Ever wondered what it’s like to work at WhiteLabelDating.com? In a new monthly piece, we ask one team member to share their working day with us. First up, Partner Manager Lauren Barnes…
So here we are again. Monday morning has come around far too quickly- who ever decided a weekend should be 2 days?! Being out of the office for most of last week at meetings means I’m sitting down to a day of playing catch-up with reports and partner queries. My assistant Amy is on hand to help organise my day, (never been my strongest point!) and we sit down to discuss the latest goings on with PR and media requests.
Now, straight onto follow up e-mails to those I met last week. Met with a potential partner and am now racking my brain in a bid to put together some projections. Explaining the benefits of our platform is the easy part- the challenge is understanding the brands and establishing what networks, niches and what angle we could take on the dating sites in order to make the partnership successful from the word go. There’s no second chances with media and online dating so we need to use
our experience and expertise to hit the nail on the head, first time! My thoughts are interrupted with our weekly scheduled meeting with our in-house B2B designer, Andrew. Since he’s come on board we’ve had the opportunity and flexibility to service our partners further with bespoke comms and homepages. We discuss his schedule for the week, which involves designing our promotional materials for the upcoming Internet World conference and of course our weekend antics which
involve Gary talking football- the meeting then quickly ends 😉
I return to some unread e-mails and review a report sent by Nick our Financial Analyst which details the demographics of one of our latest brands to launch- Tick Dating. After a successful year for Bauer Media, they launched Tick Dating in a bid to sweep up those users that may not have been exposed to their other branded dating sites. The results are interesting, an exciting launch for Bauer as it seems Tick Dating is quickly becoming a recognised dating brand. Second report from Nick- he’s on the ball today! Trying to establish a new editorial angle for FHM Single Girls. Momentum has been good since the brand re-launched and we need to keep it going. After a juicy meeting with my guys at Bauer we decide on collecting funny/ embarrassing/ successful dating stories from the FHM guys and Amy quickly gets on the case in putting together a bespoke comms plan to gather this information. As we’ve seen in the past, a simple newsletter doesn’t cut it with the FHM members- we need a hook and it needs to involve hot girls and an incentive too!
I stop for a brew and get chatting to Kelly who heads up the General and Mature Network teams on Customer Support. I’m thrilled to hear of yet another success story- yes I’m happy for the members, but more importantly it’s fresh content to feed to the partner and gives us a more enticing feature online/ in print. I pass the news onto Amy who wastes no time in contacting the members for a photo and for more goss on how it all escalated from a simple wink on Independent Singles!
After lunch, I’m asked to report on the success of my Global Dragon’s idea- a scheme which gives Global Personals employees a chance to voice their ideas, whether it’s ways to improve conversion rates, new methods for Customer Support or general office improvements. It’s all reviewed by a panel and prioritised from there. My idea was a hold tone for the Retention Team whereby members would listen to sound clips explaining site features that they may have missed which should hopefully cause them to drop out of the cancellation line and give the site another go.
Time seems to be flying this afternoon so I chuck my headphones in and get my head down. For the first time today I manage to check my to-do list! Facebook Connect is a big task and I carry on setting up Facebook Apps for the media partners. I’m inspired and think up some new ideas for marketing activities using these new FB apps which involves using them to communicate with users and mention special offers and new feature launches. It’s a great way to build a brand and give it more character, making it more accessible to its users.
As the day comes to a close, I make preparations for tomorrow’s activities which will involve a lot of number crunching (ouch!) then off to the gym I go, ready for another early start tomorrow 🙂