It’s arrived, the official month of love! 
Everyone is looking to find their perfect partner in time for Valentine’s Day. It’s a busy time for love at the moment and a very busy time for WLD!
We have already had lots of exciting news and developments in 2010 and we have only just finished January! Have a read of Februarys install and catch up on everything WLD.
We’ve Moved
As you will be tucking into this juicy newsletter we will be enjoying our first day in our new sparkly office! The teams have expanded so much in the recent months that we’ve invested in a brand spangly new office to enable the company to grow and meet its full potential.
The move is really exciting for everyone involved and we hope you will all get a chance to pop in and visit our new digs! Our new address is:
Global Personals Limited
Minton Place
Windsor
Berkshire
SL4 1EG
Hope to see you there soon
Olympic Programme Exceeding Expectations
We wanted to share some great news with you about how well things are going since the introduction of the Olympic Program in October last year. Our partners really have embraced the programme and got on board, continuing to build up strong relationships with their Partner Managers, maintaining regular contact which has led to a noticeable uplift in activity. We’re pleased to announce that we’re exceeding all of the current SLAs and continue to work to provide outstanding partner support.
We asked a few of our partners to let us know how they are getting on with the new programme. We were very happy to have had nothing but positive feedback and have a few testimonials we wanted to share with you;
“To move a business forward effectively, planning and teamwork is required. As a gold partner, I get the benefit of effectively having a team to work with to plan projects and expand the business in a logical and thoughtful way by meeting and discussing ideas, brain storming and implementing to ensure we move forward . Very beneficial for me and the growth of my dating sites.”
“Since being classified as a WLD Gold partner, the help I’ve received from my Partner Manager has been invaluable. I’ve received support on dealing with a variety of issues in running my dating sites, such as PPC advertising, number crunching and help in setting goals to grow my sites as quickly as possible. I know I can contact her via email/phone for advice whenever I need it, and we get together once a month for a face to face catch up meeting. My Partner Manager also puts me in touch with specialist members of the WLD team who can advise me on all sorts of aspects regarding the management of my sites, such as how best to promote my viral marketing campaign and help surrounding hosting and domain management, etc.”
We are incredibly happy with these results and expect things to only improve as relationships build and time goes on. If you have any questions regarding the Olympic Programme don’t hesitate to contact your Partner Manager and they will help to answer any questions you may have.
Kicking off The Partner Workshops
The Partner Workshops kick off this month which we are really excited about. We have had a really high response for the first series of workshops which has lead to us rolling out many more throughout the year, as we want as many of our partners to benefit as possible.
The first workshop happening this month is focused on the topic of harnessing social media, which has growing importance in this ever changing market. We will keep you posted on the future workshops we are hosting, in the meantime if there are specific areas that you would like support with, please contact your Partner Manager.
Development Updates
With the continuing commitment to improving the platform, January was yet another busy month for our Development Team.
We have introduced a brand new recommendations and similarities engine, which has now been rolled out across all of our partner sites. The basic idea around the new recommendation tool is that it does all the hard work for our members. Rather than relying on the users preferences and questionnaires it recommends other members based on implicit behavior as they move around the site. The new system hugely increases your members chances of finding their perfect partner and increases the amount of time they spend interacting on the site. All of this should mean increased retention rates, leading to an increase in your revenue levels.
We are also very excited about the launch of PayPal across the platform. The new payment method will mean paying to upgrade on your sites has never been easier for your members. We believe this will have a positive effect on payments going forwards. We can already see proof of the new system working, the first full day of PayPal being live, the 27th February was the highest revenue day for 2 weeks! We also saw, in the first 3 days of PalPal being live that 18.4% of UK upgrade payments were by PayPal. A huge uptake! So it all looks very promising for the future of PayPal if this trend continues!
Meanwhile, the team is hard at work on our new newsletter tool, launching the end of February. This will give you the tools that you need to send your very own newsletters to your members - initially being tested with Gold Partners, we will be rolling it out to all other partners in the coming months. We are also looking to introduce a revised moderation system for our Customer Care Team to more effectively monitor and block scammers which should improve the customer experience and see an increase in conversions.
More details will be coming your way about these exciting improvements as they develop. So watch this space!
More Great Member Support
The Support Team has been very busy with all the great New Year offers which have been rolled out to your members recently. We are pleased to say these have gone down very well and the Support Team are assisting more members than ever before.
To help the team become even more efficient, the whole team attended a Customer Service Training Course run by Hamilton Mercer. The team wants to have the sharpest skills possible when it comes to assisting your member’s needs and concerns. Overall, the course was very successful, with each member of the group bringing away positive changes to their customer service. This should hopefully see an increase in member retention, which means more money in your pocket.
Over 50’s Market Booming Once Again
The over 50’s network is still booming and only shows signs of improving. In the past month alone, the network conversion from basic to full paying members has been 11.31%. This is outstanding and continues to prove that niches work.
Members are more active than ever and as the stigma of internet dating continues to fade, sites become safer and more accessible - we’re sure that the number of over 50s signing up will continue to increase.
Thanks for Reading
As you can see February is going to be a super busy month for all of us! Very exciting times ahead!
You can keep up to date with all of WLD’s goings on at our blog, and remember to follow us on Twitter We like having lots of Twitterific friends.
Be sure to get in touch if you have any questions regarding anything in this month’s newsletter, or if there’s anything you wish to discuss.
As always thanks so much for reading
Kindest Regards,
Francesca Heath
fheath@whitelabeldating.com
WhiteLabelDating.com
