Location

MarketingWeek is reporting that OgilvyOne won the marketing account for eHarmony. I am unsure if this is the entire marketing account for eHarmony or just the United Kingdom part. eHarmony was reported to open a UK specific dating service in June (see story) but that appears to be less and less likely as there is just over a week left this month. Hopefully we will see it by summer's end. I did notice that the domain eHarmony.co.uk is registered but it currently just reroutes you to the eHarmony US site.

For more information on eHarmony, please read our review.

India's matrimony market is estimated to be worth almost $230 million annually (£118 million). This includes online dating and matrimony services which brings in about $13.5 million (£7 million). An Indian matchmaking service called Shaadi.com has become quite popular among singles in the 20 to 40 age range and is now one of India's five most popular sites according to the Britain’s Telegraph newspaper. The dating and marriage service reports it has over 10 million members and is responsible for a million marriages worldwide since its inception in 1997. 6000 profiles are created every day on the site with 60% of them being male. Shaadi.com is not just a website, there are more than 150 Shaadi Centres in 87 Indian cities. This allows parents and children to sit down with a relationship adviser and review the dating services huge database of potential matches.

One of the reasons Shaadi.com succeeds according to the Telegraph is because:

The unofficial eHarmony Blog noted a small announcement on eHarmony Canada that RelyID will be available soon. RelyID on the US eHarmony site allows members to validate their full name, age and address (see eHarmony now has an Online ID Verification Service for more info). eHarmony Blog does wonder if a company that isn’t covered by Canadian privacy laws well have success in getting Canadians to hand over their private identification information to be verified on a dating site.

Being a Canadian myself, eHarmony Blog has a good point. The thing is, I would of never of thought of the problems dealing with an American company who may not be governed under our own privacy laws. I doubt this point would have been made apparent to those who will sign up for the RelyID Canadian service. eHarmony or RelyID should make sure we are covered by our own privacy laws (maybe open an office in Canada?) or at least inform us if we are not.

There is a small article at the Calgary Herald which mentions a Ipsos Reid survey about Canadians. The survey asked 1,033 Canadians several questions about relationships and love. The following conclusions where reached:

• 70 percent of Canadians are in love (80 percent of woman and 67 percent of men).
• In total 16 percent found love online. When split into age ranges, the 18 to 34 demographic leads with over 25 percent finding love online. Only 7 percent found love aged 55 or older.

So what did we find out from this poll and how does it relate to online dating? Well it seems there are approximately one third of Canadians not in love. This means online dating sites who service Canadians has a market of about 10 million people. It also appears that 84 percent of singles who are in love found it offline, with the other 16 percent finding it online. It is too bad they didn't mention how many Canadians were not successful in finding a mate online, we would then have a more complete picture on how successful online dating is.

The Los Angeles Business Journal has a piece called "Translating the Book of Love" which looks at the dating service eHarmony and if its current matching and communication system will work well in other countries with different cultures. Currently eHarmony has separate dating services for the United States, Canada and Australia. These services do differ slightly but the questions for the dating profiles and the matching system, for the most part, are either the same or very similar. This is in part because all 3 countries major language is english and the culture surrounding marriage and dating are not all that different.

In June eHarmony plans to launch a UK version with other European countries to follow. The big news is, they do plan to launch a dating site in China. This means a new language for them and new cultural differences to work out. eHarmony did do some research to see if it was possible to convert their dating site and matching system. Through focus groups in China, a panel of psychologists validated the translations of questionnaires and found that cultural differences matter little when it comes to measuring personality types and values. A Beijing University study also confirmed that eHarmony's matching system will work well in matching China's singles together. eHarmony's lead PH.D. psychology researcher, Galen Bucjwalter is quoted:

“We found the models to be highly effective in that we can predict successful marriages in China,”

With 4 times the population of the United States, and with China's average income levels for the middle class increasing every year, there is a huge potential for revenue if a dating service is well received by the public.

Another interesting point in the article was the fact that eHarmony spends about $3 million a year in research to find out what makes couples compatible and stay in a long term relationship. This dollar amount includes the salaries of 6 full time PH.D. researchers.

For more information about eHarmony, take a look at our review.

IT News mentions that research by Parship, a large dating service in Europe has found that more and more singles in the United Kingdom are looking towards the rest of Europe for finding love. Of Britain’s 15 million single people, 20 percent or 3 million would consider a serious long distance relationship. This is 3 times more singles considering a long distance relationship than a year ago. The article goes on to explain that a major reason for this shift of views in the relatively cheap cost of air travel when compared to train tickets in the UK. On average a flight to Europe is 40% cheaper than a return train ticket from London to any other major city in Britain.