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.
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