I had a great conversation with Mandy Ginsberg, the new North America General Manager of Match.com. Mandy was the GM of Chemistry.com previously. Mandy replaced Craig Wax, who is no longer with the company. Here’s what I learned.
Chemistry growth is up 11%. They have a high rate of people completing the initial profiles. A series of new questions are displayed when I logged in this week (been a while), six in all. I am in the middle of going through the multi-step meeting process. This is not a product review, but I continue to keep track of what’s working and where improvements are needed.
Helen Fisher, who created the Chemistry matching system, has written a book about why we match up with people. The book is based on what she has learned from members of Chemistry.com during the last 2.5 years. Everyone there is excited about the book and I am hoping for an unprecedented look into how singles are using online dating.
Chemistry is launching a new ad campaign in April 2009. The campaign will feature hard-hitting, irreverent and urban messaging. Photo to the left is of successful couples who have met on Chemistry. This is a small sampling, there simply isn’t enough room for them to display them all.
Chemistry is working hard to streamline the communication process. I was glad to hear that. It takes a while to get to the point where you’re actually asking someone out on a date.
Now, on to Match. Match is preparing a new ad campaign in coming weeks. More on this after I’ve had a chance to review the creative.
Match is testing a newsfeed feature similar to the Facebook Live Feed. Only certain members can see the feature at this point.
Working on 2009 strategy now. Stepping back to figure out what consumers are feeling, address quality of matches and responses and laying out roadmap to address those sentiments. We’re going to see more innovation from Match in 2009 than we’ve seen in the past few years. Maybe video, we’ll see.
There is a whole new position for someone who is in charge of retention efforts.
Match gets 25,000 new members a day, that is incredible. I talk to a lot of smaller dating sites who would kill to have 25k members.
I’ve mentioned that the Facebook Application “Are You Interested” displays profiles of members who are also on Match. Turns out that Match shares a feed of members with Are You Interested, which inserts the profiles into the profile stream every once in a while. Clicking “Yes” on one of these profiles directs the user over to Match.com, where I found that I had to log in twice to see the person’s profile.
Login problems aside, this is a good way for Match to try out social network marketing without a) changing the way Match works for existing members and b) implementation appears fairly straightforward, click Yes (Anonymous) or Yes(Let Them Know) and either way you are redirected to Match.com, where hopefully you will create an account in order to communicate with the person. I’m not sure if there is a difference between the two Yes options?
Watch for Match to do more in the social networking space as they continue to evaluate new opportunities and partners.
