Groupon and LivingSocial have motivated many small businesses into offering daily deals, but the 50 percent commission is often a daily deal breaker. Signpost is a new venture-backed daily deal service that that lets small and medium sized businesses set up their own daily deal campaigns and online marketing offers on a DIY (do it yourself) basis. It operates on a lower commission structure with a flat monthly fee, to boot.
How it works:
1. Signpost gathers info about your business and creates a campaign. You share details about how your business operates and works, of course.
2. They match your campaign with the right online channels. This is one of the cool things about Signpost — they have loads of content partners that show your “campaign ad” on their blog or website. From their website:
We use our network of 1200+ national and local partners like Google, AOL, and Yellow Pages to access over 35 million local customers. Our extensive reach allows us to match your campaign to customers that count.
3. Customers buy a voucher online to redeem at your store by clicking on that daily deal ad and pre-paying for the offer. You pay a commission to the content partner that is displaying your ad (via the Signpost system, of course) and they promise it is never more than 15 percent.
Within your account, like any web service, you have a real-time dashboard that shows your offers, redemptions, and other campaigns you are running. For example, you can set up a Facebook campaign or run an email newsletter through the service.
What I liked about the service
- Signpost creates the campaign for you. As I pointed out above, they then distribute that offer for you. They have over 60 cities in the system so far, but I presume that if you’re not in one of those you can still create an offer of some type.
- I like that 15 percent commission versus the 50 percent that other daily deal companies require.
What I would like to see improve
As most of my readers know, I don’t like it when you can’t get access to a site without leaving all your contact details. Signpost requires your email and phone and after you click “sign up” it says they will contact you shortly. So, I tried to sign up and now I’m waiting for a sales rep to call me. Not a big deal, but that wasn’t my expectation. As noted above, they are transparent with their pricing and how it works. Ideally, they would allow you to start filling in some details or checking out the dashboards or more than “hey, we’ll call you.”
Pricing is a flat $99 per month and a 15 percent (maximum) commission to sites that generate the click-through. If you’ve wanted to provide a daily or weekly coupon to your local customers and prospects, Signpost might be worth a closer look.
Learn more about Signpost.
About TJ McCue
TJ is an entrepreneur who publishes Tech Biz Talk. TJ is a former Wall Street Journal columnist. He also writes for Forbes and American Express OPEN Forum. He loves learning about technology apps and software services - share yours with TJ. 
Great info! Thank you for this post. I have a couple of business friends who need to know this.
Thanx TJ! It was a very useful blog, technically as well as professionally! Not many of us are aware of a signpost. Every business functions according to a strategy, which inturn works in accordance to a campaign and a signpost does just that! Moreover, I do agree with you that transparency with the customer is really important and demanding e-mail ID may not work with every prospective client!
Informative and insightful as usual. This is why I check out this site daily!
This was an industry ripe for competition. I’m interested to see if the big boys will start offering some better pricing in response.
I agree with you Robert. Let’s see if they shake it up some!
This sounds promising! Can’t wait to see what’s gonna happen next. I’ll be checking on this. Thanks for spreading the word.
So this is just a cheaper version of daily deals. Koopedia.com spanks these guys.
Well… Signpost sounded like a great idea. I signed on at the end of November, they offered me a month free because I was sceptical about it. After two weeks, when I saw no response, I called and asked them to cancel. They offered me an additional thirty days because they wanted me to see that it works. Within a few days, I began to get calls and book appointments. They put me on amazon and I received a terrific response. They told me that they send checks on the 1st and the 15th of every month. They do not do direct deposit. The 15th came and left. My dashboard said the check was sent on the 17th of December. Long story short… It is now Feburary 12th and I have not received a dime. I still have to service the customers. There is no telling when this “check” will be sent. Also, aside from the three days on amazon and one purchased through their site, there is no consistent feedback. The customer service is giving me ludicrous timelines as to when this issue will be resolved.
Any luck following up with the company? I was considering joining until I read this.