With the end of our financial year approaching, all things were geared towards a big end-of-month push in August. But before that, we had some more exciting engagement campaigns to deliver.
With the new-and-improved Instant Messenger (IM) tool having launched at the end of July, we sent members news and reminders about how this works. This, combined with the improved usability of the tool, contributed to an impressive 100% increase in conversations between members!
Hot on the heels of this campaign was the regular Dating Coach newsletter for General and Mature networks. This was closely followed by the resurrection of a bespoke ‘featured members’ variant – blondes versus brunettes. Having had a break from these “versus” campaigns, response rates were twice what they had been back in April – expect to see more of these in the coming months!
The beginning of the month also saw more simple offer campaigns. Members in Scotland and Eire were enjoying a long weekend, but the discount to coincide with the holiday was rolled out to increase engagement across all territories. We didn’t stop there! As South African members celebrated Women’s Day the following weekend, we promoted a free access session to generate a 30% uplift in SA members online.
So we found ourselves nearing the end of August, and the end of the financial year at Global Personals. But before we could launch any special offers, we took the opportunity to prepare members for an upgrade. Firstly, we prompted them to complete their profiles, making them eligible for the Ice Breaker messages we promoted a few days later. This led perfectly into a free access session for basic members to read their messages, increasing basic members online by a whopping 80%!
After giving them a taster of what’s on offer within our sites, it was time to launch our big end-of-month offer. Second only to 2013’s New Year promotion, August’s offer was our second-highest grossing offer ever! To have accomplished this in the middle of summer, coinciding with the start of the football season and the return to school after the summer break is quite an achievement and one that we’re really proud of.
The challenge now is to keep this momentum going into September and to keep those who have upgraded sufficiently engaged for them to renew their membership in the future. Wish us luck…!
Matt Harman, Email Marketing Manager @ WhiteLabelDating.com