RapidBuyr's Kevin Wells on Why Publisher Leads Are a Fit For Daily Deals

By Jim Sturdivant

For business-to-business publishers, being able to target audiences with useful products and services is always a winning formula, and the recent popularity of "daily deals" coupon services provides a new way to leverage valuable leads.

In June, Reed Business Information announced a partnership with daily deals provider RapidBuyr, in which Reed's BuyerZone, which provides targeted, qualified sales leads to businesses, is able to offer RapidBuyr deals to its network of nearly two million businesses.

It's part of a growing effort by RapidBuyr, which offers discounted products and services tailored to small and mid-sized businesses, to partner with publishers. In addition to Reed Business Information, the company has recently partnered with American City Business Journals and TechTarget to offer daily deals. Publishers reap a share of the revenue from each sale; for RapidBuyr, the arrangements add millions of qualified prospects.

Publishing Executive Inbox recently asked Kevin Wells, RapidBuyr's executive vice president of market development, about these partnerships.

Inbox: Publishers have had some success partnering with you on offering daily deals. What about the deals makes them "work" for a B2B publisher?

Kevin Wells: We're focused on deeply discounted values on business products and services. Business buyers, while not impulsive, are highly opportunistic in terms of procurement for their businesses. The value to the publisher is the ability to create significant, incremental revenue from their subscribers/users by participating in the net revenue from the sale.

Inbox: How, specifically, are publishers utilizing these deals to monetize their customer base?

Wells: RapidBuyr creates offers that live on the publisher's sites and the deals are also pushed to users via opted-in emails. Any product or service that sells creates incremental revenue for the referring publishing partner.

Inbox: Have you tried this with any consumer publishers? If so, how has that worked? How is it different from B2B?