BANK HOLIDAYS ARE COMING!

We are a bit spoilt here in the UK, as May plays host to not one but TWO Bank Holidays! A long weekend takes place next week with a Bank Holiday on Monday 27th May. But it’s not just us Brits – the USA will be remembering loved ones over the long weekend for Memorial Day, with Ireland having a Bank Holiday the week after on Monday 3rd June.

We often see a spike in dating traffic on a Sunday, and this often continues through the Bank Holiday Mondays. With our Comms team busy preparing campaigns, it’s vital that your dating business is prepared too. If you have any queries, do get in touch with your partner manager. They are here to help you!

GOOGLE ADWORDS – ENHANCED CAMPAIGNS

You may remember that a little while ago we ran an update for you on Google’s ‘Enhanced Campaigns’ launch, the latest upgrade to Google AdWords, dubbed the first step to improve and simplify online marketing in order to effectively target multiple devices.

All Google AdWords campaigns will move over to Enhanced Campaigns imminently. In order to avoid any disruption to your current campaigns, it’s essential that you ensure all campaigns are moved over to the new tool as soon as possible. To read more about this update, head over to our blog. If you need any help, get in touch with the partner team who will be happy to assist.

USER EXPERIENCE – BEHIND THE SCENES

Our well-established and long-standing User Experience (UX) team work continuously hard to provide new and innovative updates and launches for the WhiteLabelDating.com platform. Rarely does this accomplished bunch shout about what they do or how they do it; so we asked Head of UX, Peter Lambert, to give as a glimpse behind the scenes.

The User Experience and Development teams are working on some new product enhancements that you will start to see appearing over the coming months. We’re very excited about these changes; there’ll be some new features and some key improvements to our existing core functionality. Stay tuned to the newsletters for further announcements!

THANKS FOR READING!

Don’t forget to join us on Twitter, Facebook and check out our blog for up to the minute news and handy tips.

I first joined WhiteLabelDating.com as part of the Customer Retention team. It takes a special mix of skills to adapt to the individual needs of every customer to help them make the most out of our sites, which means that it isn’t always easy. But with the support, knowledge and shared expertise from the rest of the Retention team, it wasn’t long before I was helping the team hit our targets. The job itself was really enjoyable, and I had fun competing with myself to try and better my previous achievements. And yet, after a while, I felt it was time for a new challenge.

Then along came the Business Development role with WhiteLabelDating.com. Business Development is very important for a business, particularly in an industry as vast and fast-growing as dating – which means huge responsibility!  It looked like a fantastic challenge, so I dived in head first.

I’m really enjoying getting stuck in, and my new team have been endlessly helpful. Every day is different in Biz Dev; I never know who I’m going to speak to, what part of the world they’ll be from or what kind of site they’ll want to set up. From media brands and publishers, to affiliates or webmasters; located anywhere from the UK, USA, South Africa or Australia to name but a few; the dating business offers no ends of variety!

During my time in the job so far, I’ve done a lot of different things that I never thought I would do. I now take partners through every step of setting up a new dating site, helping them to decide what niche, market or even territory to target. I follow up new and existing leads, to encourage them to join the WhiteLabelDating.com platform, as well as analysing how we can help them define their dating or lifestyle brand to set them apart within their own niche or territory. There is no limit to dating; absolutely anyone can set up a successful site with the right expertise, meaning that there’s no limit to sources of new business. I also regularly catch up with existing partners to see how they’re settling in with the WhiteLabelDating.com platform, discussing how they can continue to improve their sites.

The Biz Dev role is everything I hoped it would be and I am lucky enough to work in a fantastic team, who are always on hand to help each other out. I can see myself in this role for many years to come and look forward to helping the well oiled machine that is WhiteLabelDating.com, to “conquer the world!”

For new business enquiries, please contact Mav on hello@whitelabeldating.com.

All Google AdWords campaigns will soon move over to Enhanced Campaigns automatically. In order to avoid any disruption to your current campaigns, it’s essential that you ensure all campaigns are moved over to the new tool by the as soon as possible.

A brief reminder of changes to Google AdWords

There are 4 key changes that Enhanced Campaigns brings to Google AdWords that you should be aware of:

• All devices can now be targeted with one campaign

• Tablet devices are targeted in the same way as desktop

• Mobile bids can be fully controlled by users

• You can change mobile bids at campaign level

You no longer need to create separate, individual campaigns for mobile and desktop. Enhanced Campaigns offers a new set of tools that will give you the ability to manage your ads across device, time and location. Within a single campaign, you can create different ads and extensions to target different users, depending on which device they’re connecting from or what time of day they’re searching.

This will allow you to monitor everything from one campaign, rather than several. You’re able to adjust bids at  keyword level, making it even easier to observe how well each device performs.

What do you need to do?

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to make some changes to your existing AdWords account structure to bring in it in line with Enhanced Campaigns.

You will need to consider the following:

• If you have multiple AdWords accounts, ensure that you have access to all of them

• Take a look and review the tools available to help you upgrade to Enhanced Campaigns quickly and effectively

  • You can make changes in AdWords directly, editing campaigns one at a time

  • You can make changes across multiple campaigns at once in AdWords Editor

• If you have mobile-specific campaigns, you can merge them with existing desktop-only campaigns to make the upgrade process easier

• Take some time to learn about bid adjustments, a new feature for Enhanced Campaigns

Remember, Google have launched these updates to make campaigns more easily manageable, so don’t panic. If you need any help at all implementing these changes, please contact your Partner Manager today.

What do we do?

It’s our job to ensure that the WhiteLabelDating.com product is engaging, innovative and provides our users with a fantastic experience. We focus on developing the platform, bringing new ideas to the table and ensuring that the dating application is of a high quality

As a growing business, it’s important that we work to align business objectives and user goals, to create a product that delivers consumer satisfaction and business success.

What makes a successful UX designer?

It takes a unique mix of skills to be a good User Experience Designer. Firstly, the job requires an understanding of human psychology and the ability to empathise with the user. A key part of any project is pinning down why users behave the way they do. Once you’ve got a handle on that, you can create a good hypothesis to enable you to adapt user experience to best suit the needs of your audience. In addition, knowledge of the basic principles of graphic design (layout, colour and typography) is vital.

A User Experience designer’s job is to sit at an intersection between the business, its users and its technology. We bring together all areas together in our product workshops, which are held at the beginning of every project; so mediation skills are a must.

A blend of Partner Account Managers, Customer Care Executives, Engineers and Project Managers have the opportunity to put forward their ideas for each project, but this isn’t just a case of handing them a blank piece of paper and demanding a list of suggestions! We use a range of creative thinking and ideation techniques to extract, validate and prioritise ideas from the participants in these fun and insightful sessions.

What does a typical day look like in User Experience Design?

As the Head of UX, I typically start the day by catching up on emails and writing my to-do list for the day. The team will then hold a scrum or stand-up where we’ll discuss the progress of the projects we’re currently working on, next to our large whiteboard – a hub of mind maps, ideas, sketches, research and mock-ups.

I will usually be involved in a number of project or team meetings, spent discussing the finer details of a current project or planning for the future. During the early stages of a project, we also hold stakeholder interviews, workshops and conceptualisation sessions to gather objectives and to develop ideas.

Our Thinking Wall and Product Workshops.

Favourite Tools

On any one day, the User Experience Design team work with dozens of different tools. From prototyping software, to chat rooms and communication tools, my favourites include:

Thinking Wall - A new addition to our office space but something we couldn’t live without. The Thinking Wall dominates a large space at the back of our office. It allows us to quickly map out ideas, by sketching them across the wall and pinning up snippets of research, and mockups, as the product solution grows.

Creative Suite - Adobe’s suite of products are used every day, mostly for producing final designs but also for quickly developing ideas as mockups and wireframes.
Textmate - Both Textmate and Sublime are the text editors of choice amongst the UX designers and developers at Global Personals. The bundles are excellent and cover pretty much anything you might require.
Virtual Box - We run our entire development stack as a pre-packaged virtual machine, allowing us to get started quickly with minimal fuss.
Omnigraffle - This is less of a mainstay across the team but still a favourite of mine. Omnigraffle is an excellent wireframing and diagramming tool and with plenty of device specific templates available, it’s quick and easy to mock-up an idea.

What’s coming up

The User Experience and Development teams are working hard on some new product enhancements that you will start to see appearing over the coming months. We’re very excited about these changes; there’ll be some new features and some key improvements to our existing core functionality.

The life of a UX designer at Global Personals is extremely varied and it’s a really interesting role with challenging problems to solve and ambitious goals to meet. It’s a challenge we love and we hope you like the solutions that we’re developing. Watch this space for some in depth commentaries on our new features, how they work and how we arrived at the solution!

Our team is constantly expanding. If you’re looking for a User Experience job and think you could be the newest addition to our team, take a look at our latest vacancies.

The relative calm of early April gave us the ideal opportunity to create some more tightly-targeted CRM campaigns, differing from the “one size fits all” flavour that goes hand in hand with international holidays.

We began with a super-generous offer to attract inactive members back to the sites. Results on this kind of campaign aren’t typically high; however, when someone does open an email, click-through-rates (CTRs) can be up to 3x greater than those from a standard campaign. This excellent CTR contributed to several thousand inactive users coming back to us, signing up for a full membership and re-monetising their profiles.

Towards the end of the month, geo-specific campaigns came into play with impressive discounts to celebrate Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand, Freedom Day and Workers’ Day in South Africa, Cinco de Mayo in the USA, and May Day in the UK and Ireland. Despite some glorious weather contending for users’ attention (in the UK at least!), these offers gave us a strong return, setting a positive precedent for the coming summer months.

In between offers, we took the chance to highlight some of the features on the WhiteLabelDating.com platform. With summer fast-approaching in the UK, Irish and North American networks, people will be out-and-about a lot more, meaning that this is the perfect time to remind members about our mobile dating functionality. We also told members about the importance of a complete profile, a good set of photos and video profiles, as tools to attract more attention on the sites. April also brought with it the second of our monthly “ask the expert” newsletters, and some experimental “featured member” campaigns, some of which will be making their way into the regular campaign schedule over the coming weeks.

Watch this space for news of May’s campaigns!

Matt Harman, WhiteLabelDating.com Comms team

Fully integrated with a number of other Google services, Google+ offers both easy accessibility and evidence that a solid Google+ campaign can have a profound influence on search rankings. It’s currently experiencing incredibly fast growth; a social sharing report from BrightEdge showed that consumer Google+ adoption increased by 1400% in January alone.

The platform also offers a great alternative to Facebook marketing. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get unpaid Facebook content seen, with little information from the network about how to best optimise site performance, making Google+ with its content-centric, user-friendly design a breath of fresh air.

With limited targeting options for sponsored posts on Facebook, Google+’s integrated AdWords advertising model allows more targeted advertising options that have the potential to be far more profitable.

The beauty of Google+ is its clean, user-friendly design that allows it to place a greater focus on content itself. Think of Google+ as the middle-ground between Facebook and Twitter - the platform allows for greater visibility than Facebook, yet still champions visual content. It also utilises hash tags to increase engagement and as there are no limitations on characters, you can use as many as you like. With the network’s more closely involved user base, higher engagement leads to much higher click-through rates making Google+ a great addition to your content marketing strategy.

If you post good, high quality, content, the rest will follow. Google+ operates on different measurement metrics to Facebook and Twitter, instead following Google’s PageRank system. Posts about your industry or backlinks to your own original content will see them indexed by Google.

In addition to more targeted advertising, ‘Circles’ allow you to create tailored communities. These can be publicly visible, or alternatively you can create private circles that share resources with affiliates, partners or those within your organisation; the important thing to remember is that everything is customisable. Similarly, ‘Hangouts’, which are unique to Google+, can also be a great way to breed exclusivity; use it for business or pleasure, whether it’s chatting to friends or colleagues. Not only does this create a more natural, human, approach to interaction, but also if linked to YouTube this will be indexed by Google.

The world of content marketing is constantly changing. If you want to keep ahead of the curve, get started on Google+ today.

Join our Circles on Google+.

MAY DAY!

In many places, the first Monday in May (06/05), is celebrated as the start of the summer season. A dance around the ‘maypole’ used to be tradition; but for most, it’s a time to chill out and take a break! Bank Holidays are also becoming an increasingly popular time to join dating sites.

Looking at the stats from 2012’s May Day compared to the last public holiday that took place in April, cash increased by +30%! Therefore it’s vital that your campaigns are prepared and ready – get in touch with the partner teamto discuss any queries that you may have and have a successful May Day!

INCREASING CONVERSIONS THROUGH SEASONAL CONTENT

With the lead-up to the long weekend for some territories, it’s a good time to brush up on your content strategy, which is important all year round for all networks.

To help you prepare great blog material that will engage your audience and generate conversions, WhiteLabelDating.com’s Content & Copywriting Coordinator, Amy Loudon, shares her tips that will help your strategy.

HOLIDAY COMMS COMING UP…

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for “fifth of May”) is a celebration held on 5th May in the United States and regionally in Mexico and commemorates the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War. Today the date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride. We will be running a special Cinco de Mayo offer across the US Network that starts on Thursday (02/05) and ends on Sunday (5/05).

A ’May Day’ deal will be available across the UK and Ireland Networks from Thursday (02/05) and will end on the Bank Holiday Monday (06/05). Make sure your campaigns are ready to utilise these offers and engage your basic members!

THANKS FOR READING!

Don’t forget to join us on Twitter, Facebook and check out our blog for up to the minute news and handy tips.

What makes a great blog I hear you ask? Read on to find out…

Compelling content: A good starting point is to consider the most popular queries that members have about dating, or your brand specifically. Think about issues that are relevant to your target audience. When you have a few ideas and some original content in the bank, it’s time to start blogging. Be sure to monitor the size of your pages as online consumers tend to skim-read text; aim for between 150 to 400 words.

Attention grabbing headlines: Your headline is the first thing people will see; it’s likely to accompany your links across social media sites too. Therefore, it’s important to create a keyword rich, attention grabbing, headline that clearly indicates what the article is about.

Well written & formatted text: It goes without saying that the body of your article should be well written and formatted to be visually captivating. This allows readers to easily extract key information and, more importantly, stay engaged with your content. Sub-headings and bullet points are a good way to break up blocks of text to make your content easier to digest.

Links: Increase the ‘stickiness factor’ of your blog by including in-text links. Seamlessly hyperlink words or phrases throughout your content, linking to interesting places in your blog/site. For example; a blog post on ‘First date ideas for the Bank Holiday’ could link to a blog post on ‘What to wear on a first date’. By employing this technique, the passive reader isn’t interrupted but the curious reader can explore, making the site sticky and boosting SEO.

Important: Make your anchor text (the visible, clickable text) count by avoiding phrases such as ‘click here’ or ‘read more’. Instead, offer the reader a more relevant description of where they are heading. Search engines track clicks from your pages to see if they take the user to a relevant page. For this reason, the better your anchor text, the better your site will rank.

Images/Videos: It’s really important that your blog is visually stimulating. Whether it’s sourcing relevant stock imagery, posting a ‘featured member of the month’ or creating infographics, relevant imagery and videos can make your blog more fun and memorable.

Call-to-action: Every blog that you post should be signed off with a call-to-action, in order to boost traffic to your site and increase conversions. Whilst your content should be anything but ‘hard selling’, finishing off with a call-to-action can tie the article, your business and its value to the member together. For example, you could end a blog post on ‘First Date Ideas for the Bank Holiday’ with ‘why not log into your account now to find yourself a date’. These links should point directly to the sign-up form or login area.

If you’re looking for some more ideas for great Bank Holiday blog content, get in touch with your Partner Manager today to discuss using seasonal content marketing to increase your conversions.

Amy Loudon, Content & Copywriting Coordinator @ WhiteLabelDating.com

Hosting your assets

Within the WhiteLabelDating.com application, you will have uploaded a header and footer for your site; you may have also uploaded cross-sell banners to help further monetise members within your portfolio. We highly recommend that these assets are hosted on our server, rather than an external one; this will vastly increase the speed of page load times.

Another benefit to hosting your banners on our server is that, in some cases, when assets are externally hosted, members may be greeted with a security warning asking if they’d like to continue loading the non-secure elements of the page. If you’re hosting external assets on your site, speak to your Partner Manager about moving them to our site (luckily for you, most of the work will be down to them!).

Make sure your members know your site is available on mobile

It sounds obvious, but sometimes members who registered via desktop don’t actually realise that they can access your online dating site via mobile too! As summer fast-approaches, members are more likely to be out-and-about so it’s more important than ever to highlight this.

Why not add a small logo to your header accompanied by the text, ‘Access via mobile!’. You could also create a site footer highlighting to users that they can log in on the go.

Mobile conversion rates on the WhiteLabelDating.com platform have increased significantly since October 2012; make the most of this opportunity by reminding members that they can access (and pay for) your site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from any location.

Cross-selling and simple ways to increase ROI

We talk about cross-selling on the WhiteLabelDating.com blog time and time again, and we appreciate that design resource can be tight. So, to help you make money from your online dating business, our in-house designer has created a selection of cross-sell banners that can be used across all brands. Just follow these simple steps to start cross-selling within your portfolio.

1. Create new cname records for your niche sites i.e. singleparents.datingsite.com.

2. Create a new header for the niche site. If necessary, your Partner Manager can help you with this.

3. Watch your revenues soar.

OpenX. What is it and why should it be on your site?

OpenX is third party software that displays banners to members from inside the dating site application and shows tailored content based on their demographic and history.

For example, if a member registers but doesn’t upload a photo, on their next login, they will see a banner prompting them to add a picture.  Similarly, if a user has been a basic member of the site for more than 14 days without upgrading, they may be shown a trial banner at various points on their journey around the site to encourage them to upgrade.

Implementing OpenX on your dating site will maximise conversions, as it guides the user towards actions leading to a subscription. The majority of sites on the WhiteLabelDating.com platform have OpenX integrated into them, however, some sites will need to add this manually. Double check with your Partner Manager.

The increasing importance of Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect allows members to register to your dating site using their Facebook details.

This works really well for some sites. Even if you don’t have Facebook Connect as a registration option on your homepage, it’s key to set this up inside the application so that members can import photos from their Facebook account.

The new WhiteLabelDating.com Profile Wizard prompts members immediately after registration to upload content to their profile. If your site includes Facebook Connect, users will have two options to upload a photo (from a file or from facebook).  More photos = more conversions. Set this live today!

These small changes can give a long-term boost to conversion rates, user experience and your revenues. Make sure that you’re in regular contact with your Partner Manager; they’re on hand to keep you updated with gems such as these.

 Lauren Barnes, Senior PM @ WhiteLabelDating.com

Finding a new job is never an easy task. Browsing through what seems like a never ending list of “dream jobs”, and speaking to recruiters who have seemingly spent the last 30 seconds skimming through a CV you spent hours tirelessly perfecting, can be exhausting.

After leaving university and throwing myself into the hustle and bustle of city life for the last two years, I was keen to move to a company where there was potential for me to make a real impact, where two days are never the same.

I stumbled upon WhiteLabelDating.com and the Global Personals team purely by chance, intrigued by what the online dating industry had to offer. The more I researched the company, the more my interest grew and before long I had sent off an application. It’s not often that you find a company with such impressive revenues and sustained year-on-year growth, that manages to maintain such a young and energetic backbone.

I was immediately won over by the company; a games room, breakfast, and a train journey with a choice of seats (a rarity in London), alongside a real team ethos meant that, the moment I walked into the office, it felt like home (however cringeworthy that may be).

If you had told a sports mad 18 year old version of myself that I would be working as a Partner Manager for one of the world’s leading online dating companies, I think it’s fair to say I would have crossed the road to avoid you. However in 2013, it’s clear to see that with over 20 million active members, old online dating stereotypes have been well and truly dismantled. This is actually one of the most exciting and fast-growth industries in the digital marketplace.

The vibrant office has some of the most experienced employees in the industry, all of whom have been eager to share their knowledge, and take the time to answer the countless questions I have inevitably had.

The key eye-opener for me was learning about the sheer size of the market and the amount of responsibility entrusted to you, as a Partner Manager, from a very early stage. There is a real “learn by doing” ethos, which is incredibly refreshing, and has been consistently backed up with support and advice from my fellow team members.

A general day in the office involves an 8.30 start and breakfast, during which I’ll take a look at my emails and analyse how my partners performed on the previous day. I’ll then spend my morning going through campaigns with my partners, to find out what their next goal is and discussing how they can achieve it. My attention then moves to site design, marketing methods, offer coding, and testing – a part of everyday life at Global.

My afternoons are spent on analysis to improve revenues and conversions – we never stop trying to further enhance performance. This all blends in with my new found love of tea, meetings and listening to the ever-necessary radio (of which I am yet to have the privilege to control).

I genuinely believe that the online dating space is one of the most exciting industries of the moment. When I’m out with friends and chat inevitably turns to work, conversation is now a lot more interesting than simply the latest insurance or banking trends; everyone wants to know what’s hot in online dating.

We are currently recruiting for a new Partner Manager to join the WhiteLabelDating.com team. Take a look at the vacancy listing if you think it could be you.