Burnout Millennial Generation Guide into the Dating Industry
The youngest of them are 22 and the oldest are 38 and despite the media portray, millennials are more than a generation of entitled snowflakes. They might “killed” some things like diamond engagement rings and Hooters, but they also enabled a whole new business area in dating. So if you want to operate your business efficiently, make sure you understand the motives and mindset of your potential customers.
Every now and then there’s an article popping that blames online dating for butchering ‘real’ relationships and contributing to divorce rates. Despite the bad wrap, dating industry revenue grew by 11,9% over last 5 years and now is a $3 billion market and it’s expected to hit $12 billion by 2020, according to Nomura Instinet research. There are around 600 million people that identify as ‘single’ and have internet access. Every fifth of that bunch is willing to use one or more dating services, making it total up to 310 million users worldwide by 2020 (China aside). Therefore, the dating site owners should prepare accordingly.
Connected yet lonely
Being always online, whether for social media scrolling or working overtime, the Internet is a primary place for millennials to meet a partner. Leave blind date arrangements through mutual friends in 2013. Half of the UK respondents in a 2017 study admitted that they have never asked people on a date in real life, only through the Internet. It’s all about mobile experience now. If you’re interested in upselling services or membership packages, take time and make sure your mobile payments processing flow is secure and integrated perfectly. Customizable checkouts, BPS (biometric payment system) methods, and authorization tokens are the new norm. In the US and Canada alone users lost almost a $1 billion due to so-called ‘romance scam’ in 2016-2018. We, as a payment service provider, have partnered with Covery anti-fraud solution platform — AI-based system that analyzes up to 2 million transactions daily and saves us up to 95% of operational costs.
Safety before adventure
Millennials are taking their time with marriage, childbirth, and classic ‘settle down’ moments. The average age for women at childbirth in Japan, Sweden and Greece surpassed 30, according to UN data. Ladies are now more focused on career and well-being, valuing respect and safety online more than a pretty face and a full set of hair (98% female respondents wouldn’t date conventionally attractive partner if he was rude or had poor manners). Region-specific features from dating services, that protect women from online harassment, are blooming in India, for example. If you’re aiming for user engagement and classic LTV over CAC, keep in mind that millennials are far more aware of personal boundaries and more cautious about personal data (after the Facebook breach, many were facing the dilemma of deleting the app, but that would also delete everything from their dating profiles).
Are we likable enough?
A generation that meticulously documents and puts online everything, from breakfast to relationships updates, is obsessed with public perception. Since everything can be measured in likes, comments, retweets, and subscribers, millennials feel pressure to be ‘Instagram-worthy’ partners and couples. Instant gratification is addictive, but the lack of it is repulsive for millennials. In fact, interviews that Match held back in 2018, during their UK ‘Love With No Filter’ campaign, confirm a negative effect of social media pressure that’s put on their looks, career choices, and lifestyle. Dial down the over-gamification. Turning user experience in a hunt for likes, badges, and unlocked levels will soon lose its appeal, as essentially you add just another side gig for burnout millennials, another thing they have to succeed in. One more space in which the number of matches and likes define the user’s value.
Maxpay’s CEO, Artem Tymoshenko, taking the growth of the dating industry with a grain of salt: “Although money spent on the top ten dating apps has almost tripled in 2016-2018, only 26% of users have ever paid for an upgrade on a dating service. Among that 73 % who didn’t, 85% are, in fact, millennials. Our merchants that operate dating sites are facing new challenges in a form of improved customers journey with smooth and seamless payments processing, so we’re looking forward making changes according to their requests.”
Find out more about Maxpay here.
