There’s no denying that companies offering daily deals have made our lives sweeter and our mail inboxes fuller.  It’s quite exciting to find great deals every time you open your mail.  But there are times when our impulsive side gets the best of us, hogging deals that we don’t really need.  We buy it because it’s really cheap, plus we can give them as gifts if we don’t see ourselves using it in the near future.

Yipit’s latest data shows that deals related to spa and beauty still tops the charts in daily deals site at 20%, followed by food related deals at 16%.  Deals related to travel & tours, home & automobile, health/medical/dental and nightlife and entertainment significantly increased from 8%, 3%, 1%, and 2% in 2010 to 13%, 11%, 7% and 4% this year.  All in all, it’s clear that daily deals are reeling in consumer interest, finding new ways of bringing brands and buyers together.  Let’s look at some of the recent happenings in the world of daily deals.

But daily deals are maturing as they keep adding things that we actually do need.  Take Groupon for example.  They just launched Groupon Goods which offer discounts on home furnishing products like LED TVs, coffee brewers, mattresses, cutlery and still some of the usual stuff, like pilates and Ray Ban sunglasses for American subscribers.

“(The offer is) already seeing good results,” a source close to the matter said. “Groupon Goods is the buzz around Groupon. It can add significant impact to Groupon’s growth strategy.”

Priceline is also launching a daily deal service aimed for travelers looking for cheap hotel rooms.  Starting today, heavily discounted hotel rooms will become available in Priceline’s “Hotel & Rental Car Negotiator” app.  But this differs greatly from other daily deal sites as they offer the discounted rate as it becomes available and does not need to achieve a quota before the discount is activated.

Though out of the 530 daily deal companies only 170 survived, that data doesn’t stop others from trying to be the next big thing, or at least the next best thing.  The McClatchy Company, a leading news and information provider, announced the completion of its rollout for dealsaver, their proprietary daily deals service, to all McClatchy markets.  In each of their markets, dealsaver offers a daily deal in the form of a prepaid voucher that consumers can buy for 50 to 90 percent less than the value of the deal.  The deals are made available to thousands of consumers who subscribe to their local dealsaver e-mail newsletter and the deals are promoted to additional consumers through their local McClatchy newspaper and online news sites.

Canada’s most visited daily deals site, Dealfind, continues to expand in North America with their latest launch in St. Loius.  Dealfind offers St. Louis consumers carefully chosen deals on products and services worth buying, from some of the most notable small and midsize businesses in the market, as well as Dealfind’s distinguished customer service.  Each purchased voucher has a 30-day refund policy so consumers acting on impulse can return their vouchers if they realize they don’t really need it after all.