White Label Dating Monthly Newsletter – August 2020
Opportunities
Our partners’ daily initial revenue has grown by +66% since March
Each month we continue to highlight impressive growth in new paying subscribers and conversion rates, both same-day and longer-tail, across the White Label Dating platform. Last month we were thrilled with May, in May we were thrilled with April and that’s not to mention significant growth since January – historically the strongest month in dating calendar history.
At what did pose an uncertain time for B2B and B2C businesses across the globe back in March, we’ve been able to support dating brands and members alike, to stay positive in a crisis. Since the beginning of lockdown in March, our partners have seen a staggering +66% increase in daily initial revenue, platform wide. Initial revenue is the revenue generated when a member upgrades their basic membership to a paid subscription for the very first time.
The USA is presenting huge, profitable portfolio expansion opportunities
Despite all of our territories performing extremely well as we progress through 2020, over the last few months we’ve seen our largest growth percentages come from the USA. This presents huge opportunities for profitable portfolio expansion for White Label Dating partners. Especially as we begin to roll out our new networks and targeting capabilities, including hyper-local and hyper-niche options, allowing for more effective geo-targeting – more on this later.
Since March, our USA network has seen a +50% increase in registrations, coupled with just over a +100% increase in initial revenue. With revenue growing at a rate of double the associated registrations, our partners are thrilled with how the platform is performing, reporting a +15% increase in yield per registration. This is a +15% increase in the return that our partners are receiving for every pound, or dollar, that they spend.
7-day conversion rate has demonstrated a +20% increase in the USA, with longer-tail conversions continuing to grow in tandem. 7-day conversions are the cumulated number of upgrades that take place within 7 days of members registering to a dating site.
As revenues and profits grow, our partners are creating more and more sites in the USA. Not only are first-time upgrade revenues showing impressive growth, our partners’ total revenue is also growing at a notable rate. Total revenue is the revenue from first time subscribers (initial revenue), repeat subscribers (reinitial revenue) and repeat billers (rebill revenue). Since March, our partners have seen an impressive +70% increase in total revenue.
But what does this mean?
It means that members are coming back to re-subscribe and they’re sticking around. With such staggering results, even before the roll out of some exciting new platform enhancements to boost user experience further, we can’t wait to see what happens in the coming months.
What’s been happening to search trends since lockdown?
Since the UK lockdown back in March we kept a close eye on search trends, focusing on ‘online dating’ related search terms versus ‘offline dating’ related search terms. To highlight further the massive opportunities that present themselves across the pond, we conducted some USA specific analysis using Google Trends ‘interest over time’ reports.
Back in March, ‘online dating’ related searches presented an interest over time score of 50 (out of 100), with ‘offline dating’ related searches only falling slightly behind, with an interest over time rating of 40. The scores represent search interest on Google, within the US, with a score of 100 representing peak popularity.
Since March, ‘online dating’ related searches have sustained a new high search interest score of 70, even peaking at 100 during the height of the covid pandemic in early April. Whereas, ‘offline dating’ related terms are averaging an interest score of only 10, following the large drop during March.
This graph shows search interest over time in the USA for ‘online dating’ related search terms (blue) and ‘offline dating’ related search terms (red).
We know that the search interest for online dating is there, so we’ve been working hard to ensure our partners can profitably grow and expand their dating businesses with ease in the states. We understand that geo-targeting will be key to success in the USA.
What’s new
The core infrastructure of our new mature network is complete
Back in June we highlighted the positive progress of our brand new network niching project. We’re currently at an annualised run rate investment of £1.2 million. This is double what we initially committed to. The project is continuing to progress well and we’ll imminently be launching the first of our new networks.
The first network to be rolled out will be our mature network. The core infrastructure is complete and we’ve added loads of new and exciting on-site features to heighten the user experience of our partners’ mature traffic, following extensive market research to determine what an industry-leader in mature dating would need to offer.
Just Senior Singles is an example of a niched site targeted at a mature demographic.
White Label Dating partners that are already running dating sites targeted to the mature demographic will know that mature audiences want to feel safe and secure online, as well as build trust with a brand and members on the site. Our new features include a considerable number of new interests and characteristics, as well as the new Q&A function.
These features will allow members to feel comfortable whilst on site and allow them to present their personality in a very detailed way, ensuring that the members they communicate with are the best match possible. The aim is to offer a first class user experience that will enhance their desire to upgrade and continue to use the site.
We’re supporting the population of our brand new networks
Last month we spoke about our new cross-sell tool. The WLD team has been tirelessly working to maximise our partners return on investment by offering members an alternative, niche offering within their own portfolio. Resulting upgrades come at no additional cost to our partners, however they significantly increase return and allow for reinvestment, supporting continued growth.
The tool is forming a major part of our niching project to support the population of the new networks that we are currently building. This will be a supplementary strategy to ensure that these new networks can reach a strong, critical mass as quickly as possible so that the traffic that our partners are acquiring through active acquisition and spend has the highest propensity to upgrade and generate return.
What’s to come
We’re improving how our partners can target across all networks
We’re currently working on our search functionality across the new mature network to ensure all of the new interests and characteristics can be detailed in the most ergonomic way possible. Not only this, we’re introducing a considerable number of new interests and characteristics across all of our existing networks, including our mainstream, casual, christian and alternative networks. This will provide members with a much more customer-centric, positive experience as we continue to maximise the dating service we offer.
We expect conversion rates to increase and our partners’ profits to grow as the targeting options are redefined. A huge advantage of niche targeting is that there is little or no competition. There are also cheaper acquisition costs.
A niche market does not always mean a small market – particularly in countries as large as the USA – but it involves offering specific target audiences specific interests. This also presents the opportunity to increase site prices as customers do not mind paying a little extra because they are only able to get that service from our partners brands.
Combine niche and location based targeting to lower costs and increase profits
In the run up to our new networks project we conducted a considerable amount of market research to help us understand what improvements to performance would occur if our partners were to expand their portfolios by launching hyper-targeted sites – in particular, hyper-local and hyper-niched combos.
In the coming weeks, our partners will have the ability to target the location of sites at a much more granular level and provide a more localised experience across all geos. The USA for example, is a very large country with a number of states that have many different interests and characteristics within each of them.
The data we have collected shows that conversion rates are expected to be considerably higher for these hyper-targeted sites. Some hyper niche and location combos are showing a +30% to 40% increase in both same-day and snapshot conversion rates. We’ve also found that members’ lifetime values (LTV) are likely to increase the more hyper-niched and hyper-local the sites are. With ultimately less competition and a more targeted dating offer, with a customer centric user experience, members are more likely to stick around and spend more money.
In the past, a lot of our partners have targeted broad audiences and avoided small niches as this can significantly reduce volume. However, the profitability of campaigns linked to niched sites tend to be much higher, therefore the prospect of being able to launch unlimited hyper-local and hyper-niched sites, that when combined drive the same large volumes as broader sites, is one our partners are extremely excited about.
Keep your eyes peeled for this month’s Inside Track where we’ll be sharing more detailed information about the opportunities for US expansion and all of our brand new targeting capabilities.
All the best,
The team at White Label Dating
