Daily deal sites are all the rage. Bargain-crazed consumers are jumping all over sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, trying to get their hands on the next big steal.  But how beneficial are these sites to the small-business owners who promote offers on them and wind up giving up revenue in the process?

Buckaroo, a new cloud-based tool designed for small businesses to run their own marketing campaigns, could offer a viable solution. The tool, set to launch in less than two weeks, will allow merchants to send coupons and promotions via email, manage their contacts, segment their lists, track results (e.g., who received invitations, who signed up), and promote their deals via social media sites Facebook and Twitter.

Here's how it works (in a nutshell): A merchant can log in to the user-friendly tool and use its wizard to build promotions. The promotions can be customized, displaying the merchant's own logo with very minimal Buckaroo branding. Drop-down menus allow the merchant to choose what type of promotion to create, the minimum and maximum amount of people to receive the offer, and its expiration date.  The user can format the promotion using the tool and even save templates from previous promotions to simplify future blasts. Finally, the merchant can upload, download, and manage its contact list using the tool, making it easy sort and send promotions to the right customers.

Buckaroo is 100% opt in. Consumers sign up for the merchants they choose to receive promotions from.

Here's how Buckaroo differs from the ever-so-popular daily deal sites:

1. For a flat fee of $50 per month, businesses can run promotions and send them to customers via email without compromising revenue. Though merchants open themselves up to new business on sites like Groupon, the advantages of not giving up revenue are obvious.

2. Businesses can focus on building their own marketing lists. Every time a business runs a promotion, it builds its list and can keep that list (unlike with Groupon).

3. Merchants have the flexibility to run promotions with any time frame they'd like. It could be a daily deal, monthly deal, or seasonal promotion. With many daily deal sites, it's a one-shot deal.

4. The terms of the deal are open. Businesses aren't limited to offering a percentage off the price of a product or service. They can, for example, offer "buy one, get one free" deals or "kids eat for free on Tuesdays."

5. Buckaroo aims to build merchants' lists and enable them to attract high-value customers.  The tool allows businesses to import and export their contact lists, and sort them by name, join date, address, etc. (And according to Buckaroo CEO Alan Fisher, the tool will eventually have a mobile component, too.)

Of course, there are some questions that come to mind about Buckaroo.  Just how many email contacts can the tool handle? What if you aren't a small business? Fisher says that although the tool is primarily for small businesses, it has the capability to accommodate enterprise-scale operations with tens of thousands of email contacts. Another concern I asked him about was with respect to privacy. Is it safe to upload all of your client contacts into their tool? According to Fisher, nobody will have access to a merchant's contact list but the merchant, and the tool's features have been tested extensively.

What are some of your experiences using daily deal sites (to offer or receive promotions)?