom line: it’s effective marketing
Weather it’s by leveraging other applications to jump on the group buying bandwagon, or by getting creative on your ProductCart-powered store, there are things you can do to bring customers back to your store and motivate them to share deals with others. It can be very effective marketing.