In light of COVID-19, White Label Dating and their Partners commit to keeping people connected.
The World Health Organisation has declared the coronavirus, or COVID-19, a global pandemic. As we enter an uncertain time for the online industry it is important that marketers are not exploiting the current worldwide situation. The first thing we are seeing is people trying to exploit fear. This isn’t entrepreneurship and this isn’t marketing. We highly recommend that you avoid exploitation, but instead aim to support those individuals who are stuck at home and can benefit from online connections at this time.
With an increasing volume of people online, a boost in search traffic for online products and cheaper costs to acquire as online advertisers withdraw from the market, marketers within the online dating industry, and you as our partners, can support those impacted by the current crisis, at the same time as remaining fortunate enough to keep your businesses afloat, and even growing at this time.
What has happened in the past?
Although this will be a very tough time for many B2C and B2B businesses, we’re confident our award-winning platform will remain stable with both registrations and conversions growing as a result of more people being at home and online. We’ll be sharing more about our impressive same-day conversion rates later in this article.
We haven’t seen such a pandemic before, but our partners’ historic revenues are living proof that a recession is not something our business model needs to worry about – in fact, our most rapid growth as a company was during the last economic recession from 2008 onwards. At this time, our focus is on supporting our team, our partners and our members! They win by keeping connected – you win when they pay to upgrade! If this isn’t enough of a reason to push then we’re not sure what is?
So, what are we seeing that will help you and your online dating business?
There’s been a shift towards online vs offline dating searches!
The current crisis is making people reluctant to leave their homes. With more people at home, bored and online, there will be an increase in online sales as people browse the web instead of undertaking their usual activities. Social interaction is something people crave, and what better way to find someone to entertain them than on an online dating site? There are only so many conversations you can have with your family, right?
We ran some searches on Google Trends and found that there has been a shift in search traffic as a result of the current global crisis.
We compared generic online and offline dating search scenarios, ‘date online’ and ‘online dating’ vs ‘speed dating’, across the UK and US since the start of Feb 2020. Since the pandemic was announced and as it continues to progress, it is clear that the volume of online dating searches have maintained themselves, and are even on the rise, while searches for offline dating terms have dropped drastically.
There is more search traffic available… at a lower cost!
Due to the uncertainty within the current market, we’re seeing that more and more advertisers that focus on multiple verticals, not just dating, are withdrawing marketing spend and/or deferring this into H2 of 2020 while they realign their strategies. This is an opportunity for us to respond to the available search traffic and help those that wish to connect!
As more traffic becomes available and many online advertisers, costs will go down and you’ll be able to acquire much more profitability. Of course, at such a time, growing profits while others struggle isn’t at the forefront of your minds, and rightly so, but the opportunity to keep people online and communicating is almost pivotal and if you can acquire at a cost that allows you to do so, whilst making money, we’d love to support you as best we can.
How can you help to keep people connected at this time?
We want to work with you to keep members connected and keep them positive!
We already know that there is more online dating traffic available and that you can buy this for considerably cheaper than you usually would. Teamed with impressive performance across the White Label Dating platform there is a huge opportunity for you, as our partners, to benefit from the ever-increasing same-day conversion rates.
Same-day conversion rate – upgrades that happen on the same day that a member registers – has been increasing across both our Mainstream and Casual networks since the beginning of the year. Over the weekend, we saw a massive +19% increase in same-day conversion compared to the 1st February, the third highest day for same-day conversion this year.
There was also a further significant +5% increase across our Mainstream and Casual networks combined since 8th March, our second highest day for same-day conversion this year so far! Conversion rates across the White Label Dating platform have been increasing since the beginning of the year, see data below.
The graph below represents same day conversion across our Mainstream (red) and Casual (blue) networks and demonstrates a small drop in conversion when the pandemic was becoming more and more talked about. Naturally, people’s search trends would have gone elsewhere in the heat of the moment and dating may not have been, rightfully, on their mind – that’s just a reality. But we’re seeing that people are now finding a new norm and we’ve seen conversion increase.
Combined with the impressive, ever increasing, conversion rate, we’re anticipating a boost in female casual registrations due to more women being at home uploading more content, encouraging males to upgrade, therefore boosting conversions across the platform. With more people online, more content being uploaded, naturally on-site engagement will rise, leading to more upgrades and more importantly, more money in your pocket. This will give you the chance to grow whilst continuing to support those being impacted by the global pandemic.
What’s next?
What about the members who are still distracted by the crisis or hesitant to upgrade?
Don’t worry! We’ve got it covered… Our customer engagement team has been working hard to ensure that we re-engage members that may have lost interest at the time of the pandemic announcement. With offers in place to get them into the billing cycle, the efforts you have put in and are putting into acquisition to support people across the seven territories we operate in – UK, AU, US, CA, IE, NZ and SA – have not been and will not be wasted. We anticipate a spike in longer tail conversions over the next few weeks, with members returning to the site.
What not to do with your Google ad campaigns…
Google is protecting people from misinformation therefore, blocking all ads capitalising on the coronavirus. Rather than focusing on coronavirus ads, instead focus on terms that centre around communication and engagement. Rather than trying to acquire terms such as ‘meet’ you may want to bid for terms such as ‘chat online’. This way, you can take advantage of the rising number of people that will be indoors and unable to go anywhere.
Click here for more on navigating your campaigns through COVID-19.
If you have any questions about how you can help the current crisis, or want to know more about how White Label Dating are continuing to support partners, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your partner manager or reach out to [email protected].