Dating Services

eHarmony won Silver in the Customer Service category for the 2008 Gartner and 1to1 Customer Awards. Gold went to Overstock.com with Bronze being received by Cricket Communications. You ask, who is 1to1? Quoted from their website:

1to1.com is a personalized Web site developed by Peppers & Rogers Group to help people interested in CRM and one-to-one marketing find information and resources to create more loyal, profitable relationships with their customers by treating different customers differently. The site is built around the four-step IDIC methodology of Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. - identify your customers, differentiate them based on value and need, interact to learn more about what they need and then customize your products and services to meet their needs.

eHarmony is a client of 1to1 Media and it is nice to know they are taking an interest in customer service to help not only the company's bottom line but to improve the overall experience of members at eHarmony. Too often dating sites rely just on FAQs and Help sections built into the website. Paying customers need more than this. Emails and calls to customer support need to be tailored to the member. Dating Sites should be exceptionally good at this since they already have a lot of personal information about the member and hopefully they keep track of the members usage pattern of the dating service as well. Simply substituting a members name in a stock email doesn't work anymore, people are smarter than this.

See the complete winners and category list Winners here.

For more information on eHarmony, read our review.

Markus Frind, CEO of Plentoffish.com, blog has a post today called Lots of changes lately…. In his post Markus mentions 5 interesting points he has noticed in the dating industry. I think he may need to add another point to his list. The reason for this is he also asks the question:

Here is a question for everyone what are the best merchant accounts to use?

Merchant accounts are used by websites who offer paid services or goods to process credit cards, online cheques and debit cards. Markus has hired a few people lately and is obviously working on something. I wonder if he is planning to offer a paid membership that has some added benefits? Maybe he is adding some other type of dating related service? He hasn't given us any real hints. The merchant account could even be for a whole new project which isn't even related to PlentyOfFish.com.

Has anyone else heard any rumours?

Comment below...

It looks like CNBC received a number of complaints of some dating ads which had been displayed on their website recently. The ads showed:

... women unbuttoning sweaters and listing mileage to ladies looking for a date. And the others showing come-hither countenances and blaring "NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED".

A couple of days ago, the Managing Editor of CNBC.com, Allen Wastler, posted an apology to their readers with a small explanation on how it happened. He doesn't mention which dating site the ads are for, but I have a feeling it was SinglesNet.com. I have seen several of their No Credit Card Required ads before. They also tend to have woman in sexually suggestive poses on most of their ads (of course they are far from the only ones who do this).

I saw some interesting statistics on a website that mentions:

According to the US Census, 40% of American adults patronize the services of online dating sites resulting in about 120,000 marriages annually.

I searched the U.S. Census Bureau website for awhile and couldn't find the information mentioned in the quote. If this statistic is true, it would mean that eHarmony is responsible for a third of all marriages that resulted from online dating. According to eHarmony they are responsible for on average 118 marriages a day or 43,000 in one year, in the United States (see stats).

I am suspect of the number of total marriages resulting from online dating as mentioned in the quote above since, other facts didn't ring true in the article. As example, it also mentions:

China too expects dating patrons to grow in huge numbers. With 64 million singles residing in the nation, the market is expected to double in the present year.

The United States has a population of roughly 300 million with over 90 million singles. Canada has a population of 30 million with a third being single. This is the same ratio as the United States. China has a population of over 1.3 billion. I would expect them to have more that 64 million singles, a lot more! If the same ratio holds true then you would expect to see over 400 million singles.

For the full article called Internet Dating – The Good, Bad and Ugly, visit MedIndia.com. See our eHarmony Review for more information on this dating service.

According to the unofficial eHarmony blog, eHarmony is planning its eleventh free communication weekend this coming Labour Day. It starts Friday, August 29, 2008 and ends on Monday. September 1, 2008 at midnight. On these 4 days new members of eHarmony will be able to communicate for free and really test drive the dating service. This promotion will be available for both the US and Canadian eHarmony sites.

Visit our eHarmony review for more information and user opinions about this dating service.

For people who opted into marketing emails from Datran Media, eHarmony's e-mail marketing partner, they recently received 3 different emails over a 6 week period. The goal of this marketing email campaign was not only to find customers but also to increase brand awareness. At the end of the campaign, a study found brand awareness increased by over 37 percent for eHarmony, from those who received the emails. Through email, advertisers can focus their marketing dollars and zero in on key demographics. As an example, in a test, eHarmony targeted people over 40 who where Asian and Canadian. Once sent, they found brand awareness increased by almost 12 percent from those who received the email.

Click E-mail gaining utility among marketers for the full story.

For singles interested in this online dating service, our eHarmony review is a good source of information.