As the dust settles on London 2012, it’s time to take a look back over the last fortnight. With typical British pessimism, few expected the games to go as well as they did; neither in terms of organisation, sporting success or the shared festival atmosphere that everyone adopted.
The people of Britain, as well as those further afield found a new common ground in a previously undiscovered passion for sport and a fresh sense of national pride, thankfully meaning that the WhiteLabelDating.com Olympic promotional campaigns resonated that much louder.
The results speak for themselves. In our biggest, most sustained email campaign to date, more than 33 million emails were sent to our members across the Olympic ceremonies spanning 17 days. We began on the evening of the opening ceremony, allowing our members to send messages for free. This was closely followed by free access to read messages just two days later. We then repeated the free-read action the following weekend, with a final Olympic hurrah during the closing ceremony.
Clearly the Olympic campaigns were a success, with free access periods increasing daily peak “members online” counts by 30-35% and total daily logins by up to 20%.
Following the first weekend of free access we also launched an exciting discount offer which, once extended from an initial 7-day run, remained valid until the very end of the games and contributed to an astonishing increase in revenue when compared with the same period in July. We’re delighted with the results, especially considering the glorious weather we had towards the end of the Olympics, which can often be a cause for upgrades to slow down.
In addition to more direct sources of revenue and conversions, Olympic themed touch-points drove increased traffic to many WhiteLabelDating.com sites. An innovative campaign awarding “medals” to members with the best diary entries, profiles and photos generated twice as many visits to sites as the offers themselves. What’s more, click rates equalled and even exceeded those of some of our successful day-to-day “Featured Member” campaigns, which display many more member profiles.
Once again, we’ve proven that national and international events provide excellent leverage in increasing conversion rates and user engagement. Here in the Comms team, we can’t wait for the next big event!
Matt Harman, WhiteLabelDating.com Comms team.