Online Dating

Forget Black Friday. Forget Cyber Monday. China’s Singles' Day is now the world’s biggest online shopping bonanza.

The holiday, an anti-Valentine's Day for single people, traces its origins back to Nanjing University in 1993. Students began celebrating the single life annually on November 11, a date chosen because of the connection between singlehood and the number 1. Upon graduation many continued the tradition and the celebration of Singles' Day is now widespread amongst young Chinese people.

To mark the occasion, Chinese singles party with other single friends. The festivities can include a special breakfast, karaoke and blind date parties hosted in attempt to end singlehood as soon as possible. Singles' Day has also become the largest online shopping day in the world, with sales in e-commerce giant Alibaba's sites Tmall and Taobao clocking in at US$9.3 billion in 2014.

Yes, $9.3 billion. That’s more than the total U.S. online sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined in 2014. And no one got run over in a tragic store stampede.

Singles' Day shopping originated with Alibaba, but today merchants throughout China participate. Shoppers can score major deals on clothing, cosmetics, electronics and even food. Looking at the numbers will make your head spin:

• Alibaba's Singles' Day 2015 selection will include 6 million products from more than 40,000 merchants, and over 30,000 brands from 25 countries
• China’s post office estimates that nearly 800 million packages will be shipped as a result of the hoilday
• A Nielsen survey found that 56 percent of more than 1,000 internet users in China said they would increase spending compared with 2014
• Consumers are expected to spend an average of $277 per person, up 22 percent year on year
• Alibaba estimates that 1.7 million deliverymen, 400,000 delivery vehicles, 5,000 warehouses and 200 airplanes will be necessary to handle the deliveries

If predictions are accurate, 2015 could be the biggest year yet for retailers on Singles' Day. Alibaba sales could hit $10 billion in a 24-hour period.

"It's not a huge surprise that consumers are planning to spend more during this year's 'Double 11,'” Yan Xuan, President of Nielsen Greater China, told CNBC. “Income levels and internet penetration continue to rise throughout China, so this is a natural progression.”

Singles' Day is also expanding worldwide. Five thousand overseas brands from 25 countries – including the U.S, Europe, Japan and South Korea – will be available this year. This year's international participants include Costco, LG Electronics, Walt Disney Co., Fisher-Price and Lego. In recent years, Apple, Calvin Klein, Macy's and Burberry have participated.

Perhaps Singles' Day itself will soon be a global phenomenon.

Plenty of Fish may have taken a backseat to services like Tinder in terms of cultural recognition, but 2015 has been a big year for the company nonetheless.

In March, POF released its revenue numbers for the first time. The dating app and website reached 100 million users worldwide and announced that its run rate – the revenue a company can expect to bring in if business continues as it has so far that year – for 2015 was expected to hit $100 million. That's a dollar per year per user, even though most POF users don't pay a dime for the service.

In July POF was acquired by Match Group, an IAC/InterActive subsidiary, for $575 million in cash. Match Group had purchased a number of dating services over the previous six years, including How About We and OkCupid. Add those to Tinder, which Match had funded early in its lifetime, and Match Group became a serious power player in the online dating world.

After much speculation, Match Group filed for an IPO in October of this year with a tentative offering amount of $100 million. It will operate under the ticker symbol "MTCH" on NASDAQ.

And that's not where the big news ends for Plenty of Fish in 2015. As part of Match Group's filing with the SEC, the company revealed POF's current financial status. This is only the second time the public has seen POF's revenue numbers.

POF's revenue is divided into two categories: subscription and advertising. The majority of the website's funding comes from subscriptions, which make up 75% of POF's income compared to 25% from ads. POF currently estimates 2015 revenue to be $80 million.

With a little math magic, we can find out how many paying users Plenty Of Fish has. Seventy-five percent of $80 million is $60 million per year from subscriptions. Divide that by 12 and POF pulls in $5 million per month. Then divide again by $10, the average monthly revenue per paid member, and the final number is 500,000 paid members. That's a remarkably small percentage of POF's 100 million users.

There's a reason the company relies so heavily on subscription revenue over ads. As singles increasingly favor mobile devices over computers, services like Plenty Of Fish are forced to adapt to smaller screens. Ads are more distracting and harder to read in the cramped space of a smartphone screen.

In other ways, mobile has strongly contributed to the success of POF. “Since our shift to mobile we’ve seen rapid growth both in terms of users and revenue,” says founder and CEO Markus Frind.

“Our revenue model has also evolved from one driven by advertising to one driven by paid membership,” he adds. “Now more than ever, singles are willing to pay for an enhanced user experience.”

There’s no doubt about it: online dating has become even more popular, and at the same time, more frustrating than ever. Believe it or not, there is a correlation between the two.

Dating apps work very similarly to a game. You swipe left and right, amassing lots of matches to your dating bank account, and feeling great. More people, more possibilities. But in reality – how many of your matches are you actually going out with? How many send you messages, and how many respond to yours? Unfortunately, more often than not, the numbers are low. (Or worse – female daters tend to be the recipients of unwanted and aggressive texts.)

So what do we do with this information? Do we declare this to be "the end of dating" along with The New York Times? Do we delete those apps from our phones, as one writer for website Bustle has declared she will do?

You do have the option to drop out of online dating altogether, but I would argue for keeping it a part of how you meet people to date. Dating apps are here to stay, so it's time to embrace them. But we also need to learn how to date - in real life.

The problem doesn't lie with dating apps per se - technology in general is changing how we behave and interact. People are spending more time updating and commenting on their social media accounts than they are having actual conversations or meeting up with people IRL. Take a look at any bar or restaurant, and inevitably you see a group of people at a table, and none of them are talking to each other – they are staring at their phones.

There is an element of social anxiety that comes along with dating, but our phones are giving us an easy way out, rather than learning to overcome this anxiety. It’s much easier to drop a conversation online than try to think of something witty to say. And the thought of making small talk on a first date for half an hour can terrify many young daters who have grown accustomed to safely hiding behind their phones.

Instead of complaining about the technology, it’s time to do something about what we would like to see in the dating world. Ask someone out on a real date. Pick up the phone and have a conversation, don’t just text until one of you drops off. And if you don’t get a response? On to the next.

Most people want to find a connection to someone else. Online dating provides a way to meet people, not a way to actually date them. Instead, the search for connection is totally left up to us – a scary thought. (Why can’t we just blame the dating apps for peoples’ behavior?)

If you want your online dating experience to change, you first need to change your own approach to it. Don’t endlessly swipe. Talk to more people over the phone or in person. Look them in the eye when you are having a conversation. Don’t become distracted by your phone, or lean on it like a crutch when you get bored. Learn the art of making conversation, of flirting. Practice it!

There’s no shame in asking someone out, and to follow through and go on a real date. In fact, it’s the only thing that will lead to a real-life relationship.

If you use dating sites or apps and haven't run into a creep, weirdo or jerk, you're rarer than a unicorn. Sometimes it seems like online dating is only horror stories.

It isn't. There are stories that end happily-ever-after, with the lovebirds riding off into a picturesque digital sunset – you just may be the protagonist of a few less desirable tales first. It's part of the process, whether you're dating online or off.

The good news is, there are red flags that warn of dating doom if you're observant enough to spot them. If you see these bad dating behaviors, especially if you see several combined, it's safe to say you should swipe left.

1. Their profile is excessively short. Two sentences and a mirror selfie doesn't cut it. The first sign that someone is serious about dating is that they apply that seriousness to their profile. They should have filled out the text portion completely and have a thoughtful selection of photos. If they're not willing to put time into that, odds are they aren't willing to put time into you.
2. They talk about their exes. We all have them and it's ok to share stories of former relationships eventually. It's part of building intimacy. But someone who talks about their ex immediately – right there in their profile, before you've even started a conversation – is stuck in the past and probably not ready for something new.
3. They speak ill of anyone, ex or not. Trash talking is not a good look. For the same reason you shouldn't date someone who treats a restaurant server poorly, you shouldn't date someone who is rude or crude about others in their profile. If they don't have anything nice to say, they should keep their mouth shut and their fingers off the keyboard.
4. They use negative language. Trash talking isn't the only way someone could be negative in their profile. There's an endless list of things they could complain about. If their profile is focused on life's negatives, it probably reflects their real-life personality. Do you want to be in a relationship with a committed pessimist?
5. They're already flaky. Rewind to #1. That's an early sign of flakiness. Later on, you may find that they're excessively late to answer your messages or don't respond to messages at all. Or maybe they divert the conversation when you try to arrange a date. Don't waste time trying to change their mind or change their ways. If they are really interested, they'll put clear effort into getting to know you.

Watch for theses red flags and eventually you'll swipe your way into that sunset.

Dating can feel like a spin of the roulette wheel. You could wind up a winner or go home a loser, and either way, your fate is in the fickle hands of Lady Luck. Run into a particularly bad string of dates and you might even think your odds are better in Vegas.

Online dating can't take luck out of the equation entirely, but matching algorithms attempt to add science into the mix. Much has been said about how data is used to help online daters meet their match, but what about the dating sites themselves?

Lynsey Tomkinson, senior marketing manager at eHarmony, spoke to CMO about how an audience segmentation project opened up a whole new world of possibilities for eHarmony. Tasked with increasing the effectiveness of the company's marketing programs, Tomkinson's team relied on data to find ways to better understand and interact with prospects and customers.

The team's investigation began with eHarmony's testimonials. In an age that's widely accepting of online dating, testimonials are no longer needed to persuade new prospects to try it for the first time. Instead, it's about persuading them to switch to eHarmony.

eHarmony also decided to dial down on its marriage-based messaging. Although the company built a strong reputation as a marriage-minded site, that motif becomes increasingly less relevant in the modern world. The company will now showcase that it's a relationship-oriented site without focusing on marriage specifically.

eHarmony launched an audience segmentation project late in 2014 to delve deeper into audience insights. The goal was to find better ways to target individuals using messages carefully tailored to their needs, interests and lifestyles. eHarmony drew on data from its 2.6 million Australian members and analyzed more than 70 million data points – the largest bespoke audience segmentation project in the company's eight-year history in Australia.

Ten unique audiences were identified based on profitability, volume and opportunity. Tomkinson's team emphasized the top three, most commercially viable segments. As a result, customer subscriptions and engagement rates leapt by double digits, while eHarmony improved the cost of its registration-to-subscription rate by 53 percent.

After the success of these data-driven experiments, the next step is to boost data analytics capability in-house. “This provides the business the case to get these systems running internally for us,” Tomkinson told CMO. eHarmony is now taking steps to build its infrastructure. Tomkinson hopes the company can produce more data-driven initiatives internally by this time next year.

“This work has set up a good foundation for us that hopefully will work well internally in the future,” she says.

For more information on this dating service please read our review of eHarmony.com.

Are you online dating? If so, chances are you have filtered your matches according to your preferences – body type, height, age, career, or whatever is most important to you. Filtering our choices is a good thing – but inevitably, it feeds our tendencies to not want to compromise. After all, if you can choose who exactly you want at the swipe of a screen, why should you settle for less than your ideal mate? You want your date to check off all the boxes on your list, not just a few.

For example, let’s say you don’t want to date anybody who lives more than a 15-minute drive from you, or who didn’t go to college, or who isn’t much into Cross Fit since this is your preferred fitness activity. If you met someone great who lives 45 minutes away, or was into hiking instead of Cross Fit, or who doesn’t have a college degree, would you reject her?

When we are given so many options for meeting new people, it can be difficult to compromise at all. Even if the right person for you appeared on your Tinder screen, you might not even agree to the first date because there are other people who better meet your criteria and filters.

For example, I live in Los Angeles. There is a lot of traffic, and many people spend hours a day in their cars commuting to work. So it’s only natural that they don’t want to spend any more time driving to meet a date, especially when it might not go well. Why waste even more time and effort?

But the truth is, you might be missing out. Maybe you don’t want to consider someone who lives more than fifteen or twenty minutes away, but if you met someone who you found incredibly attractive and compelling, chances are you would drive those few extra miles to spend time together.

If you are a Cross Fit fanatic, and believe that only other Cross Fit people will “get you” - so there’s no point in dating someone who prefers volleyball, or hiking, or sailing for instance – then you are missing out on people who could show you their own passions which are different from yours. There is something compelling about people with passions. They make you want to know more about them, about their interests. So why not give a new date a chance, even if they will never love Cross Fit like you? There are so many other opportunities to be compatible – you don’t have to be in love with the same activity.

Filters serve a purpose, but if we aren’t willing to compromise our own rigid guidelines about what we think we want, then we miss important opportunities. Remember, preferences aren’t deal-breakers. If you’re interested in meeting someone, if you find him/ her attractive and interesting, then don’t let things like distance and compatible interests get in the way. Because you never know – love is often found in the most unlikely places.