the future of paid and premium online dating in the mobile multiscreen world
TRANSCRIPT
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The future of paid and premium dating in the
mobile multiscreen world
Laurence HollowayCo-Founder and CTO
Lovestruck
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20 years of online dating: a simplified timeline
• 1995 – Match.com• 2000 – eHarmony • 2003 – POF• 2004 – OKCupid, Guardian Soulmates, My Single
Friend• 2006 – Lovestruck• 2007 – Zoosk• 2010 – How About We• 2012 – Tinder• 2013 – Hinge (app) • 2014 – Happn, Bumble• 2015 – Raya
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1 Million Years B.T.• Fully paid services dominate• Long-term, monogamous and highly
valuable relationship with customers, insane LTVs
• 10s of millions spent on TV advertising to build brands and acquire customers
• Industrial strength CRM via email• Sharp tactics deployed to convert
subscribers• Free dating associated with low quality – you
get what you pay for• Mobile dating experience slow, unreliable,
cramped and compromised
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Born Free• The arrival of large scale free dating on
the web, with a few on mobile• Big and busy, but you do the legwork and
might have to market/spam to all your contacts to get any real value
• OkCupid was the first quality free site?• Brings online dating to a much wider
audience, breaks down barriers• Valuable lead generation for traditional
players – people try free first, use multiple services
• Freemium feature upgrades emerge
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The arrival of Tinder• Hello to the free, mobile and good• The first truly viral, social dating product? Enabled
by Facebook, minimal onboarding and a casual focus.
• Earnest nature of traditional sites at odds with the millennial generation
• The unicorn: right app, right execution, right time, right audience, right backer
• Produced a rapid change in customer expectations about the overall experience and, importantly, the cost of online dating services
• A genuine and serious threat to the model of paid mainstream dating providers
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Variations on a new theme
• More apps arriving and some growing fast. Most are free to message, most using Facebook for signup, matching and onboarding.
• Free no longer means low quality – newer apps are working to improve on Tinder too
• Mobile no longer means a compromised experience. Better apps, larger screens, faster data, greater privacy.
• BUT does anyone have any significant revenue or are they just burning investor cash looking for a buyer or, worse, just lifestyle/PR businesses? Is Tinder an anomaly rather than a unicorn?
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“Why investors don’t do dating” – Andrew Chen
• Built-in churn
• Dating has a shelf-life
• Paid acquisition channels are expensive
• City-by-city expansion sucks• Hard to exit• Demographic mismatch with
investors
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Back To The Future?• Freemium is alive and well: Tinder Plus
(Rewind, Passport), Happn charms (contact people without a mutual match), CMB beans (find out who your mutual friends are)
• Even the paid tier is perhaps stirring into life again, with a twist (e.g. Raya). But now niche?
• Pay if you’re not an influencer, pay if you’re old, pay if you want a Super Like
• Also pay if you want more quality, more curation, less choice?
• Match and eHarmony actually growing subscribers?
• Customer behaviour is not just mobile, it’s multiscreen – so dating on the web will survive?
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Why pay for dating anyway?
• Dating services with revenue should be more likely to invest in customer service, tech support and safety features
• Active blocking of scammers and bots• Selective and verified membership • External benefits such as events and discounts• The paywall is a sincerity filter for serious dating?• Added features that give daters an advantage or ego
boost• Over 30s want fewer matches, more curation (à la
CMB)?
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Dangers for paid dating
• Subscription prices being pushed down by mobile = the end of the “greedy” renewal model and heavy CRM approach?
• Gradual contraction to a small and expensive niche area of the market, like the offline introduction agencies before?
• Acquisition becomes more difficult, more expensive and ROI becomes increasingly unsustainable. Free / viral / social players don’t need paid marketing to build a brand.
• Death for those who can’t/won’t adapt to changed customer expectations• Death for those who don’t provide better value, better quality and a better
experience than free apps• No new investment for the traditional marketing-led acquisition model – only
the big guys will survive• White label providers are failing to catch up with the shift to native apps?
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Some conclusions• For new mainstream dating services, messaging and matches no
longer belong in the paid tier. Customers expect most features to be (largely) free.
• People will still pay for extras if they provide real value and advantage.
• Some people will pay to be cool or exclusive, but most won’t.• High dependency on Facebook for signup, onboarding and matching
could be seen as a risk – Zuck is famously known to be negative about online dating.
• Expensive, repetitive marketing of ageing web-generation products is not sustainable. Technology and time have moved customer expectations forward.
• The industry is always changing and those who adapt and innovate, rather than just watch and follow, can surely survive.
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Thank you