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December 4, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I asked Ron Drabkin at Adisem to put together a few tips for those of you looking to get a little extra bang for your Google AdWords bucks. Take it away, Ron.
Many online advertisers are surprised and dismayed at the prices that are currently being charged for keywords in Google AdWords (and Microsoft AdCenter, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc.) As anyone who has watched Google’s stock price can guess, the prices for keywords have indeed been going up over the last year in particular.
One fairly easy thing advertisers can do for little to no cost is to expand their list of keywords. Typically the price you pay for click/conversion will drop if you add more keywords, since more specific keywords are in most cases cheaper, since there are less bidders for each.
Here are some tips on finding more keywords for your site.
1. Pull up your own website, and that of your competitors, and read them. You very well may have phrases on your own site that you haven’t realized would make very good, targeted keywords.
2. Try one of the keyword generation products. The one I use personally is Keyword Discovery by Trellian (www.trellian.com), which has a free trial. These tools are good for finding popular tweaks and misspellings that you can add.
3. Decide if your offering fits city and interest pairings. You may want to take a list of all the cities in the US, or wherever your focus is, and pair them with interests. The online travel industry does this is the segment with probably the best keywords on the internet. So type in some words like “Cabo Hotels” or “Phoenix Vacations” into Google and watch the ads that come up for ideas on how you might do it.
4. Think out of the box to create different, unique keywords. Here is one example. I thought off the top of my head that “find a party” is a good keyword phrase. I just went to Google and there is only one ad on this keyword phrase, and it is not from a dating site. Google tells me that there is some significant traffic on this keyword phrase. Is this a good keyword? I don’t know, but I am sure that Dave or any of you could tell me.
5. You may want to buy keywords that are your competitors’ names (so if you are working for Ford, you might buy the keywords “Toyota, Camry, Solara, Corolla, etc.) It is not a classy move, but is common. Or, you can buy keywords of near competitors, paired with ads that tell the difference between your site and theirs. (Example, if you are advertising a speed dating service, you might buy keywords that are for regular dating, and your ad would simply say ”try speed dating instead.“
6. Make sure you have found keywords for different languages, or groups that have their own slang. As an example, I looked at the keyword ”Pinay“ (which means something like Philipina, in Tagalog – I think), I found an ad for True.com, but no other dating site. ”Pinoy,“ which I believe to be the masculine equivalent, gave me no dating sites.
7. Think if you want keyword substitution. It can be the subject of an entire other article. Simplistically, when you type a keyword into Google, and see that some of the ads on the right have the keyword you typed bolded in their text ad, it is because their advertiser has keyword substitution turned on. I am happy to discuss this with any readers who are curious.
Anyone who would like to discuss this with Ron is welcome to contact him, contact info is at www.adisem.com.
Technorati Tags: adisem, adwords
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Posted by Dave Evans
SpyFu is a beta service for finding out what your competitors are paying for keywords.
Arizona-based Spyfoo feeds a list of keyword searches to Google and tracks the ads, ad placement, and organic search results returned for each. Then you can go in and search on your competitor and see what they are buying.
During the beta the data is pretty stale but should get more up to date when the beta tag is removed.
Check out the results for phrase dating.
Via alarm:clock.
Technorati Tags: adwords, keywords, spyfoo
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November 28, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Match has landed a season-long product placement in a TBS sitcom through MediaHub, the media planning and buying division at Mullen.
Match will shell out between $1-2 million to be features in My Boys, based on a woman sports reporter in Chicago.
The PerfectMatch-themed Must Love Dogs was the last big product placement we've seen.
Over the weekend I watched Casino Royal this weekend and my friend and we had fun pointing out all the of product placements in the movie (Aston Martin, coke, Ford, Sony). It was fun because some of the placements were difficult to see unless you were paying attention.
I worked in advertising in New York City for a few years, and I'm the kind of person that enjoys commercials more than most sitcoms. I'm all for visual product placement, it's a necessary evil for network television. Tivo and other DVR technologies have made it increasingly difficult for advertisers to reach audiences and many of the shows are so bad they can't get advertisers the old fashion way.
Match CEO Jim Safka:
It’s a fully integrated campaign that feels less like a sponsorship or advertisement and more like a part of the program.
The waxing poetic over the bygone years of shows sponsored by General Electric is so over. Let's hope sitcoms don't evolve into “brands gone wild.”
Audiences will quickly let Match know if they want a dating service in their television program. It's a lot easier to place a product than a service. A Powerbook or Coke just sits there, make a statement about the person in the scene.
The My Boys website has a calendar with Thursday being “don't forget to sign up for email alerts” day. I thought it was for Match but it's for the show.
Early reviews of “My Boys” are mixed to positive. The show premiers tonight in TBS at 10/9c.
I wonder if Match gets their money back if the show bombs?
Technorati Tags: match.com, myboys, product+placement
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November 27, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 I have a drawer full of tech company t-shirts going back to 1993. This is the first dating-related t-shirt I'd wear, not including the SafeDate shirt, which looked great on employes but I'm pretty much a liability when it comes to donning a South Beach muscle shirt so well. Bonus on the CL shirts, they're from American Apparel.
Via RateOrDate blog.
Technorati Tags: casual+enounters, craigslist
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November 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Google Adwords management can be time consuming and difficult for dating sites with a few dozen keywords. With a thousand or more it's downright daunting except for the statistic-obesesed individuals that manage large keyword farms internally or as a hired gun.
Often, ad agencies take the burden from mid to large sized companied, keeping a hefty percentage of the keyword budget for themselves.
In a new twist, today I learned about Adisem from their VP Marketing, Ron Drabkin.
Ron walked me through a WebEx demo of the Adisem AdWords management system, explaining the features and benefits to small and medium sizes businesses that utilize AdSense. Basically, Adisem is a 100% automated keyword management and optimization service. Adisem offers a free two week trial to anyone who signs up. If you like the results, they charge a lower-than-industry-average 10% of your keywords budget.
Snipped from the website:
What does Adisem do?: Adisem's patent pending technologies operate directly from your Google account via what is called an API. Once you authorize Adisem to connect to your AdWords Account, Adisem will download your campaign history. Our servers will analyze the campaign data, as well as its competitive environment. Within 24 Hours, our system will adjust the campaign parameters and initiate the optimization process.
Campaign Modifications: Adisem will always: re-price any keyword, generate additional keywords, generate additional negative keywords. Adisem will never: modify the text of your ads, change the campaign's daily budget, remove a positive/negative keyword. You can always: add your own keywords, re-price a keyword, modify your ads, adjust your daily budget.
Here's an unformatted screenshot of the Adisem dashboard output.
You want the orange lines to be higher and the blue line to trend downward. The grey lines show the campaign before Adisem gets involved. Someone like Markus or the Match.com marketing guru's probably don't need something like this, but I can think of many small to mid-sized dating and social networking sites which could benefit from AdWords analysis and optimization.
There are other free and paid services similar to Adisem but I don't know of any which offer anything similar them at that price point and with the technology that runs the system. In the end it's up to you to decide which service is best for your needs and budget. For free, you might as well check out their system and see how it performs on your AdSense campaign.
If you take them up on the trial, leave a comment and let us know how the experience went.
Technorati Tags: adisem, adwords, keyword+optimazation
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November 20, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
It appears Match.com has finally had enough of watching True.com come out of nowhere to cruise past them in the unique visitor rankings at Hitwise (at least according to Hitwise).
Here we have the latest Match ads on Myspace, which feature the video of various women looking at their webcams or Match profiles, I'm not sure which. Being that Match doesn't offer video profiles, I'd say I've never seen a woman so happy looking a personal ad. The ad links to search results for women in southern California. I don't have a female Myspace profile (there are only so many hours in the day), so I can't tell if they get SoCal hunks on their Myspace pages.
 
 
Unlike the True T&A ads, the Match ads are really tame. Hotties in their dormrooms, yes, exciting, titilating or interesting? Not so much. I don't see this campaign helping Match much. If you're going to have video of a hottie in college, she should probably be doing something a more exciting than staring at a computer or tying her shoes. They better have some ads in the pipeline that are a lot more exciting than these if they want to take on True in the traffic wars.
After a few page loads, I finally got some True ads:
 
Hmm, which site is Joe America going to go check out?
Match will undoubtedly get a certain amount of traffic from the Myspace inventory. We'll have to compare their Hitwise ranking to True's over the next few months to see if this, and hopefully more creative, ads play out on millions of Myspace homepages.
The load time on Myspace is slooow tonight. My browser progress bar shows the Userplane stuff is hanging on the pageloads for minutes at a time. Probably a temporary glitch, but it's making Myspace almost unusable at the moment.
Technorati Tags: match.com, myspace, advertising, true.com
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November 17, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
A whole slew of dating sites are interviewing or closing deals with new PR shops. Looks like in several cases the old guard and we can only hope that fresh ideas are being put on the table. You need to get into the hearts and minds of singles before you can get into their wallets. If your PR shop isn't talking about creating viral videos like Loneygirl15, or creating a blog for your dating site, instead promising the same old inane press releases and old school media tactics, politely ask them to end the pitch immediately. The days of driving site traffic via empty calorie articles from Living Arts reporters are o-v-e-r, capiche?
RateOrDate say the Lycos Dating Search Engine is gone, instead redirecting to the Lycos home page. A good idea which died on the vine due to waning corporate interest and lackluster implementation. There are a few companies preparing to launch similar sites, expect the meta-search concept to gain traction in '07.
Dearest irina68@hotmail.com, thank you for all the emails this week, why are my responses bouncing back? I need to know where to send you the money to pay off your debt so you can come visit me.
Technorati Tags: publicrelations, gorillamarketing
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November 8, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I’m getting a lot of Baltic-bride contact from Match this week. I logged in to change my prefs and was greeted with this ad for the latest fashions for women from Lane Bryant. One look at my profile and Match should know that I don’t go for the large ladies. What sort of junk inventory is Match shoving down people’s throats?
The next ad was for Victoria’s Secret, more appropriate but come on now this is a dating service. Unless I’m supposed to bring a gift of a matching bra and panty set on date number four? On the flip side, are women seeing Trojan ads?
Match gathers an incredible amount of information on members and usage patterns. If only they would put this knowledge to better use. If they would do better targeting, who knows how much more revenue they could generate?
Technorati Tags: targeted+advertising, advertising
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October 26, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
How well do big breasts drive traffic to dating sites? Copyranter has been paying attention to the breast size of various models in True and Match ads. I'm sure there is some sort of scientific methodology someone could apply which correlates measurements with unique visitors, conversion rates, revenue and Comscore ranking. Who's going to take a shot at it?
If Comscore generally underestimates traffic, to the benefit of advertisers and Hitwise overestimates, what does this mean for the old adage that bigger is better?
Via Collaboradate.
Yes I've been cooped up in the office all week and it's starting to show. Open bar at the Greater Boston Food Bank party tonight. Tomorrow I will be all sorted.
Technorati Tags: lowest+common+denominator
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October 23, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
DigitalBulletin, part of Brand Republic, has a strategy analysis for the Match.com UK reality show.
My ears perked up until I read this:
The idea was to take Match.com to people by allowing them to interact with the brand, not just each other.
Ugh, who let the markers in the room? Don't I always say that people don't date on dating sites? They are introduction billboards, so what's with interacting with the brand? NOBODY wants to align themselves with a dating site. We're not talking about a lifestyle brand link Mercedes or Volkswagon.
TV: The climax of the idea gave one male and one female Match.com member the chance to find love through Match.com, and appear live on peaktime TV. Three consecutive solus breaks in Love Island were secured on 6 August. The ads were shot immediately before transmission, in front of a live studio audience, and then transmitted "as live". The first saw the host introduce the lucky winners, the second gave the winning man the opportunity to sell himself, and the third saw the winning woman's turn.
Online: Before TV activity, contestants uploaded videos to a special "Live Love" Match.com microsite, comprising a 30-second pitch describing why they shouldn't be single. Other Match.com users then judged the entries, with two winners going forward to the final TV stage.
The day after the live ads aired was the highest month for subscriptions in Match.com's history, and was 3.5 per cent higher than the best-performing month for the year (what month was that?).
Google searches that day led to the highest number of new subscriptions in the history of Match.com's relationship with the search engine, and these have continued to increase since. MSN has also seen a 23 per cent increase in registrations and a 39 per cent rise in subscriptions.
Not bad results, indeed. Steve Hobbs, head of planning and integration, Carat, gives the verdict. Worth reading.
However, the thinking behind this activity seems a bit more old-fashioned than that. In the past, Match.com has run awareness-building activity on TV, radio and outdoor. Though this work is executionally very different, on face value it's difficult to see how it achieves much more.
The campaign successfully delivers on its objective of taking Match.com to people and explaining its services, with well-executed ideas. But it is unclear whether the work was founded on the consumer insight that a social stigma remains attached to online dating, or whether many still believe people do not represent themselves in a virtual world as they are in the real world.
This is a great idea, similar to Comcast's singles channel. But really, I can see this being an enormous YouTube competition next. You don't need a television or to pay for a specific dating site. Perfect for a brand aligned with being single that's not necessarily in the dating space.
Get rid of HRP, M2M Cherish PR and some company called Monkey. Four companies is three to many to promote the show. Do it for cheap on the net and promote through your marketing agency and go viral with teaser videos. Let that bleed over to mainstream media, who will provide all the coverage you need for free.
Have separate categories for men, women, gay straight, younger, older and whatever else makes sense. That could be a great exercise.
Kudos for Match for pulling this off. Expect to see more web-based versions of this soon.
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September 26, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 I teleported to the brand-new Starwood Hotel in SecondLife this morning. As soon as I sat at the bar a few people came by and we started talking. One guy (no bartender!) started handing out virtual beers and we talked and drank for a while. I tried to get my avatar to do a backflip and he fell and hit his head. I think it was the beer and my lame SL scripting skills. When this place gets more popular, it's going to be quite the online pickup spot. Hint to dating sites, you should be thinking about a presence in SL. Much more about this later.
Technorati Tags: second+life, chilling+out, hungover+avatar
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September 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I wonder what drove True to internally build and launch a targeted on-site advertising system? Is it because visitors aren't converting to members and they want to makes what they can off the massive amount of pageviews they are probably logging due to aggressive Myspace and other online advertising campaigns?
Members are offered products and services that may be of interest based on initial public membership information provided during the registration process. This offer allows TRUE to filter irrelevant ads for its members by working with companies to present consumers with the most appropriate products and services.
TRUE believes this is a high-value proposition for advertisers, as time and money aren't wasted targeting unqualified consumers. Each on-site ad is placed to reflect optimal viewing location and run time, to better appeal to individual member preferences, making a click-through more efficient. Response rates are thoroughly evaluated, and adjustments are made to the ads and placement specifications to optimize their effectiveness.
I'm curious as to why they built something in-house instead of buying an off-the-shelf solution. I'm waiting to hear back from a few True advertisers to see how well the system targets ads and functions under load.
Yahoo News.
Technorati Tags: targeted+advertising, true.com
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September 18, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Meetic, a leading European online dating network, announced that is has validated the screenplay for the “Meetic” film, which will be shot and released in 2007. The shooting of this romantic comedy should begin during the first quarter of 2007, with the film expected to be released in cinemas in the autumn. The film should require 8 weeks of shooting in France and a week abroad.
Technorati Tags: movies
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September 4, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I've been digging the MIT Advertising Lab, a blog on the future of advertising technology. Here is a List of Brands on MySpace. Lot's of interesting stuff about brands in SecondLife and other advertising tidbits. Also, found, SpaceCadetz. The best of youguessedit. I was wondering when a guide like this would launch, with over 100 million people and myriad pockets of music, groups and random stuff that 99% of Myspacers don't know about.
Technorati Tags: myspace, secondlife
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August 30, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Amazon launched aStore, an easy to set up affiliate tool, this week and I decided to create a small store to test the system. Behold the Online Dating Insider Store. Right now it's only books and very simple. I'll be playing around with it, adding and moving items around over the next few weeks. In the meantime, check it out, I'm sure these mini-stores will be popping up all over the place.
The Ether click-to-call service didn't work out. I'm back to simple Paypal links for advisory calls. You can schedule one by emailing relaxedguy at gmail dot com.
More on aStore at Duct Tape Marketing.
Technorati Tags: aStore
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August 29, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 After taking a few days to go camping and hiking in New Hampshire I logged into Match.com from someone else's computer. Look at how awful the home page looks. So much text which has been tweaked for search engines and mostly useless to humans. Why do they ask eight questions on the home page? I bet that is for SEO. Bad grammar and incorrect punctuation round out a truly ho-hum homepage.
I despise how search engines are dictating web design. All of this text should be displayed as meta-data hidden in the top of the web page, invisible to viewers unless using the view-source function of a browser.
Unless this is what passes for good design at Match?
Someday search engines will access authoritative meta-data externally from web pages. Until then, we will have to put up with landing-page design that looks like the web circa 1997.
Technorati Tags: design, match.com
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August 18, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Marc Cantor is ecstatic to hear that Facebook is opening up it's walled garden by providing developers with a public API (Application Programming Interface). This makes retrieving information from Facebook and displaying the results in any application a snap.
Marc says:
A full 6-12 months ahead of schedule Facebook has - in a single blow - broken open this whole game. Now the race begins to build out services and applications (even content) around these APIs. Anyone wish to guess on how long it’ll take MySpace and Bebo to respond?
This is exactly what I've been talking about for the dating industry! I just found out that Yahoo Personals has had an invite-only partner API since January, which I will talk about soon.
Dating sites will open up their walled gardens when they figure out how to make money doing so. Problem is, most of the sites that have approached them haven't had the vision to create a truly useful service or the technical chops to make it work.
Hopefully the Facebook deal will quicken the pace for well-funded, strategically savvy companies to come knocking on the dating industry's door and offer up the kinds of value-added services that the major dating sites couldn't dream of.
SJ Mercury News has a good article about how MySpace drives a growing ecosystem, where several websites have launched complimentary services and gone on to great heights (YouTube and Photobucked.)
GigaOm says that XuQa is letting people import their MySpace profiles wholesale. As an aside, Browser (PC only, boo!) cleans up ugly Myspace pages into a readable format.
Silicon Beat on the MySpace ecosystem.
The only thing a start-up needs is to have MySpace users rave about its features, and its growth will skyrocket.
MySpace is clearly having difficulty figuring out its policy -- it is on the fence about how much to encourage other companies serving the ecoystem, or to discourage it.
Absolutely. There are a lot of companies doing much better than expected due to high adoptation rates on MySpace. It's an incredibly effective way to test new services.
This WSJ article, Moguls of New Media, talks about how Christine Dolce, whose MySpace page boasts nearly one million friends, has leveraged her looks and connections into a start-up clothing company, fame and growing fortune.
There are a lot of young people taking advantage of the viral nature of social networking to launch promising careers built on countless late night webcam sessions in surburban housing tracts across America.
I need to work on my new version of Lazy Sunday. I'm sure it's going to make me a star.
Technorati Tags: open+profiles, viral+video
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August 9, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 JDate has launched a website called JMag. Similar to Match's Happen Magazine, there are lifestyle stories, how to's and dating tips. Speaking of JDate, Spark Networks' Second Quarter results were announced last week.
The Company reported second quarter 2006 revenue for its JDate segment of $7.0 million, an increase of 13% compared to $6.2 million in the same period in 2005. JDate revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2006 was $14.0 million, an increase of 10% compared to $12.7 million for the six months ended June 30, 2005.
Average paying subscribers for the Company's JDate segment were 75,100 during the second quarter of 2006, an increase of 12% compared to 67,100 from the same period in 2005. Average paying subscribers for the six months ended June 30, 2006 were 75,200, an increase of 10% compared to 68,400 for the six months ended June 30, 2005.
Direct subscriber acquisition cost(5) (SAC) for the Company's JDate segment in the second quarter of 2006 was $14.93, an increase of 8% compared to $13.82 from the same period in 2005. SAC for the six months ended June 30, 2006 was $14.06, an increase of 24% compared to $11.30 in the six months ended June 30, 2005. The increase in JDate SAC is due to increased marketing expenditures, particularly offline, in order to build and maintain the strong JDate brand.
Markus calls the American Singles situation a continuing death spiral. Subs down 16% to 90,000. It will be interesting to see the effect MingleMatch has on the Other Businesses segment reporting.
More at Yahoo Finance.
Technorati Tags: jdate, spark+networks
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Posted by Dave Evans
Lawless Luvoo.com: Missouri residents on the Do Not Call list are receiving telemarketing calls from dating site Luvoo.com. Reader Renaldorv says I have been living under a rock, that Luvoo is not the real deal. I put Luvoo and Mate1 in the same category. Site that will be around for a while, but how good are they when it comes to getting yourself off the dating market? Fads people, fads.
Measuring Dating Site Success By Active Users: Markus says that of the top 50 dating sites there are only three free sites? This bears looking into, difficult to believe. Let's talk metrics. How about the number of active users logged into the website, averaged month-to-month. Now if we can get other large-scale sites to measure the same way we may have something along the lines of apples-to-apples comparison. For niche sites this won't work. How to measure their success?
Look at JD Power and Associates. Sterling brand, highly respected, solid results. Why can't we get this level of accuracy and truth when it comes to measuring website attributes?
Bill Tancer (blog) @ Hitwise, stats gurus at Comscore and Alexa. Go take a vacation together for two weeks somewhere with limited cell service and lots of umbrella drinks and figure out a decent measurement algorithm.
I"m beginning to like what I see from some Keynote more and more, although even they have troubles with rankings (LoveHappens as the "darling of the online dating industry?). Clearly no one system is enough. To that end, I propose a mashup of Hitwise for real-time data, Keynote for customer satisfaction rankings, Comscore for deeper five-figure research papers, and either Google Toolbar or some other equivalent for user tracking.
Social software coverage at the Social Software Blog has moved to the Download Squad. Looks like that's the end of that.
Mark Brooks is starting a site for internet dating affiliates. While I question the need for yet another site dedicated to educating affiliates, my hat goes off to anyone who can raise the clue density amongst affiliate managers and the countless lazyweb people who throw up affiliate-driven dating site review. Almost every one I've ever seen has been awful. Weak category structure (don't put eHarmony in every category for crying out loud), bad UI and cheesy Adwords.
Dating site affiliate marketing is in a sad state of affairs on both ends. How about raising the bar with well-designed websites, helpful content and edutainment for consumers? One last thing, if you are an affiliate with a few dating sites, don't just list the ones that make you money. That's not a directory it's a waste of people's time.
 True is touting the fact that Hitwise calls them the #1 dating site. Nice marketing exercise if it were remotely True.
 Webdate Desktop Application: Actually, it's an Agent. Message, Instant Message, & Search other singles in your area. I'm glad it "Sits snugly in your windows taskbar." Download.
Hottest Dating Sites Based on Religion, Ethnicity: MarketingVox says some niche dating like JDate, Shaadi.com or Naseeb.com are thriving.
I was featured in a English as Second Language DVD last year, just put the clip up on Youtube. I will probably regret posting this link but I've been quiet all week and you need something to laugh at. Talk about a bad hair day.
Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, online dating, social software
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August 8, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
New dating site CupidSurfer's members become eligible for CupidSurfer.com's $2 million giveaway simply by signing up. For every 500 premium members who register, CupidSurfer.com will hold a drawing for a prize of $500. Once the Web site reaches its 1 million premium member mark, it will host a drawing for an additional grand prize of $1 million. Each winning member's profile will be prominently displayed on the CupidSurfer.com Web site.
Yahoo News press Release.
Technorati Tags: cupidsurfer
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Posted by Dave Evans
Miller Brewing Co.'s Foster's Lager is kicking off an online dating game the site is casting as a model for other marketer partnerships.
The customized deal is a direct result of an "upfront" conducted by Heavy for the first time this year, and the game is being used to launch a new positioning for the Australian beer in the U.S. with the tagline "Crack open a friendly."
Heavy scoured the Outback in search of 10 "sheilas," Aussie slang for unattached females, to take part in its "massive mating game" that mirrors the TV classic "Dating Game," but on a grander scale. Beginning Aug. 16, for three weeks visitors to Heavy.com can watch pre-produced videos of the 10 sheilas talking about themselves in a "Dating Game" style. Viewers can vote to determine which women they like best.
More at Ad Age.
Technorati Tags: online+dating, reality+ dating
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August 4, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 Online dating press releases are typically poorly written and painful to read, often appearing as if written by an investor and CTO with a superiority complex. When I read that OnlineBootyCall reached the one million member mark with only one reported marriage I did a double-take, clearly this was a publicity stunt, or was it?
Typically dating sites let their PR flacks out of their cubicles around Valentine's day, only to remain mute throughout the rest of the year. This OBC press release should be required reading for all dating site PR departments. The quote from the CEO is tongue-in-cheek writing at it's finest.
OnlineBootyCall.com (semi-NSFW), a division of Mobeze, Inc., is proud to announce that they have received only one confirmed report of marriage since their Web site's inception three years ago.
Moses Brown, Founder and CEO:
Reaching the one million member mark with only a single reported marriage is a tremendous accomplishment. We don't ask for your life story because we don't care. We think online dating should be easy and fun and not a lot of work. We want members to party and have fun. Our motto is: 'Finding the pieces without the puzzle.'
Brilliant. OBC deserves all the publicity they get from this.
Read the release in it's entirety.
Technorati Tags: online+dating
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July 31, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Video sharing site GoFish is promoting it's online reality contest, American Dream Date, by posting footage on other video sharing sites. Jet Set energy drinks are the sponsor of the show, which is using social networking to build it's brand.
Listen to the podcast (1m34s, 2.2 MB). Read more at ClickZ.
Technorati Tags: gofish, jet set
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July 26, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Much of my work in the online dating industry involves working with startups looking for a way to leapfrog their way into a market-leading position in a particular niche. Other times it's developing new growth strategies for established sites that are looking to crack the top 10, or struggling to stay there.
I've spoken with many startups consisting of a single person with an idea and the drive and ambition to see their vision realized. The one thing almost every one of these people lack is funding. It's near impossible to raise VC for a startup dating site these days, the risk factor is off the charts. This leaves most people to hatch their idea and work on the site when they come home from work and on weekends. A select few are able raise angel financing from friends and family to work full time on their labor of love.
A typical call from a dating site startup goes something like this:
I paid a developer a lot of money for a site and the developer has become unresponsive to my ongoing needs. I'm not sure how much to spend on marketing, or where to spend it. I don't have a strategic plan for moving forward, and I feel overwhelmed thinking of everything I have to accomplish in order to launch, let alone achieve profitability.
They can't launch with a 1/2-finished site, or worse, launch with a broken site that doesn't meet the minimum requirements of today's online daters. They have a To Do list as long as their arm and not enough time in the day to get things done. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Or, as is often the case, the caller has a live site not getting the traction they expected after three, six or even nine months. The person has usually burned through what they consider a significant amount of capital and earned a lot of grey hairs for their efforts. This is especially frustrating, they have earned their startup battle scars and need a fresh strategy for getting out of the red.
Most people can't afford a typical five-figure consulting engagement, and all dating site startups need similar help. To this end I am putting together a new consulting product to address the needs of startup dating sites.
Typical startups have a different problem set than established players. The new consulting arrangement will cover issues common to all dating site startups. Generally things will start out broad in scope, further refinement of the focus of the engagement occurs naturally as familiarity and understanding grows between us.
The new practice will be structured to reflect the where the company is in it's life-cycle; startup, crossing the chasm, mainstream adoption to exit strategies. I suspect most interest will be in the startup mode, although I have been speaking with several sites who are mid-tier and need a push to progress to the next level.
To manage time and costs, I'm testing the new Ether pay-per-call service. It's easy to schedule a call where we can address a predefined list of questions. You provide the initial list and I will suggest additional topics prior to the call. From this list, during the call we will begin to develop a plan of action tailored for your specific circumstances. You get the benefit my years of experience in a condensed a la carte format where you can purchase as much time and expertise as you need.
The first phone call is an hour long minimum and will be used to establish a baseline status of your company, site, resources available, expectations and goals. Additional hours can be easily added. More often than not, the initial discussion and questions bring about more of the same as we zero in on your specific needs.
If you are seeking insights into how to accomplish any of the following goals for your dating site or social networking service, this new offering may be right for you.
- Drive more traffic to your site
- Increase conversion rates
- Free or paid subscription
- Service differentiators
- Marketing strategy
- New features (VOIP, chat, mobile, games, anonymous calling)
- Comprehensive site evaluations
- Other specific issues you define
All calls are confidential and you will receive an brief summary outlining key points of discussion.
Call Me to schedule time on the phone, affordable advice immediately. Get the information you need, when you need it. No long term consulting arrangements, contracts or hassle.
Technorati Tags: consulting, startup
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Features | Finance | Marketing | Mobile | Research | innovation | niche
July 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 BeMyEx is a spoof site promoting the new movie My Super Ex Girlfriend. The intro video reminds many of the LOST tv show spoof site for the Hanso Corporation, which has been playfully hacked recently.
The BeMyEx site features a fun quiz, your answers move a heart across a timeline, from "true love 4 ever" to "ex by tomorrow."
Video segments like "How to End a Relationship the Right Way", "Warning Signs" and "Top-10 places to end a relationship" were amusing. This is a great way to promote a movie, sort of an anti-MindFindBind.
Technorati Tags: mindfindbind, spoof, viral
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June 22, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
True.com has been ranked as the nation's No. 1 dating site, according to Hitwise's May 2006 report on lifestyle dating Web sites. I'm glad to see this finally happen, what with Match, Yahoo and PlentyofFish saying they are so popular, I'm glad this is finally settled.
True CMO Cornell McGee has been sending a lot of ads and money over to Myspace, I can't visit my page there without seeing True babes. Is a calendar next? True is taking a play from the Plentyoffish playbook. Advertise an upsell opportunity on a site that doesn't quite do it for many people.
If horny men are a niche market, True has it covered. Is there another market they are going after that I'm unaware of? Horny women perhaps? True also announced a triple-digit increase in its multi-million dollar advertising budget. How much is triple digits?
a) $N00 to $N00,000
b) N,000 to N0,000
c) N0,000 to N00,000
d) N00,000 to N00,000,000
I know what it is, care to hazard a guess?
TRUE remains the only online dating service to offer scientifically-based compatibility testing. Take that eHarmony and Chemistry.com.
True press releases are quite the caricature of the company, much like their ads.
Technorati Tags: advertising, true.com
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June 15, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Match has a new tongue-in cheek site at Bachelorism.org. I feel the need to go into Adrants mode when I see this kind of marketing.
This really needed to be a video, not a static PDF. There are so many fun things they could have done.
Where the heck is Dr. Phil? Can you imagine him having a heart-to-heart talk on his tv show set with a bunch of bachelors?
Don't slam men and leave women out of it. Where is the female version with a photo of a woman sitting with a tub of Ben & Jerry's surrounded by a roomful of cats?
I would like to see how this kind of PR affects signups. Do they get any sort of bump from this kind of stuff? Now if they had taken even the tiniest risk and done Subservient Bachelor, that would be hilarious. Subservient Chicken was a viral video clip from Burger King that got 20 million hits in a week. Huge publicity for a real gorilla marketing effort.
Funny thing, searching Adrants for Match brought up link to Truedater, where as part of their launch promotion they posted a fake Paris Hilton profile.
Technorati Tags: subservient+chicken
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June 12, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
 After watching True continue to appeal to lower and lower functions of the brain, my guess was the next round of ads would be comprised of nothing more than a pair of talking breasts. Imagine my surprise when I saw this ad on Myspace. Instead of areola, Myspacers are greeted with ad copy that *almost* makes sense. Instead of joining groups or friend trains, True will help you find new friends. Why would someone pay a site to find friends when they are already on myspace? I can see going from free to paid, but paid to free for just friendship? True slowly gaining a reputation a sex site, why are they talking about love and friendship? This mixed messaging confuses people, or is it just me?
Technorati Tags: sex sells, true.com
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Posted by Dave Evans
Mediaweek talks about Myspace adding program channels designed for advertisers who wants a more controlled environment for their messaging. Photo reviews of 3 million daily uploaded files are planned and FIM is talking with 10 companies a week, the acquisition are nowhere near done yet. Deals with Yahoo Google and MSN for search results and paid search ads are happening as well.
The only questions seems to be if people will stick around Myspace long enough to make rolling out these new initiatives worthwhile. Myspace will have a long tail, longer than Friendster, but how big and how long?
Technorati Tags: myspace
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Posted by Dave Evans
Former Baywatch star Carmen Electra is giving out dating advice for Luvoo.com. Luvoo is publicly traded as of Friday, currently trading at $.74. More on Luvoo, including their free 12-month subscription and plans to use celebrity endorsements for publicity. I wonder who David Hasselhoff is going to shill for?
Technorati Tags: bringbackbaywatch
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June 9, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Mark Brooks has another interview with Jupiter Research's Nate Elliot.
My quick take:
Online Dating market in EU doubling between now and 2009? Maybe 40% tops. Good points about different EU sites maturing at different rates.
Match and Meetic are the big players but there are several large US sites tentatively looking across the pond. When they come ashore, watch out.
"We’ve also found that online daters don’t leave dating sites for social networks."
This may be true for EU but absolutely false in the US.
Mobile dating has always been over-hyped, remember last year when it was the 13th most important feature for online daters? It's a long slow road to adoption, on either side of the pond. US mobile phones lag so far behind EU and Asia, no wonder we're slow to adopt mobile dating. We need GPS and compelling location-based services for it to work in the US.
Good points about video dating, adoption rate continues to be slow. People are not comfortable with it at all. According to the media, the people who are tend to end up on "To Catch a Predator." Apple's built-in iSight cameras on the new MacBooks make it easier than ever to start video-conferencing. Skype video is what's going to drive this and dating may benefit.
Pricing info is spot on. Raising prices is short-term thinking. Pay-by-credits trend may increase as well. How many more people will pay a few bucks for an introduction like on LinkedIn as opposed to $25 a month for a dating site?
I've always said that price is a filter. My $25 a month does not pay for the service, it creates a community of like-minded individuals and keeps out the lower quality browsers.
Daters perceive the difference between dating site and a social networking site as slimmer than ever, and at a price point of $0, the value has to come from more quality matches. I wouldn't be surprised if some dating sites started to more aggressively filter members like eHarmony to justify their price points.
The industry is growing, but at what cost? The top 10 sites continue to enjoy growth of varying degrees while a huge number of sites sit stagnant and due to low operating costs remain operational well past their sell-by date.
Technorati Tags: price+elasticity, credits, video+dating
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June 8, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Snip from links via Popgadget:
Using a combination of prime-time TV and the Internet, Shaadi Online has helped arrange dozens of marriages since going on air in Pakistan three years ago, shaking up a conservative Muslim culture in which family networks usually decide who weds whom.
Religious leaders accuse the show of promoting a western agenda to harm middle eastern values. Mix growing access to the internet, satellite TV and frustrated middle eastern singles and new ways to meet people are bound to emerge.
How long until Fox has a global TV show about the lives of international Myspacers? "Follow Jamison from the first day he puts up his band's profile to the day he marries the girl he met on Myspace." Not long now.
Technorati Tags: arranged+marriages, global+domination
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June 4, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
The Playboy Channel has a new show, 'Foursome', which follows couples around to see if they end up having sex. Everything, including bedroom cams, will be recorded. Expect a lot of woman on woman action, because it is reality television after all. I do not subscribe, you'll have to read reviews elsewhere.
Technorati Tags: playboy
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Posted by Dave Evans
According to the New York Times via Mediabuyerplanner, dating site Perfectmatch has signed a season-long deal to be integrated into the storyline of Lifetime channel's new series about a dysfunctional dating service, Lovespring International. Throughout the 13-episode season, Perfectmatch.com will appear as a faceless nemesis that steals clients from Lovespring.
"It's much more than having a beer on the counter," said Duane Dahl, chief executive and co-founder of Perfectmatch. "We really look for seamless integration opportunities."
PerfectMatch has done a good job integrating with various movies, from Must Love Dogs to The Break-up. The success of the Lovespring deal depends on if the show makes it past the first few episodes. As we have all seen with increasing frequency the past few years, poorly received network shows tend to disappear without a trace.
Under the terms of the deal, Perfectmatch bought commercial time during episodes of Lovespring International and Lifetime will buy online ads on Perfectmatch.
Recently I reviewed the LEK dating show pilot. Not sure what is going on with that.
Technorati Tags: perfectmatch
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June 1, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
On the heels of the confusingly-named MindFindBind featuring Dr. Phil, Match.com is offering the Match Starter Kit, free, for a limited time only.
First up is a marketing pitch featuring a perky, doe-eyed "relationship expert" going over all the features of the site. The Cleavage meter was pegged at 11, very distracting.
Next up, a John, Stewart look-alike talking about writing a power profile, followed by photo advice, complete with terrible audio quality. Then comes a segment on how to search. Then back to the perky expert talking about managing your dating life.
The majority of the content is so obvious it made me cringe. Where are the hints, tips and tricks to get the most out of your dating experience? The stuff specific to Match that you don't learn in books or from dating experts?
Most useful was the art of emailing section. Email Etiquette is the number one, and first, faux pas most people commit on dating sites. The Taking It Offline portion was very good, surprisingly, says this jaded expert.
A surprising amount of the copy was a bit too close to the ProfileDoctor Personal Ad MakeOver copy, but that's what happens when we began offering the precursor to the starter kit three years ago, albeit without the video and Flash.
Overall, Match did a great job with the starter kit. There is no way they can start charging for this though, unless they continue to add content, which is doubtful when they have to focus all their energy on Happen Magazine.
If I could just hire someone to go out on dates for me, now that I would pay for.
Press Release.
Technorati Tags: match.com, profile+writing
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May 31, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
For singles, getting their 411 into someone's hands in a bar can require a lot of strategery. Flirtbucks are cards people share to let others know they are interested in them.
Each Flirtbuck is similar in size to a business card, containing a 16 digit code tied to the users online profile at the Flirtbucks website.
The site is very clean and clear and the copy is engaging. It's the concept I have a hard time with. Flirtbucks are definitely going to be more of an option for guys and four cards for $10 is expensive compared to sharing your business card or personal digits. I can't tell you how many people I've contacted after they have shared their Myspace or LinkedIn username.
Then there is still the nagging problem of how to penetrate the person's circle of friends. If someone comes up with a product or service that address that, they will be rich. Once you are in, you are free to chat until someone bounces you out of the circle. It's a very effective border patrol style you see happening in bars all the time.
Handing off what looks like an Amex Black card before receding into the background while hoping your expensive gamble doesn't end up in the women's room trash can is certainly going to appeal to some people. Definitely a novelty item. Probably good for speed dating events and concerts as well.
Flirtbucks is Patent Pending. No link to the filing and I'm pretty sure this has been done before.
Technorati Tags: flirtbucks
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May 25, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I've been doing a lot of podcasting about online identity recently. and x+1 came up during a recent conversation. Match.com is right on the home page as a client. I believe Match is using the X+1 Marketing Optimization platform. Supposedly good for conversion rates of 25% to 200%. I wonder how much that costs them.
Technorati Tags: conversion+rates
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Posted by Dave Evans
ComScore World Metrix says nearly one in seven Internet users worldwide had visited MSN Spaces in April of 2006. Unique visitors to MSN Spaces has more than doubled in the past 12 months, from 41.65 million to 101 million. Amazing growth, just goes to show how much easier it is to gain market share based on existing user base, in this case MSN.
Technorati Tags: MSN+spaces
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May 23, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Things have been a bit crazy around here, what with the 100-year flood and 10 inches of rain. Reports of cows and cars floating down local rivers, where is my Arc?
Worldfriends enables website operators to add a self-branded dating channel to their sites. WFN caters to partners and end users internationally by operating in 20 different countries and in five different languages - English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Dominic Penaloza, CEO:
If you want to socialize, there’s nothing worse than an empty bar or empty website. Our partners know this and see the significant value created by our network approach. The private label nature of our operation allows partners to have their cake and eat it too, in the sense that they are able to enhance their branding and traffic while simultaneously adding a popular new service to their total offerings. We’re happy to reach our 200th partner and look forward to welcoming several hundred more. The more partners we can add, the better it is for the entire network.
WFN signs eight partnerships a month. 680,000 members, 1k new members daily. WFN’s 200 partners include well known media brands such as ESPN, STAR TV, and China Times, Internet Service Providers such as Taiwan’s dominant ISP Hinet and Japan’s So-net, a unit of SONY group, leading websites such as Japan.com, Mail.com and Fresheye.com, and also popular blog sites such as Japan-Zone.com, and Shanghaiist.com.
Technorati Tags: world+friends
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May 18, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
According to Marketing VOX, Google Video has been updated. Still not up to par with YouTube but getting better.
Google, which provided a special site for video-makers with many titles to upload, is promoting the new video service via a program that coincides with "National Break-Up Day," June 2, and the release of the film "The Break Up," starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn.
Google is asking people to upload their break-up videos, which I believe is going to result in either very sad or hilarious viewing.
Technorati Tags: brea
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May 16, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Spark Networks has removed the word Connection from their African American Community, BlackSinglesConnection. BlackSingles seems to go to a site with a different look & feel. No word on the additional features Spark plans on adding in the near future. I'm not so sure taking an axe to the domain name is going to make the site more recognizable.
Technorati Tags: blacksingles, spark+networks
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Posted by Dave Evans
Eharmony has tapped Philip Armstrong for the Chief Marketing position. Based on initial comments in Adweek, Armstrong sounds like he is going to create a social network for eHarmony members. This is certainly a new direction for the #3 Dating site (depending on the day of the month or the stats you pay attention to). Several competitors have launched social networking-type features, results have been mixed to date.
Eharmony members either love or hate not being able to browse profiles, the duality is clear, there is no middle ground, at least for the members I've spoken with. It remains to be seen how they respond to people wanting to add them to their Pal list, rate their photos and spam them, all common to the current crop of social networking services.
Eharmony is going to have to do things differently, or risk alienating the current members and who knows how new recruits will react to the new feature? Perhaps an opt-out option is in order. How will this affect the marketing strategy? Remember when Match had a social networking feature? I'm talking 3 years ago, but, join me in the chorus, they chose not to market the capability. Can you imagine where Match would be now if they did?
What is the elevator pitch for, "We're going to be like MySpace, for older, serious singles who really just want to get married instead of being force-fed the latest 20-something trend of which we most likely have no understanding of or interest in."
Eharmony spent more than $60 million advertising in 2005. No doubt a good portion of the 2006 budget will have to go towards explaining what social networking to members.
No word on how eHarmony's plans will be affected by Yahoo's social networking patent.
Technorati Tags: eharmony, social+networking
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May 11, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Last week I got a call out of the blue from the wife of an old friend of mine. I was at their wedding a few years ago, busy lives and distance have made it difficult to stay in touch. She had an old cell number for me, but Googled me, found the blog, and viola, 40th birthday party here I come. If it wasn't for the blog, would she have found me?
Yaho Personals and Reunion.com have gotten together to make searching for people a whole lot easier.
Reunion members who are looking for past connections and focused on dating will be directed to Yahoo! Personals to continue to meet and communicate with others who match their dating needs. Yahoo! Personals will also provide relevant services and helpful tips through content and offers to the millions of Reunion.com members who have indicated they are interested in dating. Similarly, Yahoo! Personals’ users will be directed to Reunion.com to find, reconnect and stay in touch with others by accessing Reunion.com’s People Search and unique Who’s Searching for You? features.
The two services are "creating opportunities to further increase their distribution and marketing channels while offering relevant and topical content to users." I'm not so sure about Yahoo's "targeted precision marketing efforts". There isn't much of a connection between reunions and dating, this is a traffic swap. Either you are looking for friends from college or high school or you are dating people in your area code. Yahoo has saturated their own network and needs to find new partners to market to. Reunion's 25 million members fit the bill nicely.
Technorati Tags: reunion.com, yahoo+personals
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May 9, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Yahoo! is experimenting with building its own "verticals," or web pages designed for a specific user. The idea is to figure out on the fly, through the terms the person uses, whether he is gay, old, divorced, adventurous, or anything else that could be a group--in the best cases, taking him to one of a half-dozen planned specialty sites.
Parsing profile data to figure out the demographics and orientation of members has two primary benefits. The first, which they will actively promote, is a more personalized user experience for new and existing Yahoo Personals members.
At first glance it seems like Yahoo is trying to throw "hundreds of people" at what Matchmaker did years ago. Members would align themselves with a particular silo during the signup process, segmentizing members into sexual orientation and geographic slices. When Date.com acquired Matchmaker recently, they removed the silos and threw everyone back into one large dating pool.
The second is what I consider the real reason Yahoo is embarking on the initiative. Targeted advertising based on profile content. The benefits of this across all Yahoo properties is enormous. Think of the millions of photo sharing, Yahoo360 and MyYahoo pages out there for the parsing. Tying in personal attributes via Yahoo properties is going to create a much richer dating profile, to say the least.
These so called "verticals" are really part MyYahoo, with a dating twist. It will be interesting to see how Yahoo initially groups people initially. Six groups is not a lot for millions of people. I bet it's going to pretty vanilla at first as they roll out the functionality. They aren't doing anything more than a specialized database query, which is what members already to when they say they only want to see young, tall, Asian, rich people within 2 miles of their zip code.
I worked on a similar concept in 1996 where profiles were parsed and communities of interest were built on the fly, which was very cool to work on and way ahead of it's time but didn't scale well.
Just thinking about the scale, size and complexity of the project is mind-boggling. Taking disparate Yahoo properties (fiefdoms) into consideration, this is a big project.
When compared to Chemistry.com, it looks like this could be what cements Yahoo at the #1 position for a long time to come.
More info at Forbes.
Technorati Tags: yahoo personals
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April 27, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
This just in from the Yahoo PR machine:
Ask Desiree is a new portal with tons of great dating tips, polls and features. “Ask Desiree” allows singles to “ping” their dating questions to Desiree, check out fresh date activities and get advice on how to spiff up their online profile, all for free. Plus, Desiree comes to the rescue of singles with her “Eject a Date” function, a Plan B for daters in distress. Skeptic singles can have bail out messages sent to their mobile during the date — just in case. To see Desiree in action, check out: http://personals.yahoo.com/askdesiree
I was wondering when they would launch something along the lines of Match's Happen Magazine. Supposedly the questions are sent in by real people. We all know that is not the case. They would be better off with a celebrity or dating coach.
I would like to see the traffic data for Happen Magazine, if someone at Match would be so kind as to send that along. What are you seeing happen at Happen?
What Yahoo got right:
Helping singles make the most out of their online dating experience is an important role for all dating sites.
Providing date activities based on your zip code is a great idea, very helpful. A search for kite flying in 02118 returns a list of public parks. No comment about taking someone kite flying on a date.
They link the relationship test to the "Find Sensational Singles", smart way to drive more people to take the test.
Profile help via Flavor Up Your Dating Profile contains various canned options and open ended questions, some are good, some are not so good. Some are terrible. Was any of this stuff user tested?
Where they missed the mark:
The entire operation is clearly focused on 20-somethings. What Yahoo completely missed is that it's the over 35 crowd that needs this kind of service. Why is Desiree a 60's go-go dancer with thigh-high boots? Yahoo staff, feel free to chime in and explain yourselves.
Guilty of gratuitous use of Flash. it can be slow and unresponsive, a total turn off. Even the form to send in a question is Flash and why don't they don't ask for your email address?
The whole "Eject a Date" concept is terrible. If you are on a date that is not living up to your expectations and have to rely on a fake call or email to get out of it you need to learn how to read people better on the phone before you go out with them. After getting in a huff about this, I can't even find it on the site.
Yahoo needs to go back to the drawing board with this one.
Technorati Tags: yahoo+personals
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April 26, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
As the reputation and identity management market continues to heat up, last week's press release from iKarma made my head spin trying to figure out the core message. The press release is a perfect example of trying to say too many things and ending up frustrating the reader. It's imperative that companies stay away from what I call Buzzword Bingo when attempting to promote their companies.
"Viral Marketing Pandemic Unleashed"
"iKarma Mixes Viral Marketing and Social Networking With Word-of-Mouth and Reputation Management"
"Get Viral and Sticky, RSS Linked and Web 2.0 Clique"
If I was a small business owner reading this I would be quite confused. Any company needs to clearly explain the problem, the core offering (solution), what are the benefits over how I spend my hard-earned dollars currently, how much does it cost and finally how do I learn more about it? Unless you hit these marks the release falls flat, as is the case here.
Then again, I took the time to read the release and wrote about it.
Technorati Tags: identity, ikarma
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April 24, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
The New York Times article about Myspace is causing quite the commotion. The Social Software Weblog mentions the Tim O'Reilly post about 100,000 people making friends with the Wendy's hamburger. If corporations are going to pony up $35k so I can put a hot dog or a Lexus on my pal list more power to Myspace, that kind of money is not going to be thrown at them for very long.
This all started back when Friendster started kicking off people who were signing up as inanimate objects. I thought it was great to be friends with the Grand Canyon and the Eiffel Tower. Who says you have to be yourself all the time on the interweb? Being someone other than yourself does not necessarily detract from the overall value of the community.
As for contextual advertising rivaling friendships on social networking sites, see my earlier post, Behavioral Targeting Beats Contextual Targeting.
Technorati Tags: hamburgler, myspace, behavioral+targeting, contextual+targeting
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Posted by Dave Evans
Adrants sez that in a recent study on an internet advertising campaign for Panasonic found that:
Behavioral targeting identified and reached 50.3 percent more imminent buyers of Panasonic plasma TV's than contextual targeting. The study, by Next Century Media using Insight Express across 1,146 respondents, also found the cost to reach each potential buyer was 50 percent less than contextual targeting.
When considering a plasma TV purchase, people on the receiving end of the behavioral targeted ads showed a 67.6 percent higher preference for the Panasonic brand than those reached by contextual targeting. The study also showed a 168.9 percent advantage for behavioral targeting over run of network in terms of increasing the likelihood of buying the Panasonic brand.
Interesting.
Technorati Tags: behavioral+targeting, contextual+targeting, puppy
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April 18, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Ad Age on talks about singles flocking to Myspace from Match.com. The novelty has worn off and dating sites have not stepped up to the plate with new features to keep up with consumers. BindMindFind and $200 couple's therapy do not a healthy industry make. Couples counseling is more of a Google Local kind of service, but if you want to pay a dating site more money to stack the deck in your favor, go for it.
Lisa Skriloff states that CL is drawing away daters from traditional sites. Lisa, I don't see Craigslist taking much away from traditional dating sites, where's the data to back that assertion up? Unsubstantiated claims drive me crazy.
Then we have Teamdating, where you get to meet their friends and their friends get to meet your friends, or something to that effect. Are people demanding they want to go out on a first date with their friends around? This is new to me.
Good intel: Match.com spent $54.2 million on ads last year, while eHarmony spent $61.6 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
More than 1/5 of the entire dating industry revenue went to ads for both companies, and Yahoo wasn't even mentioned.
Yahoo Personals Premiere had "solid early growth over the past 18 months." I assume that is shorthand for "early interest has flattened out."
Jim Safka was telling people that Chemistry.com is "intended to draw in affluent individuals who haven't online dated before." I have not heard this "affluent individuals" phrase from Match, Chemistry is Match's response to eHarmony walking away with their customers, affluent has nothing to do with it. Rich people like to take tests and middle-class rely on intuition?
New advertising campaigns? I haven't seen them. All my brain registers are Eharmony ads and those Mate1 ads popping up everywhere. I wish for all the money they are spending that Mate1 would make them more memorable. They are advertising for brand impressions, not call-to-action. Big mistake.
Pretty soon people will have their dating site running in their taskbar with presence detection, voice and third-party enhancements like testing and search. We will look back and wonder why we had to actually visit a website to view profiles and search for people. See Meetro as an example.
Technorati Tags: match.com, mate1, teamdating
Comments (6)
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March 21, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I personally don't pay much attention to dating and social networking site rankings. I leave that to Hitwise and Comscore. It's Yahoo, Match, Eharmony, Spark and Friendfinder in the US. Everyone else is fighting for the free and niche eyeballs. For sure, some are fighting better than others but that's the game right there.
When it comes to Europe, the numbers are even more difficult to compare. SparkNetworks, which is a conglomerate of over a dozen dating sites, has overtaken PerfectMatch, a single website. Huh?
Month after Comscore confuses networks of sites with single sites, dating sites and social networking. How many years until they get it right? I know the lines are blurring, but dating makes far more money than social networking. Who are these rankings for? Consumers don't pay attention to them, which leaves industry, and the data are so broken as to be unusable in any real strategic planning.
I want to hear about Meetic. They were battling Match for #1 in EU. Now Yahoo comes in and takes the top spot? True.com is the #4 dating site in Europe?
Nielson can't even get enough panelists to visit the sites to complete their top 15 rankings.
I bet anything over 10th spot isn't much more than 25,000 members in reality, and even less paying members. Is anyone using this data to gain a competitive edge?
Technorati Tags: comscore, hitwise
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March 12, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
A while back I created a script for comparing the Alexa ranking of a group of websites.
Alexaholic has done the same thing, albeit much nicer looking. Glad to be able to replace my hack with a nicer option. I hear that Alexa is now using dating from sources other than the toolbar, which has been quite US-centric and not very reliable. Make sure to click the tabs for the type and range of data, refreshes in place, very smooth.
alexa charts by alexaholic
Technorati Tags: alexa, traffic
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March 3, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
About a year ago I signed up for Dating on Demand, the Comcast cable channel for viewing dating video profiles. I received an email from them today, which was a bit of a surprise. I thought they had taken the service out to pasture long ago, because they aren't marketing it at all. It's been so long, the email is totally out of context and almost ended up in my spam filter. To top it off, the email assumes I am a woman looking for a man.
Where to begin with what is wrong with DoD? Hire email copywriters, focus on message clarity, use gender-less marketing copy. Tell me when your film crew will be in my city instead of leaving me hanging for a year and then sending out a clueless email.
I live in Boston, if you can't get to my city in over a year you have bigger problems than your revenue-less business model. How about outsourcing the filming or renting a satellite studio for a weekend, you could do 25 cities in one weekend? How difficult is that?
Technorati Tags: comcast, dating+on+demand
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February 23, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
True.com founder Herb Vest has applied for a patent to improve ad targeting. The application is for a "Method for improved targeting of online advertisements." Take a look at the patent application for the details.
Patent applications are difficult to understand and the ambiguity makes it difficult to really grok what is being patented. After a quick scan I think the application is about mining dating profiles for demographic information which would be shared with advertisers. This is something I've been advocating for years, and written about in detail.
One of the most obvious benefits of dating site advertising is local advertisers. Once we know your zip code, local ads are a snap. Health, entertainment and finance industries would love to get ahold of your profile data, where else do people expose so much about themselves in a public forum?
From the application:
...Advertiser can use that information and categorize users using criteria such as age, gender, location, education, income level, or any other data field of the profile information.
In an example, a dating service may collect user information such as name, age, gender, location, education, annual income, and smoking preference during a user registration process. This profile information, containing both the actively and passively collected information, is extremely valuable to a company who may be interested in targeting their advertisements to certain groups of users who have responded positively to specific placements of an advertisement.
For instance, a dating service may be interested in acquiring additional females with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000. The profile information collected by the advertiser may show that females in that income group respond best to a certain advertisement on a specific financial web site. The advertiser can then shift resources toward those advertisements that best help them achieve their goal.
In the last part, why mention customer acquisition then targeted ads? Confusing.
Several references to dating sites and true.com throughout the application. No doubt True will use this to increase advertising revenue. Does anyone know if a company like Amazon has this type of patent already in place?
Previous posts related to advertising and behavioral targeting.
Technorati Tags: behavioral+targeting, contextual+advertising
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February 15, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Mother's, listen up. Chances are, your 17 year old daughter is probably 1/2 naked on Myspace. If that wasn't disturbing enough, Playboy is looking for (Not Safe For Work) the sexiest women of Myspace, which will be included in a nude photo pictorial. Anyone with two fake ID's will be considered. Could this be the new version of the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue?
Update: Om Malik has more.
Technorati Tags: myspace, playboy
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Posted by Dave Evans
It would seem that dating sites are getting smarter about leveraging the hype about Valentine's Day. Date.com sponsored what may be the worlds longest date, Consumating let potential cupids place heart icons on people's pages and Cupid.com set the world record for speed dating, 36,000 in one night.
Technorati Tags: valentines+day
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Posted by Dave Evans
Userplane has parntered with Broadband Enterprises to launch its video ad network. Emarketer projects streaming video spending will nearly triple to $640 million in the next two years, and grow to $1.5 billion by 2010.
Michael Jones, co-founder and CEO of Userplane:
Streaming ads are a much-needed advance in the maturation of the Internet and will help ensure its future profitability. Companies like Broadband Enterprises understand this and Userplane is excited to provide the platform for publishing this nascent generation of video ads.
Userplane is currently serving more than 200 million impressions a month and growing by 5,000 new communities a week.
Technorati Tags: userplane
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February 10, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Nate Elliot at Jupiter Research has come up with an interesting concept for online dating sites called targeted discounting strategies. This is a concept worth serious deliberation and consideration.
Before going into pricing strategies, it's important to understand that his clever sound bite has a fatal flaw, discounting. Why spend a lot of time trying to figure out discounting strategies when in fact a cost increase could be and effective revenue opportunity?
Some people argue that charging people $50 a month is too much. I say it's not enough. Yahoo raised their Premium service cost to around $35. Not nearly high enough to justify the word "Premium.
Eharmony got it right, $50 monthly wager that it will marry me off faster than several months at $25 with the "commoners", sniff. People use price as a filter. That's why matchmakers charge $5,000.
At Chemistry and Eharmony, the value is not only the enhanced matching algorithm, you're paying more so you don't have to spend hours each week looking at profiles. Paying more to do less.
Funny how on Myspace it's the exact opposite. All people do is look at other people's profiles. Last week I looked at a friend's profile, and 30 minutes later I counted I had looked at 100 additional profiles.
Last night I saw a tv show that said 40,000 women are abducted into prostitution each year. Myspace is a prime hunting ground for this sort of thing. That's not going to happen on Chemistry or Eharmony.
There are no links between profiles on dating sites. However, FastCupid has done a good job creating blogs and groups, I spend more time there now because I'm interacting with others in my zip code. In fact, we're going out for drinks soon. Low pressure, just a group of singles. Try doing that on most other dating sites.
Chemistry reminds me of the DNA machines on CSI. Swab in mouth, put in reader, out spits a piece of paper showing if two people are connected.
The email I get is pretty much split 50/50, some people love it, others hate it. People are happy with matches, and disappointed because the service is so broken.
Match had a $500 service at one point, I think it lasted about 3 months.
Up-selling existing customers seems like a smart move, it's all the rage now. What about the new daters? I hear Match will not actively promote the service until Q3. They have to convert as many people over to Chemistry from Match as possible, where the cost per acquisition is as low as Yahoo marketing across their own network. Once the databases are full, the Match marketing jalopy will kick into effect and we'll be BinderMindingFinder to our hearts content.
Back to targeted discounting strategies. Nice idea, but too complicated for most dating sites. If targeted advertising on dating sites doesn't even work, how difficult is it to implement different pricing models?
Before we get into that, what could some of these discounts be?
Repeat browsers- been to a dating site's home page four times without signing up? Read the cookie in their browser and give them the first month for $9.00. It's better than nothing or losing them to the True Cleavage campaign.
Active user- Someone sends 50 emails a month, 25 flirts, keeps profile updated, new photos all the time. Treat them like a superstar. They do more for your service than you ever will. They are as close as you'll ever get to loyal members. At least for three months.
Zip code- if a particular zip code didn't have many people in it, reduce the rate until it fills up, 25% off.
Race/gender/age- too many old ladies, not enough young gay women, 15% off.
End of subscription- 2 weeks until they leave, 20% off. Some sites offer variations on this already. Most notably PerfectMatch. Balancing the strength of the offer without badgering is key.
Zip code jam-packed? Hot revenue zones need their own special incentives. Time to put in your thinking caps.
Technorati Tags: marketing, pricing
Comments (4)
| Category: Marketing
February 8, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I've been going to Starbucks looking for evidence of their Starbucks partnership and I have yet to find anything more than the Starbucks card with the hearts on it, but no mention of Yahoo Personals.
The Espresso Dating partnership includes a link on the Starbucks website and Yahoo Personals, but what about at actual Starbucks stores? Am I missing something here? Why make this a web promotion and not in-store? I've fallen for countless POS (point of sale) come-ons at Starbucks over the years. Coffee mugs, CD's and stuff like that. How difficult is it to do a little tabletop ad for Yahoo Personals?
Is two free coffees all it takes to get people to sign up for a dating site?
The Espresso Dating guide mentions Starbucks a few times, but it's way too cutsey. If a woman took me to a yard sale for our first date I would be skeptical she was my type. Dressing up in my Sunday best to go play snooker? Come on, who writes this stuff?
From how I read the fine print, you get your card three weeks after the first billing date. Does that mean two months after I join Yahoo Personals I get my 2 free coffees?
The promotion is only good for another week. I'm surprised they didn't extend it further, a great partnership in the making if they can figure out how to do better cross-promotion.
It will be interesting to see when consumers start doing more comparison shopping when it comes to selecting a dating site. Could it get as aggressive as long-distance providers? Last time I switched LD services I got $100 and a plane ticket.
How about a Red Sox or concert ticket? Match could do that, they are cousins to Ticketmaster after all. More to come on marketing partnerships soon.
The amount of amazingly simple and effective marketing tactics that could be utilized at big dating sites to drive signups gives me butterflies. So far, it's been over-promise and under-deliver. Maybe iDate kick-started people and we'll start to see some more compelling marketing and advertising.
Tip for dating sites: Go buy a stack of Starbucks cards, load them up with $10 and give them away as promotions.
Five free coffees to the Yahoo Personals staffer that sends me the number of people who have taken the Starbucks card offer.
Technorati Tags: yahoo+personals, starbucks
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| Category: Marketing
January 25, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Late night TV last night was full of dating commercials and talk show references. Early on I saw several Eharmony commercials and as the night progressed a few for Quest personals with blonde on bed in nightie doing the 1-900 pitch. Doesn't Vertrue makes something like 80% of its personals revenue from phone sex? Still a viable market.
The best part was when Jay Leno was joking about Match.com's MindFindBind, saying it should be called "Jump pump dump."
Technorati Tags: match.com, vertrue
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January 18, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
During my daily read of several dozen blogs, I came across this amazing new advertising at TechWeb. The top corner of the page appears to lazily peel off the page, revealing an ad in the upper right corner. Very cool.
[tags: advertising]
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Posted by Dave Evans
Local Boston webhead James let me know about his website, a growing catalog of online advertising called Adverlicio.us. The name of the site is a spin on the popular social bookmarking service Del.icio.us but actually, since the ads are stored on his site, it's actually more like Furl, which duplicates web pages on it's servers as a sort of file locker.
James is putting together a comprehensive list of dating site ads. it's just starting out now, and heavy on the True ads, but as more people send in banners the site should be a good resource for marketers.
[tags: adverlicious]
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January 17, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Click the thumbnail to see the full image.
#1 Why do people on LoveHappens need my help?
#2 Why is the email called "find someone to help?" I didn't sign up to be a helper. I'm a busy guy, go help yourself.
#3 This is a thinly-vieled attempt a la Friendster to get more members. Listen to the landing page verbiage. "Do you have a few single friends you'd love to see with someone great? Then tell them, and everyone else you know (married people have single friends, too), about LoveHappens." Who is going to fall for this?
#4 At least they are using real people. Perhaps too real.
Yes, I am in quite a mood today.
Update: Wait, there's more. You can spam your friends without even signing into the service. On your account page, it actually says "You are not paying any LoveHappens membership dues at this time — Start now!" Unbelievable. Then, when I tried to unsubscribe, the directions are incorrect. Helpful for them, not so much for me.
[tags: LoveHappens]
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January 16, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Last year Friendster was on the block for a cool $200 million. Shortly after, an astute lottery winner could pick it up for around $20 million. Recently, Viacom performed due diligence on Friendster and came back with an offer for $5 million. Friendster has raised about $15 million from VC over the past few years.
Friendster's eight million monthly visitors, 20 million profiles and an ad-supported revenue model are outweighed by yearly operating costs in the $5 million range which continue to scare away potential suitors. PaidContent has more.
A friend worked on the original sixdegrees.com website (precursor to Friendster circa 1997) and I remember asking what people did on the site, only to hear the big deal was that you could email people you didn't even know were in your network. Big whoop.
MySpace decimated Friendster because they got the music angle and were hip to the kool kids from the get-go. A larger problem was that Friendster never had a concrete identity. In the dating space, I know that women on FastCupid are far more likely to be my type than on Yahoo or American Singles. I'm able to make a purchasing decision based on my experience on visiting many sites as someone in the industry.
What are dating sites doing to woo people that are coming to online dating for the first time? Often times I will ask people to tell me what kind of people drive Mercedes and Kia's. Most say something about the quality of Mercedes and the affordability of a Kia.
When I ask them what type of people go on different dating sites, the only thing I ever hear is, "I've heard of Match" and far less, "I hear Eharmony is for Christians." That's the sum total of branding in the online dating space. I assume that Adult Friendfinder would be mentioned as well, but who's going to tell a complete stranger they know about that site?
It's been a while since I've visited the home pages of the top ten dating sites. I'm willing to be nothing has changed in a year or so. Most will have stock photos on the home page of happy couples and weak or no branding phrase. Pretty much exact same features and pitch on each.
A cup of coffee later, here's what I found on the home pages of the top 10 dating sites from Hitwise.
1) Yahoo has a happy couple photo, and a permutation of a tag line I used at ProfileDoctor 3 years ago, "Better first dates, more second dates." Home page looks like a person who learned HTML last week designed it.
2) Match touts iteself as the largest and seems to have wrestled Dr. Phil from PerfectMatch. Someone in the search marketing group must have gotten promoted, because the top of the page is devoid of any branding and the bottom is hundreds of SEO-friends words and phrases.
3) Eharmony doesn't have a tag line on the home page. It touts a Free personality profile and has the usual happy couple photo.
4) Gay.com has no tag line, just sexy pix.
5) True.com says Live Love Learn and has the couple photo and another of a couple who are about to, or just have, completed a intimate act.
6) American Singles has great-looking people, "Where people Connect."
7) SinglesNet has a hot babe and the tag line "Dating made easy."
8) Plenty Of Fish's home page is a design atrocity, although Markus says that's going to be fixed soon. The pitch is "we are free."
9) Mate1 has a hot babe who's all about intimate dating and free for women.
10) MSN Match has no tag line, but does have a happy couple photo.
Interestingly enough, several sites list their patents on the home page. So consumer research showed that people are more likely to shell out cash if they see a patent number on the home page?
Overall, I was underwhelmed by what I saw. Poorly designed, lame stock photos and weak tag lines.
As a guy, cleavage may get me to a site, but it takes a lot more to keep me there. Where is the excitement and the mystery we associate with meeting people for the first time?
Each of these sites should market themselves different from the others, although this is clearly not the case. I'll be talking about this more in the coming weeks.
[tags: branding]
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January 15, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
Read/WriteWeb mentions a USA Today article which states Myspace has reached 47.3 members. Also of note, MySpace is signing up 160,000 new users A DAY according to MediaPost. Stunning numbers to be certain, but how long will they last?
The USA Today article compares the traffic of Myspace, Facebook, Xanga, Bebo, Friendster, Tribe, LinkedIn and Orkut. Some interesting conspiracy theories about Facebook's links to the CIA have emerged as well.
[tags: myspace]
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January 11, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
I used to work at an advertising agency. Suffice to say I enjoy good advertising. I'm reading "Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands" and thinking about how the dating industry approaches branding and advertising. I came across this ad and have to say this is the most outrageous creative ever to emerge from True.com. Is this the kind of marketing that the industry has to stoop to in order to earn customers? I have seen financial investment sites with pr0n, websites featuring naked newscasters, why not mix pr0n and a dating site? I wonder what her click-through rates look like?
[tags: advertising]
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January 3, 2006
Posted by Dave Evans
ZDNet reports the top 20 advertisers on online personals sites via Nielsen/NetRatings. Yahoo!, InteractiveCorp and MatchNet lead the pack with 83.3% of all ad impressions on personals sites.
[tags: advertising]
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December 9, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Bill Broadbent at Instinct Marketing said:
If the average call cost is $10 and you have a ballpark labor cost of $4 per call (20 minutes with $12 total hourly comp) and say a 20% optimistic closing ratio (from call to paying customer) you're looking at an acquisition cost of $70 per customer. Maybe that would work for the eHarmony's and Perfect Match, but not the common personals site running their current models.
Read the rest of his quote. This is going to be a popular topic as more dating sites start to use call centers to drive customer acquisition.
[tags: customer+acquisition, instinct+marketing]
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December 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
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October 31, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Rich Gosse and Dan Bender have started a website called Podcast Singles Network. Rich interviewed me last week as part of the industry insiders track, we talked about the Meetic IPO, Chemistry.com and the upcoming Internet Dating Confercence.
The site is under construction but you can listen to the podcast.
[tags: podcast]
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October 18, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
In the first half of 2005, eHarmony saw a 67 percent increase in affiliate sales from the same period last year. EHarmony uses Commission Junction, a ValueClick Inc. company, for their affiliate management program.
Steve Hartmann, director of online marketing at eHarmony:
It's very important that our brand be consistent across all our marketing channels. With the help of Commission Junction, plus the remarkable enthusiasm and support of the publishers in its network, we've been able to maintain our premium brand image while driving growth in our subscriber base.
Press release
[tags: eharmony]
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October 14, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Adrants sez TANGO, the singles magazine about lofty issues such as love, life and the pursuit happiness, has doubled its rate base to 200,000 effective with its February 2006 issue. The magazine, which launched as a quarterly, will also shift to bi-monthly publication in 2006.
[tags: tango]
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October 12, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
PerfectMatch is teaming up with "LIVE with Regis and Kelly" for a two week quest to find LIVE assistant producer, Lori, a "Perfect Match."
At ProfileDoctor we do this all the time: interview a newspaper or radio reporter's single friend who subscribes to an online dating site. Find out what's working, their feelings about the experience, what they want to accomplish and collect humorous anecdotes. Next, help the person revise their personal ad, then do another interview a few weeks later. Always entertaining an informative before & after results.
Smart Move on PerfectMatch's part. They get consumer marketing in a way that no other dating site can touch at the moment. And they do it for a lot less than what Eharmony and Match pay for their advertising campaigns.
PM affiliates can earn up to $140 per sale and $1.50 Per Lead. They are also trying to give away a million free subscriptions. For comparison, True.com and American Singles pay $4.25 an email. Word on the street is that they probably outperform PM.
From PM's Commission Junction information:
Drive a 1 month Subscription and earn $27.50 per sub.
Drive a 2 month Subscription and earn $30 per sub.
Drive a 3 month Subscription and earn $50 per sub.
Drive a 4 month Subscription and earn $50 per sub.
Drive a 6 month Subscription and earn $75 per sub.
Drive a 12 month Subscription and earn $115 per sub.
Affiliates can add on an additional $25 per sale by hitting easy to reach incentives.
Thanks Markus!
[tags: profiledoctor, perfectmatch]
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October 2, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
One of the men who was invited to participate in the Dr. Phil show featuring PerfectMatch is not happy with the experience.
[tags: perfectmatch]
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September 21, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Members of Salon Personals received this email, reproduced in it's entirety.
As you've probably noticed Salon Personals has undergone some major changes over the past 10 days. We're going to try and explain what happened, why, and how it will give you the best personals experience on the web.
First, Spring Street Networks, the company which formerly powered Salon Personals, ran out of funding and was recently acquired by Various Inc., which has rechristened it FastCupid. We've now completed our initial integration period where we've migrated members to the new and supportable platform.
What does this mean for you?
There will be some changes, such as an alternative billing system and added functionality, but fundamentally Salon Personals will remain the same. You'll still be part of an elite group of people who read Salon or one of the other sites in our network like the Onion, Nerve and the Village Voice, so that you have the best prospects around. You'll still use a familiar interface, still benefit from a strict privacy policy and, with any luck, you'll have even better success at finding that perfect someone.
What happened last week?
Due to an unfortunate sequence of events we were forced to change systems before we had all the kinks worked out. We can't apologize enough for the problems that we've caused and are working overtime to fix all the issues and make sure that the new site retains all your information and settings.
We believe that we have resolved most problems but if you're still experiencing a problem please e-mail our support department at salon@fastcupid.com or use our online form and we'll resolve your problem as fast as possible. Our Customer Support team is available 24/7 to help you with everything from lost passwords to how to personalize your experience and increase your chances of finding true love (or whatever!). Got a question, suggestion, or problem? We're here to help... 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
What now?
Now that we have most of the issues resolved we plan on customizing the site so that it works better than ever. Since our initial launch, we've implemented more than 30 design and functionality customizations resulting directly from member suggestions. Because we're starting from scratch (the old company ran out of funding and there was no way to upgrade their software), some changes may take a while. Hang in there, and we promise we'll get there soon!
Unlike before, we now have dozens of programming gurus working overtime to build a better site based on what you (and people like you!) have told us they want. Those changes include:
Richer profiles that give you more opportunities to tell people who you are and find out who they are
A subscription option, in addition to the familiar pay-per-use points system
A way to share private photos , testimonials, and messages with your friends
Blogs and member groups so you can share your thoughts with other members
Bigger photo albums and the ability to make photos private
Free instant messaging and chat rooms
How will the change affect who sees my profile?
We're not merging the FastCupid database with anything else. The potential dates and mates you hear from are still from the same partner sites as always. And we have a strict privacy policy so your information will not be resold or given away.
How do I know the profiles I'm seeing are real?
Our goal is to ensure that all profiles on the site are legitimate and of actual people. Under the new system, we allow, and even encourage, "flagging" of any profiles you find questionable. If a flagged profile is determined to be phony, it's promptly deleted.
You're not going to spam me, are you?
We have a zero-spam policy, both for existing members and for potential members. The only mail you'll receive from us is totally controlled by you. We send emails to tell you about potential matches, let you know about new messages in your inbox, and share news and updates about the sites. But you control whether you get those messages or not. You can go to your Account Page and change the settings any time.
A Journey Starts with the First Step
We've just gotten started. It takes a lot of work to redevelop and re-launch a website. But our strength is using technology to offer new and better ways to connect. We have some things in the pipeline, including video profiles and a faster instant messenger that lets you webcam with other members, plus our team always reviews YOUR ideas on new features. We want FastCupid to stay your favorite way to meet new people online and we will work hard to do it. That's our commitment to you.
Max Garrone
Salon Media Group
Salon Personals
[tags: fastcupid]
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September 19, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
National Unmarried and Single Americans Week is September 18 - 24. “National Singles Week” was started by the Buckeye Singles Council in Ohio in the 1980s to celebrate single life and recognize singles and their contributions to society. The week is now widely observed during Sept. 19-25 as “Unmarried and Single Americans Week,” an acknowledgment that many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word “single” because they are parents, have partners or are widowed.
- Number of unmarried and single Americans: 95.7 million
- Percentage of unmarried and single Americans who are women: 54%
- Number of unmarried and single Americans age 65 and over: 14.5 milion
- Number of single parents: 12.2 million
Data from unmarriedamerica.org and the US Census Bureau.
What is your dating site doing to help celebrate with singles? I haven't seen any specific marketing except for a Match.com press release.
[tags: single, research]
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August 29, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
This job posting found on Craigslist.
Title: Online Ambassadors
Location: Work from home. Anywhere in North America.
Schedule: Schedule: Flexible. 15-20 hours/week.
Pay: $1100 for 6 weeks.
Are you a sociable person who loves to meet new people online? Do you have a home computer? If you answered yes to these questions, you can earn nearly $200/week working just a few hours each day on your own time.
Mate1.com needs Online Ambassadors from all North American locations. If you are over 18 years of age, outgoing, courteous and can type reasonably quickly, you can do this work in no more than 15-20 hours per week, at home.
Your mission would be to communicate with our members by internal Mate1 email with a view to familiarizing them with the web site and making them feel a part of the greater Mate1 community. Your work would consist solely of replying to emails from Mate 1 members. The ideal candidate will have some experience with or interest in online dating.
Thanks Markus!
[tags: craigslist, mate1]
Comments (3)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
Posted by Dave Evans
Devlyn Steele, a personal coach, created the Online Dating Kit, a booklet & CD kit to help people figure how how to do online dating. I received an email today stating that Devlyn is discontinuing the ODK affiliate program. I wonder how many units he's shipped, seemed like a useful product.
[tags: online dating kit]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
July 31, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Duane Dahl, CEO of PerfectMatch, wanted me to pass along his response to my post about the father-daughter date scene in Must Love Dogs.
As our team consulted from the early days of the script we are in fact thrilled with our historic integration into this terrific feature film that features an all star cast including Diane Lane, John Cusack and Dermot Mulroney. Warner Bros. has been a terrific partner. Featuring Perfectmatch.com in the trailer and in all tv ads - was truly wonderful and shows how seamless the product placement was.
We look forward to the continued significant lift as the film arrives in theaters....all the way through to DVD sales, and airings via Rentals, Airplanes, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax...and on and on. Keep in mind...this is entertainment and this is a romantic comedy....if this were a movie about site run by an evangelical Christian that discriminated against divorced women and gays and it had our brand attached....THEN we'd be embarrassed and concerned. Our team has been in the dating space since 1995....we can have a little fun for the sake of entertainment - and the audiences are loving this film!
[tags: perfectmatch]
Comments (2)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
July 27, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Details are slowing coming across the wire. Red Herring and a bunch of news outlets have contacted me today trying to make sense of the deal.
One of the questions I get asked most often is what is FriendFinder's real traffic ranking?
12M visitors is what is officially published at ComScore, how much of that is spyware vendors? I expect Markus to chime in on this.
In the meantime, here's a quote from Jack Mardack, Director of Marketing, FriendFinder, Inc.:
I can tell you that 180 Solutions has helped us acquire more than 10,000 new members since August 2003.
This was dated last year.
[tags: friendfinder]
Comments (1)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
July 26, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Adrants mentions the recent Logoworks viral marketing scheme where they created a billboard to look like some guy named Lance who is looking for a date.
The website mentioned on the billboard, datelance.com, actually goes to a LogoWorks recruiting page. Clever use of misdirection.
[tags: logoworks]
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
July 13, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I'm working on a few items related to dating site spam. While I put things together, here
s my current favorite opening line from Russian Brides.
"hi, I very much liked your structure and me more..."
I've received 25 emails like this on Yahoo! over the past few weeks. Each one exactly the same, with different pictures. For some reason, Match doesn't seems to suffer from the same inundation of spam that Yahoo does.
I've responded to a few of the lovelies, we'll see what happens.
Yahoo should at run a filter over their active profiles. How difficult can that be? They have hundreds of customer service reps that could work on this. That would be a fantastic customer relations project. "We're making dating easier, safer and faster for our members."
If they don't do it, which they probably won't, maybe you should think about doing it on your service.
Unfortunately for many free sites, this would reduce the number of active profiles by 40% or more.
[tags: Russian Brides, Yaho]
Comments (3)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Marketing
July 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Date.com is sponsoring it's second cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean "Majest of the Seas, October 14-17. The ship will stop for fresh singles in Nassau and Cococay. Details here.
Are any other dating sites doing live events and cruises? Ever since Match halted Match Events and Match Live, I haven't heard of much going on.
[tags: cruise, singles]
Comments (4)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Events | Marketing
July 7, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Much ado about Alexa rankings lately. It's time to take a hard look at developing an industry standard for ranking dating sites. This is a first pass, hopefully it can be refined over time with feedback and turn out to be something helpful to the industry, advertisers and consumers.
The dating industry, and one could argue that website in general, need a ranking system that is resilient enough to react to changing traffic inflation tactics like spyware, toolbars, link farms and other more uncommon methods on the horizon.
One that takes into consideration the myriad sites out there, paid, free, inexpensive, credit-based, subscription based. Long duration members vs. short, high value vs. low. Getting nookie vs. getting married.
A question to you then. What are the metrics you would use to develop a ranking system that fairly and accurately represents the entire online dating industry?
Some example metrics:
# visitors
# members
# paying members (customers)
% conversion rate
membership duration
customer satisfaction
customer success
Before deciding on the metrics, we need to think about the overall goals of a ranking system. Why is a dating site's Alexa, Comscore or Hitwise rank so important?
An Excel spreadsheet from your CFO and another from the membership director can give you a good look into how your company is doing. Does it really matter if a competitor has N number more profiles than you do?
As long as you're making money and growing your business and delivering what the customer expects, what's the big deal? Consumers most certainly don't judge their decision solely on traffic ranking. They don't say, "this site is free, but it's large and I like the ads, so I'm going to join it." They watch tv, listen to radio ads, surf the Interweb and ask their friends for advice.
If the industry is infatuated with traffic rank, to what ends?
Pre-money valuation?
Preparing to sell your membership list?
Advertising?
Marketing?
Sale of company?
More eyeballs = more ad dollars. However, more members does not necessarily mean better customer experience.
Small niche site with high-value members = more ad dollars.
How would Userplane's ad network value different sites? If I understand correctly, at the moment it's a run-of-network deal, in the future it will be more targeted, at least one would hope.
As an advertiser, things are shifting. I used to think I wanted 50,000 eyeballs. What I really want are the 500 that matter most, that are ready to buy. The high-value eyeballs.
Free sites are made up of relatively low-value members. They are not so serious about dating, mostly giving it a try. Arguable point, yes. Let's have at it. Free dating sites rely on advertising, it's all about the eyeballs. Free sites like Plentyoffish and WebDate make decent money off of advertising, at least that is what I am led to believe.
What about geographic ranking? 500,000 members. Whatever. How many are in my aggregated zip code area? Dating sites would never publish this kind of information, it's too transparent. Consumers would love it. The old "N number of people online" is only useful if you have chat, otherwise who cares if/when people are visiting the site?
Mid-priced subscription-based sites are geared more towards serious daters, although a good portion are casual daters.
Some subscription-based sites try to undercut the competition on price. This hardly ever works. They end up with low-value members. A certain slice of the online dating demographic use price as a filter. Not enough sites leverage this. Price point is a metric as well. Value-per-dollar would be an interesting way to measure a site, but too much trouble to figure out.
If Site A charges $9.95 per month and has 500,000 member and Site B charges $24.95 and has 34,000, which site should be ranked higher? It's a quality vs. quantity argument.
How do you define satisfaction or success? Success for the dating site company is rarely aligned with the goals of it's members. Customer satisfaction is not something we hear about often enough in the industry.
If you're a top 10 site, your popularity is based on the total amount of active profiles and paying members and customer satisfaction. [Insert discussion about definition of active profiles.]
More members tends to attract more members.
High quality members bring additional high-quality members.
Define high-quality members. 450,000 free members means absolutely nothing to an advertiser, it's just a number, and they have no way of judging it past what you tell them about your membership demographics. You're never honest with them anyway, because you would never get their money if you were, and they know that.
Is a dating site "better" because people vote with their wallets and stick around longer?
"I've been on this dating site for 6 months and I can't find anyone decent."
You have extended the lifetime of the customer, yet have failed to satisfy their objective. The promise has been broken, unwritten or not. And your site gets the reward of getting ranked higher than a site that does it's job faster and more efficiently.
Is a higher-percentage of long term customers a good or a bad thing?
One would think from a consumer perspective that high churn rate is a good thing.
Do you think people actually enjoy the online dating experience? That number is probably a lot lower that we would like to think.
How can a dating site improve the experience for members and extend the duration of the membership? What metrics can we use to gauge how effective a dating site is? Relying on # of marriages is one way to look at it, but not the only way.
There's a lot more to this discussion, like I said, this is a starting point. I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Maybe I'm way off on this, maybe all the industry need is Alexa and Hitwise, why air the dirty laundry or bother self-policing or becoming more transparent when things are going along just fine as they are?
Technorati Tags: alexa
Comments (5)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Finance | Marketing | Research | Traffic
June 29, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I decided to merge my thoughts on WebDate and Alexa into one post.
The Interview contains lot's of talk about mobile dating and the future of Webdate. Let me tell you about the mobile dating. Nobody is doing it, yet. In iDate Miami we learned that mobile dating ranked #13 on consumers list of what they value most about a dating service. MatchMobile was never able to get much more than 100,000 paying customers If I remember correctly.
As for the future of WebDate, expect massive loss of members if/when they move to a paid model. Tiered or not, free and #5 doesn't mean much if all you're doing is earning revenue from banner ads. With all the spyware/malware out there, these rankings are useless and Hitwise better smarten up. (Ed:Looks like they did, read on for more about new HitWise ranking system).
Buying crappy traffic from toolbar vendors may inflate your numbers, but those people are usually not serious daters. Someone prove me wrong, please.
Webdate is the 20-something crowd, they don't pay and they have grown up as voyeurs, of course guys like checking out young women with video cams.
Markus has commented over at Online Personals Watch that HitWise is using a new filter which has dropped WebDate from #5 to 15th position.
The drop in rank shows just how much websites rely on low-quality pop-up and spybar traffic to inflate rankings.
Consumers don't care much about traffic numbers, they care about quality. I would like to see the referrer logs and the follow-on links for sites. Where did the traffic come from and where did it go?
If you get thousands of visitors that immediately turn away, should those visitors count towards your aggregated traffic rank?
I have to disagree that Alexa is as useful as Markus thinks it is. Relying on statistics gathered from toolbar installs in inherently flawed and inaccurate for a number of reasons.
A site like Corante caters to an internet demographic that probably doesn't have the Alexa toolbar installed. Many even have Javascript disabled. Then again, people who use free dating sites probably have a ton of toolbars and spyware installed.
A while back OPW or some other site wrote about Bebe.com, a "social networking" site (and I use that terms loosly) getting inordinate amounts of traffic. I looked at Alexa and found this:
Bebo.com gets approximately 6,000 per day, which works out to 180,000 visitors a month.
Bebo is ranked 613 on Alexa.
Corante receives much more unique visitors than 180k per month.
Corante.com is 10,968 on Alexa.
It's unfortunate that I can't measure my traffic apples-to-apples against the other blogs because the Corate link love and GoogleJuice is so tremendous. We have links that haven't been modified for over a year old that are the number one search result on Google.
Now let's look at Technorati. Technorati is a search engine which tracks weblogs as Google tracks web pages.
Google and Yahoo are fine for searches that focus on content which is not date-sensitive. Technorati adds new blog posts seconds after they are created. Much more immediate understanding about what's hot right now.
According to Technorati:
Bebo.com: 817 links from 633 websites (1.29 links per site)
Match.com has 673 links from 503 websites (1.33 links per site)
Yahoo Personals: 433 links from 220 websites (1.96 links per site)
Corante: 7,749 links from 4,057 websites(1.91 links per site)
What does this mean? Corante has much more link love than the other sites. People are talking about us a lot more than the other sites. This changes all the time, depending on press releases, media attention and getting Slashdotted (huge traffic spikes). It's fascinating to watch traffic spikes from media attention, the ensuingGooglejuice (high Google ranking) and then follow-on traffic from news aggregators. Keep in mind that tracking trackbacks on Technorati is leading-edge, and the demographics of the users are decidedly tech-heavy.
Go to Technorati.com yourself and compare your dating site with your competitors.
For those interested in these kinds of things, here is a anti-phishing toolbar from Netcraft.
Comments (6)
| Category: Marketing
June 23, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From the GoogleMeister, Markus
Google has just launched a new beta that allows targeting of image ads by site. Basically you pick what sites on the google content network you want your ads to run on.
For example you could run your ads on plentyoffish.com and on news paper sites like suntimes.com it doesn't matter if the sites you are advertising are related to your content or not.
There are tens of billions of pageviews a day that can be bought for a company that has enough money.
I believe that major brands will get into this in a big way because of the branding aspect, it is far cheaper to reach a million people online then it is to reach them via TV.
To enable Targetting by site in your Google Adwords account do the following. Login Click on My Account Click on User Preferences scroll down to Campaign Types [edit] and click edit. Click on Enable site-targeted campaigns
Once you have saved the next time you create a campaign you are given the option of making it a site targetted campaign.
Thanks Markus.
Comments (0)
| Category: Marketing
June 9, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Over the years I have found several blogs that cover the online dating industry. There are hundreds that cover online dating. I'm not interested in those. I decided to start a list of useful blogs, talk about what makes them worth visiting, and how they can improve.
Feel free to leave a comment with you blog url if you want to be added to the list. I know I'm missing several. I did that on purpose, I want to hear about what you're reading. I'll add it to my blogroll in the sidebar.
Mark Brooks Online Personals Watch
Mike Jones Userplane blog
Judith Meskill Social Software Weblog
David Jackson Internet Stock Blog
Me Online Dating Insider
Not many dating sites have their own blogs, which I find bizarre. Talk about a lost opportunity to communicate with members!
I'm going to talk about Online Personals Watch, the Userplane blog and Online Dating Insider. I'm also going to share a bit about how this blog got to where it is today. I'll get to the others blogs in another post.
Brook's tag line is:
Online Personals News and Commentary
That's pretty close to what he offers, although a little light on the commentary.
Userplane's blog tag line is:
Userplane's ongoing discussion on the business of online community development.
The problem with Mike's tag line is that his has nothing to do with discussion. It's outbound only, press releases and you can't even leave a comments. That's not a blog.
I don't have a tag line, perhaps I need one.
Both Mike and Mark have something to offer online dating industry. That is clear. I read them almost every day and pull from them often. They both are leaving a lot of social capital on the table by not taking full advantage of the power of blogs. Not by a long shot.
Online Personals Watch exists to get exposure which drives consulting gigs. He self-identifies as an online dating marketing expert. Yet he doesn't practice what should be, in theory, preaching to his clients.
Why else would he talk about sexy grandmothers and some of the other embarrassing PR that comes across his desk?
I unabashedly do the same thing. However, there is a lot of crap out there on the newswires that I won't touch because a) it's not worth your time to read and b) I like to think you come here for what's important, not the latest me-too dating or rate-a-date site.
If I could do one thing it would be to have each and every dating site's press release come across my desk for editing before going out to the wires. The quality, even of the top 5 sites, is shaky, if not embarrassing most of the time. Doesn't anyone have any pride in their writing skills?
Jones dips his foot in the editorial waters from time to time. He doesn't want to upset anyone or tarnish his brand.
I know a lot about what's going on, right or wrong, in the online dating industry and I use this blog to tell the world about it. Experience shows that many dating industry insiders read this blog. Some of them actually get something out of what what I write about. Or don't write about. The positive feedback is part of what keeps me going. So does the negative stuff. Thank God there is a feedback loop tight enough that I know what my readers think 5 minutes after writing a post.
I started blogging 4 years ago because I'm an early adopter who likes writing, market research and the technologies which drive Web 2.0. Over time, this blog evolved into a tool to educate my 70+ ProfileDoctor affiliates. I spent far too long trying to get biz dev executives at dating sites to understand how we could work together so I started writing about the industry to broaden our horizons and get a better grasp on how the industry must change to survive, much less thrive. Easier to write it all once than over and over again.
This blog evolved again, when I started hearing from CEO's and biz dev executives at the top-ten dating sites. It became more of a market research tool. My last gig was at a management consulting firm. It was all about the external business environment. I love market dynamics, cause and effect and the ability to leverage technology to get the the picture, from 50,000 feet down to 6 inches.
This blog will evolve again this summer into something new and different. I'm excited and I think you will like the direction it's headed. More on that later.
The problem I have with Brooks blog is that it's mostly press-release regurgitation with a few lines of puffery at the end. Mike Jones in-lines Brooks' content, and they both miss the mark when it comes to leveraging the power of blogs and starting a conversation with potential customers. It's easy to create an RSS feed from Yahoo News, PubSub, Bloglines or any other aggregator out there. But that's not blogging. I am guilty of this from time to time, but it should be the exception, not the rule. Your time is too valuable for that. I can teach you how to set up a newsreader and get all your dating news in about 5 minutes. But then all you're doing is reading the news. Where's the original thought, the argument, the discussion?
There are a few simple things that both Brooks and Jones can do to dramatically increase the value of their respective blogs, which leads to higher rankings, which leads to perception of authority, which leads to sales and consulting gigs.
Neither of them accept trackbacks, the real promotional value of blogs. That's like not letting people bookmark you website. No one can easily link to their sites, so their Google, Yahoo, MSN and Technorati ranking suffers.
Mums the word. I don't see them commenting on other blogs. Readers of their comments on other blogs would follow them back to the source. More traffic, more potential customers, more sales.
Quality is in the eye of the beholder. I think Brooks kow-tows to the industry with interviews full of softball questions which do nobody any good who has more than a passing interest in the dating industry. This is what Mark has chosen to do, and that's fine. I would rather shake up the bee's nest and get people engaged on conversation on the blog. Some accuse me of being overly negative against some dating sites. Well, they deserve it in my opinion.
Brooks continues to add resources to OPW which is a good thing. Keep that up, there is no such thing as too much information if you have the right filters and it's presented in the right context.
I don't like the categories Mark uses, a company is a not a category. Perhaps I'm nitpicking but a solid category structure means a lot to readers, as well as search engines.
The top 10 lists Mark posts are worth checking out monthly when they are updated. But I don't get the Notable Psychologist list.
Brooks is trying to be all things to several different markets, and it shows through loud and clear.
Add OPW to your newsreader or list of daily blogs for keeping up with day-to-day dating industry news. Why? The frequency of OPW posts is increasing, while Online Dating Insider decreases. There are a number of reasons for this. One is I don't have the time to read every press release about new dating sites. It takes something pretty big for me to take a look, although I do write about dating site marketing more that anything else. I'll always be more comfortable as an insider as opposed to a straight news source.
Mark and Mike should continue to develop their blogs. As for me, I continue to find my voice as a blogger. It's an ongoing process that never ends.
Comments (1)
| Category: Marketing
Posted by Dave Evans
Mark Brooks at Online Personals Watch has announced a working relationship with iDate. My question is, what does each partner get out of the deal?
iDate benefits from more exposure, although everyone in the industry knows about iDate, just like they know about OPW and this blog. iDate gets a newsletter and the OPW email list.
OPW benefits from additional traffic in that Mark may get some consulting gigs out of the publicity and alignment with a popular brand associated with the dating industry, at least to insiders.
Marc Lesnic makes huge piles of cash bringing together gamblers, dating executives and pharmaceutical executives. As he branches out into Mobile Dating Conferences(huh?), he risks over-extending himself. But then again, we have nowhere else to go. I can't imagine that many US dating site executives are going to Prague, mostly it's going to be the value-added service providers like Userplane and perhaps LookBetterOnline. The local dating market there is smaller and operates much differently than in North America. Much harder to break in without big partnerships. Dating sites that didn't attend Nice last summer will find that out soon enough.
With no dating conferences coming up in the US for another 7 months, a vacuum exists, ripe for another conference organizer to step in and do a smaller, more intimate gathering of executives. Who is going to step up to the plate? I get together with many of the Boston-based dating companies and it's nice to be able to sit F2F and talk shop. Perhaps a smaller, more intimate event is in order.
I have not heard much about SITRAS since they postponed the last conference. Are people getting their money back? iDate is the most popular(read only) conference at the moment. Either the social networking sites will start showing up or the dating sites will start going to the social networking conferences. I want to go to Vegas for a change.
Comments (2)
| Category: Dating Events | Marketing
June 7, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Lavalife polled a bunch of members and found that 41% of the 2,445 Lavalife singles polled said they would streak during an NBA game to ensure their team was victorious. The polls were done just in time for the NBA finals. Lavalife hosts two NBA Finals viewing parties thrown exclusively for singles at the world's only NBA Store on Fifth Avenue. Perhaps these events will be fare better than Click At A Flick, Lavalife's ongoing promotion with Lowe's.
Yahoo News
Comments (0)
| Category: Marketing
June 2, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
OMMA Magazine has a story about Eharmony and how they went against the grain by using the word marriage in their advertising. Lucas Donat, CEO of Donat Wald, talks about how Eharmony sought to differentiate the service by focusing on people serious about finding relationships and it's rigorous questionnaire. Donat reviews some of the cable tv and radio campaigns, and the article finishes up with Eharmony marketing executive Suzanne Nagel talking about Eharmony's online marketing, where 70% of visitors are coming from search engines and 24% of total visitors became paid subscribers in 2004.
Comments (6)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Marketing
May 30, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I received the usual quarterly email today asking if I wanted to advertise ProfileDoctor on AskMen.com. I clicked through the site and found this ad from True. For a company that supposedly is 60-something percent female, I was amused at the porn-like quality of this skyscraper ad. I ordered my copy of Doc Love's Mastery of Love System, part I. Maybe if I learn the secrets I'll meet the woman in the True ad.
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
May 25, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
MarketingVox says:
An eROI study of emails sent, read and clicked on shows that the market has finally evened out into a sort of stasis where the number of emails sent out on a particular day of the week is only that which won't overload the reading rate. This has also reduced the volatility of click rates from day to day.
Click through to see graphs from last year for contrast. ExactTarget and MarketingSherpa email send study results here.
Comments (3)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
May 22, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Match sent out a periodic email urging members to check out new features that have been covered here previously. In the irony department, I see that the email tells reader to add @connect.match.com to their Safe Senders email address list. Then I look over at the ads Gmail has selected as contextually relevant and I see ads for Spam filters. Sometimes my Match email, and email from other dating services, ends up in the spam box, and others it goes through fine. I hate managing whitelists and rely on Google's fairly robust spam filters but the results seem to be spotty.
I wish all dating services would offer their member updates and weekly emails as RSS feeds, much easier to manage, won't get stuck in spam filters and since newsreaders can now display html fairly reliably publishers don't loose the richness of html email.
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
May 20, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Maria at Soflex pointed out a new service provided by Pilot Group – sale of people’s profiles who really would like to find their second half or become acquainted with somebody.
Snip:
If you have purchased Dating site not long ago and have not become popular among Internet users this service will be useful for you. Even if you have been working in Dating business for several years and having constant clients this service will be nevertheless useful for you. It will be interesting for your site visitors to communicate and find new friends from another country. You can order people’s profiles from many countries in our company now. We can also integrate them to your site at your enquiry. Your site will become more interesting and substantial. It’s important to note that all profiles are active. People really would like to find friends all over the world. We constantly renew our databases and offer you only those people data who gave the fullest profiles. Besides, you can order any number of profiles – from 100 to 5000 ladies’ profiles from the USA, Ukraine, Russia, and some other countries.
$1.50 per profile for 100-499, 500-1000 $1.00 and so on. Website for ordering profiles.
Comments (5)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
May 15, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Markus at Plentyoffish has written a short tutorial on how dating sites can take advantage of the Google Content Network. I've been getting deeper into Adwords, anything we can learn about how to take advantage of Google's ad networks is great. Make sure to leave a comment if you have improvements or issues with his ideas.
Many advertisers don't realize how the Google Content Network works and end up over paying, or shutting off a campaign. Here is how I would run my campaign.
1. Create a campaign for search, and uncheck the content network.
2. Create a second campaign for Content Only. You have to create the campaign first then uncheck search network, make sure you set the prices lower on the content network then on the search network.
When you create a campaign for the search network it is totally different than creating something for the content network. Do NOT use dynamic keyword insertion for the content network. The content network works by creating a theme out of your adgroup and everything is broadmatched (Your ads are shown for any term Google thinks may be related).
Let's say you have an adgroup, and it has the following contents, and you are using Dynamic Keyword Insertion for the title of your ad.
Online dating
Online dating Seattle
Online dating New York
If these 3 ads are in the same adgroup, and you are using dynamic keyword insertion in the title, your ad could show 'Online dating' or 'Online dating Seattle' or 'Online dating New York' as the title.
Your position and the amount of traffic you get from the content network depends on 2 things: price and click through rate.
The following ad title: 'Online Dating New York' will get a fraction of the clicks of a title that just says 'Online dating'.
On the search network the ad "Online dating New York" would only get triggered when someone typed in Online Dating New York. On the content network there is a good chance the ad could show up if the term that triggered it is even slightly related. (ie. 'Online dating' would trigger the above ad).
The key to the content network is getting your CTR really high. To do that you need to create adgroups containing a common theme and really good ads that seem like they fit the page.
'Women Seeking Men'
A title like that will get 2-5 times as many clicks as an ad that has a title of "Online Dating", the end result being that your 15 cent ad can beat out a 80 cent ad for position number 1.
I would also place no more then 20 terms in an adgroup and make SURE they are all on theme. Here is a sample adgroup that would work insanely well on the content network, but totally suck on the search network.
Ad title: 'Women Seeking Men'
Ad text: 'Millions of Single Women, are Looking for You!'
Keywords: free dating, free online dating, free dating service, free dating site, free dating online
Then create another adgroup for Personals etc.
Ad title: 'Women Seeking Men'
Ad text: 'Millions of Single Women, are Looking for You!'
Keywords: free personals, free online personals, free personal ads, free personals site, free personals online
Also don't forget to use negative terms when creating dating ads in both the search campaigns and content campaigns. You can dramatically lower your costs and raise CTR giving you a higher position. A negative search term tells Google not to show your ad if that term pops up.
I would use negative search terms on the search network like.... software, who, what, when, why, articles, news, articles, info, tip, information, tips, cards, job, e-greetings, laime, report, for, game, on script, games , phone , software, greetings, phone lines, story, telephone, etc.
Good stuff, thanks Markus.
Comments (0)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
May 13, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
From the press release:
In an effort to bring forth the most up-to- date content and resources to its site members, popular online relationship service True.com, and AskMen.com, the leader in men's lifestyle content, announced an exclusive partnership.
Under the terms of the agreement, TRUE will serve as AskMen.com's exclusive online personals partner. In exchange, AskMen.com will provide its popular content on dating, love and sexuality to TRUE's site, further boasting the online relationship service's "U" magazine, which already touts content from TRUE's team of psychologists, editorial staff and Psychology Today. The two companies will also work together on a series of cross-promotional events.
According to Ashkan Karbasfrooshan of AskMen.com:
We've been looking for an online personals partner that holds itself to the same level of quality that we do, and TRUE was the obvious choice. TRUE has clearly differentiated itself in this crowded industry via its focus on science and security.
True gets traffic from AskMen, the primary driver behind the partnership. What I don't get is why they are going after the type of men that frequent askmen.com. I thought they were quite happy with the majority of their members being women.
True is probably paying a lot of money to be featured n Askmen.com or they have signed quite the rev share deal.
Askmen website is all about babes, "is she a stripper", and "dating systems", hardly the type of member that True needs at this point. Upon careful review, I see that True's ads on the site are all bikini babes. We'll see how this partnership pans out.
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April 28, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Webdate is experiencing some impressive growth according to their latest press releases. There seems to be a lot of people seeking a "hip destination for online daters seeking beautiful people and a fun environment reflective of the Miami club scene."
According to Hitwise, Webdate is the sixth largest in market share. 3.5 million members, one million members in the past 6 months. Webdate is a free service deriving revenue mainly from advertising dollars. If you have a hot new vodka drink or hip-hugger pants, it's a good place to advertise. I like the videochat feature, it's the best part of the site.
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April 15, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Yup, I'm in a mood today.
I'm amazed at how many dating sites email me about uploading photos without providing resources for getting my photo taken. Where is the coupon for a webcam, where is the LookBetterOnline link? $130 is still way overpriced but they seem to be the market leader. There are other photo companies out there, but they seem to choose Obscure Marketing Tactics that keep them off consumer's radar. At least tell me to go to a mobile phone store, check out the new phones, get my photo taken with a camera phone and maybe offer a coupon for $10 off the phone. How difficult is this to do? Don't get me started on the "finish your profile" emails.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Buying advertising on dating sites used to be an expensive proposition. It wasn't long ago that impressions on a medium-sized site could run you $10,000 per month. Most of the graphics looked poorly integrated and un-targeted because the low-budget ad networks offered up 3.9% APR, ED pills or mortgages. Portal-sized pricing for poor CTR.
If Userplane has their way, it appears those days may be a thing of the past. They have come up with the Aggregated Social Software ad run. A single buy, with a $2,000 minimum that will spread your ad buys across 2 of the top social networks, MySpace and Friendster. [Disclaimer- I'm an Intermix shareholder.]
General parameters:
- US and Canadian Traffic Only
- Generally targeted toward singles
- Banner advertisements will be displayed equally between MySpace and Friendster (with additional properties in the near future)
This is something I've been talking about for some time now and I'm glad to see Userplane taking the lead on this one. Joe Tracy has had a dating site ad network for some time now although I don't hear much about that. Chat, search and now advertising, Userplane is certainly broadening their base with their recent partnerships.
I take issue with the fact that the traffic is being identified as "mostly singles". The most easily identifiable demographic on Myspace and Friendster is twentysomethings. This demographic grew up on internet ads and knows how to run ad-blocking software. However, part of the Myspace appeal is that visit to the site is like visiting a psychedelic circus. Pam Anderson, boy-bands, basement DJ's, slackers, hackers and freaks. It couldn't get any freeform and most likely turns off anyone who was old enough to remember Carter. Demographics aside, Myspace gets a ton of traffic and there are a lot of music labels out there willing to pay for the priviledge of joining the Myspace circus. Friendster's cache and traffic palls in comparison but they must do something to monetize the remaining eyeballs. I wonder if Userplane will offer ads on Friendster blogs or if that is a separate deal?
The value of these opportunities is not yet set in stone but Userplane is well positioned to reap the benefits of a multi-site social and dating ad network. They don't even have to to know who the visitor is. All they have to do is figure out how to do keyword targeting on profiles. Assigning keywords to profiles and blog posts and anything else that needs to be indexed, searched or tagged for advertising is the next big thing on the interweb. Fantastic opportunities for ad networks as soon as they figure it out.
Later on this year Yahoo! Personals will begin offering up profiles via RSS. That has the potential to drive some enticing advertising deals. And to think they have shied away from advertising because they didn't want to pollute the user experience. They just didn't know how to make enough money at it to risk screwing up their site like some other date wharehouses.
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April 7, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Trendwatching is always coming up with cool terms to describe trends. Last year, they used ProfileDoctor as an example of FEEDER BUSINESSES.
...New businesses and services that feed (off) New Economy (there, we said it!) stars like eBay, Google, Match.com, or Amazon. FEEDER BUSINESSES often create a win-win situation: they make it easier for consumers and businesses to use a key service that, thanks to its popularity, reach and depth, has become so sophisticated that getting the most out of the service requires help from specialists.
Now the guru's have coined the term "Tryvertising", which is all about consumers becoming familiar with new products by actually trying them out. Kind of like the 3 or 7-day trials that several dating sites have been experimenting with. If your site offers "free tastes", what has your experience been with conversion rates at the end of the trial?
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Posted by Dave Evans
According to Duane Dahl, CEO of PerfectMatch.com, they only have one competitor, eHarmony. Hows that for market differentiation? No mention of Match or Yahoo! anywhere in recent press releases.
MarketingVOX has an older post about Match.com's recent $25 million campaign designed to reposition the brand again, this time in response to inroad made by "new" competitor eHarmony.com. Hanft Unlimited, the agency responsible for the campaign, became Match.com's AOR recently, after about four months of project work.
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Posted by Dave Evans
PerfectMatch is spending a lot of dough trying to advertise along side the big boys in the online personals space. "Genuine People, Real Love" is the name of their latest campaign. Developed by Carat Interactive, the campaign copy leverages the idea that "Love is in the Letters," which refers to the Myers Briggs-like "DUET Total Compatibility System."
Press release.
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April 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I read BoingBoing several times a day. Consistently rated the #1 weblog, it features the best links submitted by thousands of loyal readers. Last night I saw that True.com is doing some boobalicious advertising on BoingBoing. The scantily clad co-ed ad links to a page featuring this disclaimer, "If you are married, please close your browser." I'm not sure what Title, 18, Section 1343 of the U.S. code is, or why the fine for joining a dating site under false pretenses is up the $250,000 and a jail sentence of up to five years. Any legal beagles out there able to shed some light on this?
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March 29, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Saturday's PossLTR pilot was a big success. Looks like the show got good ratings and it was a lot of fun to be a part of. The producer, the esteemed Roberto Mighty, has asked me to put out an all points bulletin for dating services interested in exploring category-exclusive sponsorship opportunities with the show.
Roberto Mighty has been producing prime-time ABC-affiliate TV programming since the mid 1990's. His current project, "PossLTR™," is the first TV reality program about dating after divorce. After three years in development, it had a single market test on Boston's ABC affiliate on Saturday, March 26th in prime time, followed immediately by a one-hour Live Web Forum with relationship experts. PossLTR scored a massive rating and share, beating out "Wheel of Fortune," "Friends," and "Entertainment Tonight." Surprisingly, it drew a slightly larger male than female audience in the crucial 18-49 age demographic. Roberto is interested in discussing a category-exclusive sponsorship/web development deal with an online dating service. You can find out more about the series at www.possltr.com, or email him at rmighty@celestialmedia.com.
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March 26, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Somebody winked at me today on Match. Maybe I didn't notice it before, but on the Wink page I see ads to "Email this member for free" brought to you by the Discover Card. The ad is being displayed totally out of context and doesn't make sense in my case as I'm a paying member and I'm already logged in. Looking more closely, at the top of the page Match is asking me to subscribe today. Why am I being served up inappropriate advertising when Match knows so much about me personally?
Dating sites are perfectly suited to highly specific contextual and demographically-targeted advertising. What sites are taking advantage of the revenue opportunities?
I think part of Match's problem is that IAC is involved with all the ad deals and there are clearly too many layers of management and approval to go through at this point as Match struggles to keep up with the Yahoo! Personals juggernaut.
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March 25, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Out of curiosity I typed the phrase "online dating" into Google to see what came back. Click the picture at the right to see the actual results.
#1 - It seems that harmonysingles.net has copied the look & feel of eHarmony in order to funnel affiliate sales through it's website. The ad itself displays the eHarmoney.com url as well as Harmonysingles.net. How confusing must this be to consumers?
#2 - heartdetectives.com. Looks like any generic dating site, how can they afford the #2 spot?
#3 - perfectmatch
#4 - Senior Friend Finder
#5 - Yahoo! Personals
#6 - iMatchup.com
#7 - Great Expectations
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March 21, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Tango Magazine, "The magazine about relationships" is offering a special introductory rate of $14.95. Duane Dahl of PerfectMatch has been an early supported of the publication.
At first glance, I was thinking that Tango could be categorized as the print version of Match.com's Happen Magazine. After a brief conversation with the publisher I realized that a full review of the magazine is in order.
I like that Tango features the Tango Relationship Index (TRI), "an innovation in evaluating the relationship zeitgeist for dating and married couples...The TRI is calculated using consumer information, commodity prices, and U.S. marriage data."
TRI pulls data from sources such as the Weekly Jewelry Purchase Index and Nielsen BookScan. Tongue-in-cheek in nature, the TRI reminds me of the old Vice Index.
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March 17, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
A woman has been seen around the interweb lately, hawking everything from handbags to MSN Dating Tips to dating sites. Which sites you ask? Elite Mate, American Singles, Where Christains Meet and eHarmony to name a few. Read about the hardest working model here.
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Posted by Dave Evans
TRUE is now accepting advertising. Oxygen Media is advertising two original shows. Mr. Romance, which is sponsored by TRUE, and Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber.
According to the press release:
TRUE is able to segment its core audience based on criteria such as income, location and hobbies, Oxygen Media can reach its key audiences with tailored messages in places where TRUE's members take the most action, including TRUE's home page, its search engine and its popular online magazine, "U."
This is a smart move for TRUE. Advertisers will appreciate the ability to target specific high-yield demographic segments of the membership database.
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March 8, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Heart2Heart Network announced the addition of Swingalicious to its network of premier online dating merchants. A spicy new online dating community geared towards swingers. Owned by FIRST media Group, Heart2Heart is offering dating affiliates who join Swingalicious right away an additional registration bonus of up to $100 based on their total registrations to Swingalicious during March and April 2005.
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March 3, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Joe Tracy over at Online Dating Magazine has launched the Online Dating Banner Exchange.
Swapping banners is a good idea for tier 2 and 3 dating sites, and I think Joe is on to something. For the major players, ad buys are the logical way to go. Creating a specific online-dating category in an ad network and offering it to advertisers along with some level of targeting is something the industry has resisted, mainly due to the perceived complexity and cost to get into the game. A company with a robust ad server in place is more likely to join the network than a site with rudimentary, or no ad server in place. Ad networking have dating categories, but usually these are not as targeted as advertisers would like. I think "singles" would be a better name for the category. I've spoken to several advertisers and dating sites who say they would embrace the idea. All it takes now is an enterprising company to connect the dots.
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February 22, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Claria Corporation, which used to be called Gator, has a subsidiary called FeedBack Research, that put out some statistics on Valentine's Day:
Surfers looking for gift ideas and potential lovers online contributed to significant spikes in traffic for sites in the 4 weeks leading up to the holiday:
-- ProFlowers.com experienced a +418% increase in traffic;
-- RedEnvelope.com's traffic increased by +122% and;
-- Bluenile.com had a +128% increase.
-- Dating sites also saw an increase in traffic: CupidJunction.com had a
+43% increase in the weeks leading up to the holiday and eHarmony.com
had a +24% jump.
Other domains with large increases were: 1800flowers.com (+414%), Diamond.com (+120%) and Avon.com (+91%).
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Posted by Dave Evans
I recently received an invitation from a friend to join the SMS.ac mobile phone text messaging service. My friend said he never knowingly invited me, and digging around I see that blogger Joi Ito is being potentially sued for calling the SMS "address book synchronization" feature spam after they contacted all the people in his hotmail address-book.
If you are going to introduce a viral component to your marketing initiatives, take the time to test it out and get feedback from on lots of people (novice and expert internet users alike) before rolling it out to customers. I receive roughly 15 emails per week from 4 or 5 dating sites, and that's just too much email. Giving people a compelling reason to visit a service is one thing, badgering with free trials and fake looking models week after week is another. It makes you look desperate and unprofessional. At some point, you lost me as a potential paying customer. Why not ask me why I keep deleting your emails instead of continuing to send them? Email is cheap and easy, but a successful marketing campaign usually isn't.
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February 15, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
My co-bloggers at Corante have been covering some online dating news. The 212 blog, which covers New York City, has a piece on Yahoo's Valentine's Day promotion in Manhattan.
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February 14, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Posting lots of news this morning and wiping off nasty pancake makeup from this morning's live interview on Canada's CBC News Morning Show.
Club 555 has partnered with 8minuteDating.com to offer in-person dating events in cities across the U.S.
Interesting tidbit from the release:
While online dating has surged in popularity to an estimated 40 million visitors during the past 12 months, fewer than 5% of those singles are actively meeting one another in person.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Lorna Borenstein, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Personals, talking about Yahoo! Personals Premier:
We realized that with more people looking for a longer-term commitment, that's one of the areas our service had to get to and we had to do it quickly. The era of just being able to serve up faces and expecting to succeed in this industry is over.
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Posted by Dave Evans
A flurry of emails this morning. The one from LavaLife caught my eye. It's the usual "free credits to contact people" pitch, but down at the bottom is what caught my eye.
LavaLife is giving people no longer interested in keeping their memberships an easy way to delete their profile and account. Other sites offer this service but I've never actually received an email which makes it so easy to remove all traces of your profile and account. Kudos to LavaLife for attempting to keep their membership database fresh.
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Posted by Dave Evans
From About.com:
Consumers are expected to spend $97.27 on Valentine's Day, down slightly from $99.24 last year. However, 61.8 percent of consumers plan to celebrate the holiday, up from 59.8 percent one year ago. In all, 2005 Valentine's Day spending is forecasted to reach $13.19 billion.
How did you Valentine's Day marketing effort work out? Did numbers go up or stay the same? How many sites did an affiliate deal with 1-800-flowers or similar service?
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February 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I received the following two emails, only seconds apart this morning. One is unsolicited spam, the other is opt-in. Can you guess which is which?
"Find a Christian Valentine's" - WhereChristiansMeet
"AFF News: Singles, couples wanted for play!" - AdultFriendFinder
Have a great weekend, 17" of the fluffy stuff hit last night and I'm off to play in the powder.
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Posted by Dave Evans
LA City Beat has a good cover story
on the science of matchmaking, the ethical questions and also does a pretty good job of taking it to eHarmony. It's thorough with many not-read-before details, highly recommended.
Bullet points:
PerfectMatch matched 250 singles on an episode of Dr. Phil. They clearly understand get how to reach their audience. I'm enthusiastic in the hopes that this type of marketing and promotion will be embraced by other companies.
Ethical questions: Do these sites have an ethical obligation to guarantee that their tests are proven effective?
A full two screen are dedicated to discussing eHarmony, it's Christian, anti-gay focus and links to Focus on the Family. I get lots of email from people pointing this out, perhaps it will force eHarmony to be more clear in their marketing about they types of people they want on their system. Certainly with all the hype behind the fundamentalist Christians, there won't be any shortage of members for eHarmony.
Marylyn Warren, the company’s senior vice president, is careful to say that eHarmony is meant for everybody. We do not discriminate in any way. That's not true and we all know it but that's what marketing is for. They'll spin this all day long if they have to until people walk away thinking eHarmony is all about lasting marriages.
PerfectMatch, True, and Yahoo! Personals all offer same-sex matching. And yet Dr. James Houran, chief psychologist of True, says his own research shows that gay couples are not seeking exactly the same things out of a relationship as straight couples.
It just so happens that heterosexual and homosexual couples … certainly agree on the recipe for compatibility, but they don’t agree on the relative amounts of those ingredients.
Houran is adamant that his test is the only truly scientific one on the net. True’s test measures 99 relationship factors to calculate an overall compatibility index score between two members, telling them the likelihood that they will get along. Angered by what he sees as his competitors’ lack of scientific discipline, he’s gone so far as to author an article in The North American Journal of Psychology detailing their failings.
Scroll down until you get to the major differences between the philosophies employed by PerfectMatch, True, and eHarmony. Interesting stuff.
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Posted by Dave Evans
I thought this warranted a mention on it's own. From the LA CityBeat article:
Friendster.com, the online networking community, recently partnered with eHarmony, announcing, “Friendster proudly introduces eHarmony.com.” But the company was unaware that its business partner excluded gays and lesbians until informed by CityBeat. Though not a dating site, per se, Friendster allows its members to search for “men, women, or men and women” of the same or opposite sex for dating. “To be honest,” says Jim Scheinman, Friendster’s head of business development, “I have to call and talk to eHarmony about that, because you’re telling me this for the first time.
Unbelievable. The first big deal Friendster does and they don't even hit up Google for the color commentary. Two words, due diligence.
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February 10, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
In a strange marketing twist, Date.com has issued a press release identifying gifts that if given would be the quickest way to end a relationship. Give a woman the Debbie Does Dallas DVD boxed set or a guy a bassinet. Huh? Of all the blue-sky thinking and slam-dunk marketing opportunities presented by Valentine's Day, why go for the lowest-common-denominator tone?
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February 8, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Last week I did my first screen test ever, for a pilot TV series about post-divorce daters. During the shoot I had a chance to speak with the producert, Roberto Mighty. Talk about a name made for television! Roberto would be interested in hearing from established companies (more general advertisers than online dating sites) who would be interested in advertising on the show. Think about being the initial advertiser on Queer Eye or Extreme MakeOver and you get the idea. If you have a budget for television and ads in the can, email me and I'll make sure Robert gets in touch with you.
"PossLTR" is an innovative new half-hour television show that follows mid-life men and women who find themselves on the dating scene again, due to divorce, demanding jobs or other romance-busters. The half-hour Pilot debuts Saturday, March 26 at 7:00 PM on WCVB-TV, Boston’s ABC affiliate.
In the Pilot broadcast of "PossLTR"-- filmed in locales throughout Greater Boston -- two divorced single parents go on a marathon, all-expenses paid blind date, with various stops around the city, but not before undergoing a complimentary pre-date makeover to give them added confidence.
Interspersed with video snippets of their date and their dialogue, the couples' friends, family and co-workers weigh in with opinions about how it's going. Will love ensue? What conflicts are likely to arise? What about the kids?
"PossLTR" is the brainchild of Roberto Mighty of Celestial Media, Inc., who created the concept based on his own dating dilemmas. Mighty is Executive Producer of a trio of highly rated, independent shows and series that have appeared on Boston network television since 1994.
LIVE POST-BROADCAST WEB FORUM: Viewers are invited to participate in an online forum immediately following the broadcast. See outtakes and extended sequences from the show. See excerpts from future episodes. Share opinions about the date/daters. Should they see each other again? Why or why not? Relationship experts, including dating mavens, family practice therapists and sex therapists will respond to individual questions about mid-life dating. All PossLTR venues (restaurants, salons, attractions) and advertisers will have web links.
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February 5, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Take a test, go to Paris: Take the Yahoo! Personality & Love Style test for free and they will enter you in a drawing to win a trip for two to Paris for a week and $2,000 spending money.
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February 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
I received another TRUE Valentine's Day marketing email. I don't usually comment on every ad I see but this one caused me to pause. Titillating to say the least. I would have expected them to take the high road with the tone of their ads instead of going for the lingerie model. I wonder if their advertising is targeted enough to deliver women some beefcake or if everyone receives the same image.
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February 3, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
According to this story from xbox.com two Xbox live gamers playing Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon have hooked up for more than a gaming session and now they have a baby together. An isolated incident, but it makes you wonder about the matchmaking capabilities of GameBoy's, personal Play Stations and other handheld game/video devices. An untapped market or a case of "if we're both playing this game 9 hours a day we might as well hook up?"
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February 2, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Today I auditioned for a reality show about dating, did two interviews and answered a lot of canned questions for reporters gearing up for TV, radio and print articles about Valentine's Day. What is your marketing department doing to leverage 2/14? Have you created your custom affiliate banners? How about your regular ad banners? Is your copywriter putting together a special Valentine's Day newsletter? Date.com TRUE and Match have kicked off their annual Valentine's Day marketing push, but I'm not seeing much from other sites I expected would have taken advantage of this special day.
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February 1, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
First it was Apple with their Switch campaign. Great vignettes of former PC users who had made the switch over to Mac. Recently, my bank started their own switch campaign, complete with an 800 number for assistance. This got me thinking about the PerfectMatch vs. eHarmony battle underway (By the way, watch for True to join in, they really have to at this point to stay relevant.) I can imagine we will start to see some of the smaller niche sites offer a switch campaign to woo customers away from the large date-warehouses. The marketing copy practically writes itself and the customer feels warm and fuzzy about the attention being paid to them.
At ProfileDoctor we built a system which would take our customers' Match.com membername and automatically go out to Match and slurp down the profile for our editors to revise. The profile templates for most sites never change, so the structure of the data are pretty solid. At least until sites start using blogs as their profiles. What's keeping dating sites from doing the same? Obviously there are legal implications, but what if the customer emailed their profile to the competitor? Even a semi- automated switch option would be a cool option for anyone who could save their photos to their hard drive, re-upload them to the new site and paste their essay into a textbox. That's just about everyone as long as you have a non-geek write the instructions.
This post was written while listening to Keeping The Faith [Just A Touch Mix] from the album "The Works" by De La Soul.
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January 31, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
My trial "guest list" status in Yahoo-speak, ends tomorrow. I'm told by email that I'll miss out on advanced searching and matching features unless I fork over more cash. I followed the link to the Upgrade page and see that the list price for Premiere is $34.95 a month yet I'm offered the service for $19.95 a month, which is the standard price for Yahoo's generic date-warehouse. This offer has been extended until Feb 17th.
snip:
For a limited time*, we're offering our current subscribers a free upgrade to Yahoo! Personals Premier. With Premier, you'll have access to everything in our standard service, as well as Premier's advanced searching and matching tools developed for people looking for long-term compatibility. Get on your way to better first dates, more second dates. Upgrade now and you'll lock in this low introductory price for as long as you remain a Premier subscriber.
Makes me wonder why they are extending the upgrade offer. What percentage of the existing Yahoo! database of members have signed for the Premiere service? I would hazard a guess that the answer is probably not many if they are extending the offer. Who's idea was it to end the trial two weeks before Valentine's Day?
Yahoo Personals Premier subscribers also benefit from the following features:
-- Overall Fit Rating - One to five hearts will appear within search results based on a combination of Personality Fit and Relationship Fit ratings
-- Personality Fit - A measure of compatibility with someone else who has taken the Personality & Love Style Test; a rating ranging from "Good Fit" to "Poor Fit" appears directly in search results
-- Relationship Fit - A five-point scale (from "Excellent" to "Poor") displayed directly in the search results indicates whether someone who has also taken the Relationship Test is a good fit
-- Fit Optimizer - Singles are encouraged to provide feedback on how compatible they are with the people Yahoo Personals recommends for them; feedback improves future search results
The regular Yahoo! personality test is from WeAttract, looks like their SmartFit technology is by the same company.
I need to poke around the site some more. Lot's of little changes to check out.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Latest deal is three months for the price of one. Is this taken from the existing marketing playbook or a quick attempt to lure new customers which would otherwise sign up for a competitor?
I see that Dr. Warren has a new book out.
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Posted by Dave Evans
From AdRants:
A new national print campaign, created by Hanft Raboy, introduces the theme line "Love is complicated. Match.com is simple." The work, which launches today, uses photographic images from Elliot Erwitt and others to "capture love's mystery and complexity" as the releases explains. The ads will appear in People, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and other publications. Soon to follow is a multi-million dollar national television campaign that is slated to break in March.
Maybe they are on to something here, although the first thing I thought when I read the tag line was nothing about online dating is simple. You practically need to attend boot camp to prepare yourself for posting your profile, learning the search systems, weekly email, email etiquette, and making the most of your dating site and offline dating subscriptions. Not to mention the emotional rollercoaster of the first few weeks. We'll see what effect the ads have on subscription numbers over the next quarter or two.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Those of you who consider yourself hotshot Search Engine Optimization types might want to look into Google's new AdWords API (application programming interface), a back-end interface customers can use to monitor and control Google's own systems in regard to their own campaigns. Sample code for Java, .NET, Perl, PHP, XML is here.
This is great news for those of us who feel the existing AdWords dashboard lacks the features we need to run our campaigns as effectively as we would like.
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Posted by Dave Evans
Email from Kristine Kirschke, Program Manager, Yahoo! Personals:
Dear Yahoo! Personals Publisher,
How would you like to earn a lot of extra cash for love? This February, Yahoo! Personals is offering you just that! As you know, Valentine’s Day is on February 14th, and Yahoo! Personals has designed a special promotion for you to get the most out of this very busy month of romance:
February Promotion
Earn a bonus payment above and beyond your usual commissions. Simply generate 3 subscriptions in February and you’ll earn a $75.00 bonus. This bonus payment will be applied to your account in early March.
Stay tuned for a message announcing new Valentine’s Day creative which will be available ASAP!
Cutting it pretty close with the Valentine's Day creative, but they are the only service I've come across with special creative.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
Posted by Dave Evans
Catching up on some old news.By now you have been overwhelmed with press releases talking about how the Australian Wine Bureau partnered with Match.com to report on single Americans, revealing their attitudes, perceptions and preferences toward wine and romance. Or maybe not. 62 percent believe that their date's choice of beverage provides insight into their lifestyle, and 52 percent felt that it is indicative of their personality.
Unless they are into something sketchy like absinth or Southern Comfort, does it really matter what your date drinks? I recommend staying away from men who drink cosmos, but that's just me.
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January 26, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Nate Elliott, analyst at Jupiter says:
Friendster has contracted with DoubleClick to do their adserving. And, against all odds, they have some decent advertisers (eg, Verizon, Chase Bank) mixed in with all the bizarre pay-per-click stuff. Now, if they could only find some users (despite their claims of 13 million members, they average fewer than 1 million visitors a month), they might have an advertising business on their hands. One shouldn't hold one's breath.
Pay-to-play online dating site must find a way to extend the customer life-cycle in order to remain relevant. Adding a social networking component is the most obvious way to accomplish this. Problem is, it's difficult notoriously difficult to turn a profit with most social networking sites. By striking a deal with a major advertiser, Friendster may be one step closer to profitability.
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January 25, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
My goodie bag contained a copy of One2Oneliving magazine (an iDate sponsor) and I had 14 hours to kill on the way home, so I read it.
Prepare yourself for an onslaught of lowest common denominator stuff like best car for singles- Aston Martin Vanquish. Sexiest careers- world's fittest man, and an interview with Some guy from the O.C. If you don't know what the O.C is, then this magazine won't appeal to you.
Klunky layout and a bad press job, no doubt will look better once more advertiser dollars pour in. I felt like I was reading Maxim, Details and FHM at the same time. Without the writers.
I mentioned Tango magazine recently. I'm looking forward to their entry into the singles scene publications. Until you see a copy of Tango, hold on to you advertising dollars.
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January 24, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
The domain names Meetpeople.com, singlewomen.com, singlemen.com, meetgirls.com and meetlocals.com are for sale as a group for $1 million dollars. I'm curious as to what you think the real value of these types of domain names is.
More dating and social networking-related domains for sale:
livesocial.com
ethnickarma.com
hushlive.com
amerisocial.com
ethniclive.com
diversedating.com
diversedates.com
vibedating.com -
vibedates.com
singleslab.com
seeknsingles.com -
seeknfriends.com
cellopia.com
mingleone.com
loveopia.com
seekndate.com
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
January 13, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Lavalife announced a five-year exclusive integrated personals partnership with Sympatico.MSN.ca.
The new partnership gives singles the opportunity to access Lavalife content and services across all Sympatico.MSN.ca properties, including its portal, MSN Hotmail and MSN Messenger.
Paul Gallucci, Chief Operating Officer of Lavalife Corp:
By teaming up with Sympatico.MSN.ca, Lavalife can provide Internet users with the opportunity to take full advantage of our services. We're very excited by the significant reach of the newly launched portal, which will allow Lavalife to continue building its presence in Canada, while providing more and more singles the opportunity to meet and connect with each other online. This exclusive partnership further builds on the successful relationships Lavalife has shared with both Bell Sympatico and MSN.ca over the past four years.
PR Factoids: Lavalife says that members exchange 1.3 million messages every day. That's a lot of credits being used by members. I wonder how many messages are exhannged on SpringStreet.
Since its inception, Lavalife has attracted over 6 million unique members. More PR fluff, I would rather know how many members are currently active.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Marketing
January 11, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Last summer there was some talk about advertising to singles on dating sites. If your site offers free membership, thats about the only choice you have to monetize those eyeballs.
Most of the larger sites that take ads have deals with advertising networks, or in the case of a site like Date.com, use 24/7 Real Media's AdStream local ad serving solution. Date.com highlighted audience segmentation as one of the significant factors behind its decision to use 24/7. Behavioral targeting enables a site like Date.com to sell and deliver advertising to specific market segments.
As far as I can tell, most impressions don't seem to be targeted past "single people." As a dating site operator, you know their age, sex, race and financial situation, information most advertisers would kill for. Is anyone using profile information to further target ad messages? I know that Match members have a 10 digit code associated with their profile, which represent a wealth of information about the person. I'm not sure how much of that they leverage in the IAC advertising department, but you can bet they're thinking about it. Dating sites could charge a lot more to advertisers if they could utilize the information in their own databases.
One problem is that most dating sites are run by engineers who are too busy protecting their domain to warm up to targeted advertising, even though a wealth of personalized information is a few mouse-clicks away. Consumers are also wary of their personal information being used to sell them stuff they may have no interest in, not to mention the privacy issues.
Would you offer targeted advertising if an ad network made it easy to leverage your customer data?
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
January 10, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Tango, which launches on February 1, 2005, will be dedicated to advising women on the complexities of modern relationships. Because women are marrying later and are far more career-driven, relationships have gained importance--yet are tougher to manage than ever.
CEO Andrea Miller in MediaPost:
You won't see articles here on 'how to please a man. Think 'Sex and the City' in print, with more gravitas.
Tango has amassed some solid talent. Elise O'Shaughnessy, a former executive editor at Vanity Fair, will be editor in chief, and Ellen Abramowitz, former publisher of Seventeen and Teen, will serve as publisher.
Tango is avoiding all direct mail and instead have set up a relatoniship with perfectmatch.com to help market their new title when it launches.
PerfectMatch has done a digital deal with LifetimeTV and now a dead-tree deal with Tango. It will be interesting who benefits more from the relationships. I imagine Liveftime will drive lots of traffic to PerfectMatch and PM will offer Tango subscriptions to members and advertise in the initial print run. I can't imagine a print run of 100,000 copies will bring PM many paying subscriptions.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Marketing | Weekly
January 4, 2005
Posted by Dave Evans
Match.com launched its 15-day "workout" program to help singles simplify their search for love in 2005. The " 15-Day Love Challenge" offers fun and realistic advice and tips for taking a proactive approach to dating in the New Year, and it provides a convenient starting point for the thousands of single men and women who will log on to Match.com just after the holidays.
Kristin Kelly, Match.com's Vice President of Love:
We call it the New Year's resolution phenomenon -- it's a time when single people take stock and make a conscious decision to focus on finding a successful, emotionally rewarding relationship. While we can't take the mystery out of love and romance, we can do our part to help millions start the New Year off right by offering them a simple, step-by-step guide to dating and finding relationships that will add depth and meaning to their lives.
Link to the Challenge, like most Match.com special sites, didn't work on my Mac and it periodically comes up blank on my PC.
The link for Day 1 took me to my Match.com Search page. Not sure what that's supposed to do for me. There are a few other links to your profile throughout the 15 days. Overall, the challenge is sensible, lowest-common denominator advice, like telling your friends you are single, or winking at someone, or developing your interests. That passes for a challenge? Talk about an easy assignment. Strange that they don't hook you in to join Match.com until day four, and you can't access the link on Day 1 without being a member. Sloppy oversight. I would have expected more of a customized experience, but knowing what I know about the technical handcuffs at Match, it's not surprising that the Challenge doesn't add up to much. Their hands are tied when it comes to doing to more interesting stuff, like showing an improvement in your page-views, or percentage of people they filter for you that you actually went out with. There's lots of interesting data hidden away in your profile and they have chosed not to mine it. Yet.
Comments (1)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
December 22, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Last night I received 7 emails in a row from True. One of them was a new members email displaying, among other places, a woman from Guam. What is it with the loose search parameters? I definitely have to put together a member search shootout one of these days.
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December 20, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
A certain dating site based in TX sent me an email with five women from California that are supposedly compatible with me. What part of 25 miles or less didn't they understand? The whole "your matches" by email-phone-www thing is getting out of hand. I'm getting people from the UK, singapore, even North Korea. Don't offer a service unless you can prove the results are useful.
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December 16, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
I've been using various video-conferencing applications since 1993. CUSeeMe, iVisit, Netmeeting, icuii, Paltalk, Jmeeting, I've tried them all. I even got paid to talk to scantily-clad women on iFriends.net at one point, but that's another story. Who cares? You should. An established company that provides video-conferencing software recently announced they have 2 million users. I don't believe that for a second, just as I don't take dating site statistics at face value. However, even if they have 1 million people, that is a nice niche community to market to. Or provide access to, or cross-promote to. This company has tried to develop an online dating component around the webcam community, but it doesn't look like it's getting much traction. There's definitely an opportunity here for an enterprising sating site to swoop in and either buy the company or get access to the members through a partnership.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Marketing | Technology
December 8, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Mr. "Men are From Mars" kicked off the hour-long event by telling the heart-wrenching story of his father dying of heat stroke, locked in the trunk of a car. It may have been a transformative event for him but it was a total downer to listen to. Next, he moved on to his new favorite topic, body chemistry, and the interviewer kept mentioning how they spent time with Dr. Grey in Nepal and going on about his impressive ranch. It's one hour later and I now know that Cortisol? is bad and dopamine is good and men should stop taking Viagra, among other things. Some of it was marginally interesting, actually. Now I have to go out and buy one of his books, which seemed to be the driving force behind the presentation.
The only dating advice he gave was during the last 3 minutes. He told us to "stop looking, start dating" and "not to look desperate." My bartender could have told me that, in fact I'm going to go ask him. Next time I'll opt for a complimentary e-datingExperts.com mouse pad.
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Posted by Dave Evans
PerfectMatch.com today announced a unique partnership with direct-response powerhouse Guthy-Renker designed to bring love, happiness and personal satisfaction to the lives of millions of people across the nation in search of relationships.
Guthy-Renker and PerfectMatch.com set a new precedent in direct-response television marketing -- the first infomercial driven by an online service and the first-of-its-kind to explore the online dating and relationship phenomena. The 30-minute program will air beginning Nov. 20 in most major markets and on cable channels, including LIFETIME Television who recently signed a multi-year programming partnership with PerfectMatch.com.
Actress Josie Bissett will Serve as Celebrity Host and Help Introduce PerfectMatch.com to Millions of Serious Singles Seeking Long-Term Relationships. Bissett's Claim to fame was her role as Jane Andrews Mancini in TV Series Melrose Place. She also appeared in one soft-core title, an Italian movie called Desire (1989).
In case you didn't know, the PerfectMatch.com management team pioneered online dating by founding and growing Kiss.com and Udate.com, two original online dating sites that grew to more than 7 million members leading up to its sale to Match.com for $150 million.
Partnering with Lifetime was smart if the deal makes sense. We'll see if that keeps the membership skewed towards the magic 65% female ratio it supposedly has.
Link
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December 2, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
At the last SITRAS event down the road in Miami Beach in June, there was lot's of talk about how bad the customer service is at most online dating sites. It was the number two complaint from customers and I'm not hearing anyone address this. I'm hearing a lot of new, and not so new, ideas about how to grab more market share, but nobody seems concerned about their current customers. Reducing customer churn by integrating value-added services and higher-touch customer service could be a whole track at a show like this, maybe next time.
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November 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
I belong to several dating site affiliate programs. The extra beer money is great, and more importantly, I've found that dating sites that are good at managing relationships with their affiliates usually have an effective marketing strategy in place.
Many large dating sites have lackluster affiliate programs. Outdated revenue share numbers and incorrect contact information drive me crazy, and most services fail Affiliate Marketing 101 by not even sending out a monthly email telling me about my performance and offering ways to help me make more money.
This week, Yahoo! bucks the trend with seasonal Affiliate incentives. Yahoo! affiliates who generate 3 subscriptions in December earn a $75 bonus. Generate at least 30 subscriptions in a calendar month and they'll pay an extra 75% per subscription. Affiliates can earn up to $70 per subscription on top of the December bonus.
What is your company doing to bring in new affiliates and keep existing ones happy? Where are the special holiday ads and text links? Do all your ads have too much flashy bling-bling or do you go the extra mile and give your affiliate lots of choices between static, (tastefully) animated and compelling, call-to-action text links? Keep your affiliates happy this holiday season. Take care of them and they'll take care of you.
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| Category: Finance | Marketing
November 23, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Number two on the Entrepreneur list of hot trends is Feeder Businesses:
"Eat off the big guys' plate. Trend agency Trendwatching.com coined the term "feeder business" for companies that feed off giants like Amazon or eBay. Instead of trying to compete with Match.com (so the feeder mind-set goes), why not start a business to help Match.com's clients write better online ads, take "glamour photos," or make sure that potential Mr. Right really is who he says he is? Other thriving feeder industries include eBay drop-off stores and eBay software. Chew on this: How could you feed off Google? Starbucks? Wal-Mart?"
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| Category: Marketing
Posted by Dave Evans
The JDate ad, a 30-second animated spot, runs once an hour for 18 hours a day on the JumboTron screen above ABC's "Good Morning America" window at 44th Street and Broadway in Times Square. The current initiative--which will run through early December, then again from Dec. 20 until Feb. 11--is the first traditional ad campaign for the site, said company spokesman Jonathan Cutler. JDate is also running a print campaign in New York magazine. The campaign, produced in conjunction with Outdoor Television Network and Blink Multimedia, will run only in New York City, where JDate has "a significant member base," said Cutler. MatchNet's move came just two days after Yahoo! debuted its own upgraded personals service, "Personals Premier."
MatchNet's American Singles is the third most popular online dating service, with 6.21 percent of the market, behind Yahoo! Personals, which has 20.94 percent of the market and Match.com, with 7.26 percent, according to research firm Hitwise. MatchNet's JDate was the 20th most popular dating service, according to Hitwise.
Link
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| Category: Dating Site | Marketing
November 8, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
I'm hearing a lot about mixing singles events and sports marketing. In fact, L.A. Sports and Entertainment Commission has backed a "Singles Night" for the opener of the WTA Tour Championships at Staples Center on Wednesday. The NBA's Washington Wizards are doing their own singles party, also Wednesday, for $50. This one includes in-game "speed dating" and a postgame party.
Link
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October 29, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Love.com is offering two weeks free when you subscribe for 30 days. Click on the thumbnail to view a larger version of the image. The 30-day subscription is $14.95. Interesting to note that most SpringStreet partners charge on a credit-to-connect basis yet the AOL deal is subscription-based. Love.com is an AOL property powered by SpringStreet Networks., but you probably knew that already.
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October 27, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Quest Personals affiliates now earn commissions for the life of a Quest member. Quest boasts of over 100,000 unique visitors.
"The advantage to dating affiliates," explains Susan Arts, Product Manager for Questpersonals.com, "is that new members often buy the most cost-effective subscription available, just to test the waters. Members will invest in larger (and more expensive) subscription packages once they've made a few connections. Most affiliates miss out on the bigger purchases, since they traditionally earn commissions only on the smaller initial purchase. Our affiliates earn on everything."
Quest is owned by First Media. "First Media is an established industry leader, and one of the largest North American providers of interactive technologies for the personals market. In operation for over 15 years, our focus is on providing our customers with fun, easy-to-use tools for meeting or chatting with others in their local, or global communities at great value."
The Quest Partner Program is powered by the Heart2Heart Network.
Link
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October 25, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
I received an email from Match to participate in their survey. Mark Williamson, Director of Research at Match.com, is responsible for the survey. I took it, and here are my initial comments.
Ideas they are testing
1) Ability to turn off ads on the Match.com site
2) Opportunity to have higher placement in search results
3) Stand out in search results with a different color profile
Match website is definitely too crowded and busy these days, removing ads might help with the clutter.
Higher placement and colored profiles is straight from FriendFinder playbook, nothing new there. Higher placement in search results is interesting, although no info on how they would do this. Currently the only way to stay on top is to log in several times a day.
Be one of the first profiles that a new member sees
Profile highlighting
$37.95
Priority Placement in Search Results & Profile highlighting & turn off ads
$37.45
Be the first to be seen by new users
$34.19
Priority Placement in Search Results
Profile highlighting
Be the first to be seen by new users
Turn Off Ads
$39.29
Priority Placement in Search Results
Be the first to be seen by new users
$35.95
Priority Placement in Search Results
Profile highlighting
$36.69
General Membership
$29.95
Lot's of other variations I won't go into here.
Proposed prices for these services are confusing and the survey was tedious. They asked the same questions overand over with slight tweaks to price and offer. By the 12th page I was just clicking buttons to get over with it The last page is totally out of place, asking you 20 or so questions about your personality. You can't finish the survey without clicking a radio button for each selection. These questions definitely belonged in a separate survey.
We'll see what they do with the data they gather. Upping prices could be a disaster, but the highlighting stuff is a good move, as proven by several other services already.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Marketing | Research
October 19, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
The personals business is warming up to the concept of viral marketing. Last week I heard from Tom Jaffe, President of 8minuteDating. 8minute has a promotion that goes like this: if you can get three people to register for one of their speed dating events, you'll go free and they each receive $5 the event fee. Cool. I wonder how much of Match's discontinued live event traffic will get picked up by the speed dating companies, lock & key parties, etc? Today, I received an email from greatboyfriends.com which started out "relaxed, you delicious kumquat!" asking me to refer a friend for a free week on the service. What is it with the kooky writing over there?
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
September 16, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
AmericanSingles introduced a special offer to help U.S. military personnel, currently on active duty, connect with its members for companionship, dating, or friendship with a complimentary one- month Premium Membership. While I'm all for supporting the troops, but I would think that a subscription to a videochat porn site would be more appropriate. Can you even get a decent public internet connection in Baghdad? Will Centcom censor personal ads?
Link
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Marketing
August 16, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
On a more personal note, the WSJ did not include ProfileDoctor in their article on writing personal ads which came out today. (Disclaimer: I'm the founder of ProfileDoctor) . I can't wait to hear from the editor about how she totally blew us off. So much for co-opetition within the industry, Thanks to Mike Jones @ Userplane for pointing this out and the cross-blogging. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out. Yes people, PR does matter.
No link to the super-expensive online version of the Journal.
Reader tk42schleg was nice enough to provide a free link to the article.
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July 19, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Yahoo! is countering a common trend of dating sites using plastic-looking people in their marketing efforts and web ads.
They're looking for real singes to star in their new ad campaign. If you're selected, you're off to San Francisco in September for an unforgettable photo shoot with the other great singles we've chosen. You'll stay at a swanky hotel, enjoy cool restaurants, fun mixers, and a few days in front of the camera. Go behind the scenes of last year's photo shoot and check out the exciting year our current Real People have had in the
If chosen, Yahoo! Personals will provide you with an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco with the other selected singles, where you'll stay at the swanky Adagio hotel. You'll be shooting up to 3 days, but will have at least 1 day off to explore SF. We'll have fun dinners together, but also give you time on your own. It's a BLAST! And we pick up the tab!
Details at Yahoo!
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Dating Site | Marketing
July 8, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
Online dating service Match.com has selected Interpublic's Mullen as media agency of record, the Wenham, Mass.-based company said Tuesday. Match.com launched a new campaign June 14 and will run through the second half, including cable TV, network radio, magazine, online and event marketing. Mullen's client list includes XM Satellite Radio, General Motors, Match.com, Wachovia, Eddie Bauer, LendingTree and People.
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June 22, 2004
Posted by Dave Evans
I was checking out The Onion today and I came across this interesting points program. This is a pretty cool idea, but I don't see it on Salon or Boston.com, two other Spring-Street powered sites I visit often. I wonder if they are testing this on a subset of all their properties as a pilot program?
The deal is that between 4/1/04 - 12/31/04, every time Onion Personals Points are purchased with a MasterCard, free credits (no value) will be added to the purchaser’s account. TheOnion.com and Spring St. Networks reserves the right to refuse any purchase for any reason. (ed. emphasis- why would they refuse a purchase?) The promotion is valid within the following packages:
Buy 25 points get 1 free
Buy 50 points get 3 free
Buy 100 points get 5 free
More details at The Onion.
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April 11, 2003
Posted by Dave Evans
USA Interactive (USAI), the owner of 500-lb gorilla Match.com, is buying all remaining shares of hotel.com in an all-stock transaction worth a reported $1.1 billion. Now you can find a date on Match.com, buy tickets to an event through Ticketmaster and book a hotel room at hotel.com, all from one company. Talk about cornering a market! Read more at WIRED.
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February 17, 2003
Posted by Dave Evans
Meet your Match.com date for a TV pilot and get an all-expenses paid date in New York City. Match.com is giving one lucky couple who feel like they've found a love connection online an all-expenses paid first date in NYC.
If you've already developed sizzling online chemistry with another Match.com member, have corresponded with them online, but haven't yet been able to meet this special someone face-to-face, they want to hear from you.
To apply for an opportunity to participate in this TV pilot, please return this completed questionnaire, along with your photo and contact information to Bridgette Cush at: ilovestory@match.com.
**Only questionnaires with all questions answered, complete contact information and those who are currently involved with other Match.com members but haven't yet met will be considered.
Name
Age
City
Match.com username
Contact phone numbers
Best times to call
Your date's Match.com username
1. How long have the two of you been in touch via Match.com?
2. How well do you feel like you know him or her?
3. Have you talked on the phone yet? If so, how frequently?
4. Have the two of you discussed getting together before? What has stopped you from meeting?
5. What would you want to do on a first date in New York?
6. How do you think the person on the date will stack up against the online persona that you've come to know?
7. How important is it to you to find out if you're a good match with this person?
8. What are your expectations of the relationship? Serious, just friends or other...please explain.
Please return via email to: ilovestory@match.com, and don't forget to send your photo.
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| Category: Dating Events | Marketing
Posted by Dave Evans
The battle in the online dating service business has become as competitive as the contest among looking-for-love singles angling for that final rose from "The Bachelor."
Market leaders like Match.com, a unit of USA Interactive, and Yahoo Personals, are now turning to well-known creative shops and significantly increasing marketing budgets. Their ads are now showing up in prime time on shows like "The West Wing" and "Joe Millionaire," while promotional efforts have paid off in placements like Match.com's on the six-part series on dating appearing on "Today." More...
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