Hello everyone! This must be one of our favourite months here at WhiteLabelDating - the month of love ! It would be hard to miss the buzz of valentine’s day that appears to be everywhere at the moment, and we hope that we help our members take a step in the right direction for finding their perfect partner by providing them support with any situation that they have.

This week the support team have decided to celebrate Valentine’s day by going for a group meal, love will be in the air as we are all to receive a secret cupid gift.

We hope you all have a romantic week too!

Customer Satisfaction rate

97.9%

Member Query of the week

With valentines day fast approaching, we have found a lot of members asking us how we are going to celebrate or if we are having any new features for this occasion.

We are always striving to improve the service we provide our members and as Valentine’s day is the time for romance and love we thought it appropriate to provide our members with the opportunity to send an extra special gift to that special someone We hope this helps our members find the results they are looking for.
Below is a list of gifts that some of our lucky members could be receiving this month.

Chocolate
Flowers
Kiss
Rose
Chocolates
Cupid
Frog prince
Heart/arrow
Hearts
Gold ring
Strawberry
Teddy/heart
Valentine Card

In order to send gifts you will need to purchase credits which are a type of online currency, to purchase credits members will need to log in to their account and click on the “My Account” tab then “Credits” they will then be presented with a link that says “To Purchase Credits Click Here” you will need to click on the word “Here” to be taken through to the payments page. Our telephone number is displayed on the payments page so if any members have problems we are available to assist them over the phone.

Good feedback

We are pleased that the below 2 members have found their perfect match just in time for Valentine’s day.

The first lucky member is Jeff Booth (http://www.funatfifty.co.uk)

Message: Dear support team. I have met someone who I believe is the right one. I do not want to renew my membership when it next comes up for renewal. Please acknowledge this E-Mail. Thanks for all your help.

We also have great news from Flora MacKay (http://www.MumsDateDads.com)

Message: Dear SirMadam, I wish to cancel my subscription which is due for renewal on 02022010.
I have met some-one on your site.
Thank you in anticipation,
yours sincerely,
Flora MacKay.

We all know how much of a mark social media is starting to make on the online dating world and how much of an important factor it is becoming to the success of your site. Social networking allows you to supplement the traditional marketing methods with tactical and targeted messages that can help influence users behaviour. You can become more socially involved with your users, being able to send personal replies and messages can really help your brand become more connected with its audience. Taking the time to add that personal touch will ensure users that you care about their custom and make them realise they are not just ‘another number’.

Some of our partners have already set up some social media links for their dating websites but it is important to ensure that you get the most out of them as you possibly can. To help out with this we wanted to inform you of a social media event that covers all aspects of social media. The event, ‘Shaping the Future of Social Media‘ goes on for 2 days and features four dedicated conference streams, workshops and exhibitions.

The event is being held at the Olympia Conference Center in London on the 15th and 16th March, so that leaves you plenty of time to clear a space in your calendar.

You can register online and receive a free exhibition pass for the event or if you fancy getting a bit more involved you can register for some of the more advanced packages.

For more information on the event check out their website at www.mobilesocial-networking.com.

A great example of a site that does just that is FunAtFifty.co.uk, a successful dating site for the over 50’s. The sites ‘latest news’ tab is full of new developments, up to date offers available to members and relevant information relating to the online dating market. Users of the site can also follow FunAtFifty.co.uk on Twitter and keep up to date with them that way, their Twitter page is also filled with relevant links and the latest news.

It couldn’t be easier to keep your site up to date, all it takes is a few visits to the WLD blog where you will find all the latest platform developments. Once you have had a little read of some of the latest blogs, you can start to tailor the information to fit your site and your target market and there you have it, relevant informative information your members can relate to. You can also catch up on the latest news at WLD’s Twitter page.

Remember our blog is there to help you, and to help your members get the most out of their online dating experience, they may not know to check out the WLD blog and therefore may not be up to date with recent WLD developments, placing similar blogs onto your sites makes it much easier for members to be kept in the loop, and we wouldn’t want them missing out now would we, so get posting!

If you need any help building up your site, or introducing a blog, don’t hesitate to contact your partner manger, they have lots of tips up their sleeves!

We have already had lots of exciting news and developments in 2010 and we have only just finished January! Have a read of Februarys install and catch up on everything WLD.

We’ve Moved

As you will be tucking into this juicy newsletter we will be enjoying our first day in our new sparkly office! The teams have expanded so much in the recent months that we’ve invested in a brand spangly new office to enable the company to grow and meet its full potential.

The move is really exciting for everyone involved and we hope you will all get a chance to pop in and visit our new digs! Our new address is:

Global Personals Limited
Minton Place
Windsor
Berkshire
SL4 1EG

Hope to see you there soon

Olympic Programme Exceeding Expectations

We wanted to share some great news with you about how well things are going since the introduction of the Olympic Program in October last year. Our partners really have embraced the programme and got on board, continuing to build up strong relationships with their Partner Managers, maintaining regular contact which has led to a noticeable uplift in activity. We’re pleased to announce that we’re exceeding all of the current SLAs and continue to work to provide outstanding partner support.

We asked a few of our partners to let us know how they are getting on with the new programme. We were very happy to have had nothing but positive feedback and have a few testimonials we wanted to share with you;

“To move a business forward effectively, planning and teamwork is required. As a gold partner, I get the benefit of effectively having a team to work with to plan projects and expand the business in a logical and thoughtful way by meeting and discussing ideas, brain storming and implementing to ensure we move forward . Very beneficial for me and the growth of my dating sites.”

“Since being classified as a WLD Gold partner, the help I’ve received from my Partner Manager has been invaluable. I’ve received support on dealing with a variety of issues in running my dating sites, such as PPC advertising, number crunching and help in setting goals to grow my sites as quickly as possible. I know I can contact her via email/phone for advice whenever I need it, and we get together once a month for a face to face catch up meeting. My Partner Manager also puts me in touch with specialist members of the WLD team who can advise me on all sorts of aspects regarding the management of my sites, such as how best to promote my viral marketing campaign and help surrounding hosting and domain management, etc.”

We are incredibly happy with these results and expect things to only improve as relationships build and time goes on. If you have any questions regarding the Olympic Programme don’t hesitate to contact your Partner Manager and they will help to answer any questions you may have.

Kicking off The Partner Workshops

The Partner Workshops kick off this month which we are really excited about. We have had a really high response for the first series of workshops which has lead to us rolling out many more throughout the year, as we want as many of our partners to benefit as possible.

The first workshop happening this month is focused on the topic of harnessing social media, which has growing importance in this ever changing market. We will keep you posted on the future workshops we are hosting, in the meantime if there are specific areas that you would like support with, please contact your Partner Manager.

Development Updates

With the continuing commitment to improving the platform, January was yet another busy month for our Development Team.

We have introduced a brand new recommendations and similarities engine, which has now been rolled out across all of our partner sites. The basic idea around the new recommendation tool is that it does all the hard work for our members. Rather than relying on the users preferences and questionnaires it recommends other members based on implicit behavior as they move around the site. The new system hugely increases your members chances of finding their perfect partner and increases the amount of time they spend interacting on the site. All of this should mean increased retention rates, leading to an increase in your revenue levels.

We are also very excited about the launch of PayPal across the platform. The new payment method will mean paying to upgrade on your sites has never been easier for your members. We believe this will have a positive effect on payments going forwards. We can already see proof of the new system working, the first full day of PayPal being live, the 27th February was the highest revenue day for 2 weeks! We also saw, in the first 3 days of PalPal being live that 18.4% of UK upgrade payments were by PayPal. A huge uptake! So it all looks very promising for the future of PayPal if this trend continues!

Meanwhile, the team is hard at work on our new newsletter tool, launching the end of February. This will give you the tools that you need to send your very own newsletters to your members - initially being tested with Gold Partners, we will be rolling it out to all other partners in the coming months. We are also looking to introduce a revised moderation system for our Customer Care Team to more effectively monitor and block scammers which should improve the customer experience and see an increase in conversions.

More details will be coming your way about these exciting improvements as they develop. So watch this space!

More Great Member Support

The Support Team has been very busy with all the great New Year offers which have been rolled out to your members recently. We are pleased to say these have gone down very well and the Support Team are assisting more members than ever before.

To help the team become even more efficient, the whole team attended a Customer Service Training Course run by Hamilton Mercer. The team wants to have the sharpest skills possible when it comes to assisting your member’s needs and concerns. Overall, the course was very successful, with each member of the group bringing away positive changes to their customer service. This should hopefully see an increase in member retention, which means more money in your pocket.

Over 50’s Market Booming Once Again

The over 50’s network is still booming and only shows signs of improving. In the past month alone, the network conversion from basic to full paying members has been 11.31%. This is outstanding and continues to prove that niches work.

Members are more active than ever and as the stigma of internet dating continues to fade,  sites become safer and more accessible - we’re sure that the number of over 50s signing up will continue to increase.

Thanks for Reading

As you can see February is going to be a super busy month for all of us! Very exciting times ahead!

You can keep up to date with all of WLD’s goings on at our blog, and remember to follow us on Twitter We like having lots of Twitterific friends.

Be sure to get in touch if you have any questions regarding anything in this month’s newsletter, or if there’s anything you wish to discuss.

As always thanks so much for reading 

Kindest Regards,

Francesca Heath

fheath@whitelabeldating.com

WhiteLabelDating.com

Customer Satisfaction Rate
97.6%

Member Query of the Week
As you may know, on the January 26th 2010 we launched PayPal across all of our sites. This now means that members have several ways of choosing to make a payment with us, these being:

1.       Payment online via credit/debit card
2.       Payment via mobile phone
3.       Payment via cheque/postal order
4.       Payment via PayPal

Prior to the introduction of PayPal, we did receive a large number of members writing into us regarding their interest in being able to pay via this method therefore; as soon as this went live we sent a newsletter to all our members informing them of the great news!
The main query we have had regarding payment via PayPal is how we will appear on their statement. We inform members that it will appear as ‘PayPal – Global Personals’
We have had some great feedback so far from members who have now chosen to upgrade their accounts with us. With all these new full members the pool of potential soul mates has just got even bigger!

Good Feedback
We are pleased to report that in the past week we have had some great feedback from our members and  we have chosen these two messages to share with you.

The first message is from Susie “plentymorefish”

“Thank you so much……I appreciate your help and am happy to deal with people who are so helpful.”

We have another message to share from Lynne “Lovesecondtimearound”

“Many thanks for that information. It’s as I guessed or thereabouts!

I’m not sure that I have the latest Adobe Flashplayer - I’ll have to check.

At least I know how it works now!

Congratulations on a good site. Much better than one of your rival ones which I have abandoned!“

WhiteLabelDating.com
Global Personals Limited
Minton Place
Victoria Street
Windsor
SL4 1EG
United Kingdom

We will let you know how we get on with the new office. It should only be good times ahead!

WLD Welcome PayPal

We’re very excited about the launch of the payment method across the platform, which we believe will have a positive effect on payments going forwards.

This introduction will mean that your members can now pay using PayPal across all of your sites. Paying has never been easier.

People Prefer PayPal

PayPal has a well earned reputation of being a safe, trustworth brand that is known internationally, simple to use and millions of people’s favourite choice for payment.

They use cutting-edge data encryption, fraud detection tools and all kinds of other advanced techniques to improve security, making your members feel even safer when subscribing to your site.

Any Questions…

If you have any questions about this new development your account manager will be more than willing to help you.

The new payment method is a welcomed introduction to the platform and we look forward to seeing the results.

Best Wishes

Your White Label Team

Hello again from everyone in support . We are very happy to report that Pat has done very well in her first week, she is picking up the support work quickly and we are sure that she will be a great addition to the team! We are also excited this week because we have all been given the opportunity to further our customer service skills by attending a Customer Service course run by Hamilton Mercer! We will all be taking part in the one day course over a period of two days, and we believe it will be an excellent way to brush up on our existing skills, and learn new ways to help our members and improve their experience with us. You can be sure that we will let you know how this went next week!

Customer Satisfaction Rate

98.2%

Member Query of the Week

January can be a hard time for everyone, with the Christmas period over and the excitement gone, our wallets and purses feel quite a bit lighter than they were before December! This is why we have run a special offer code for the January period. JANSALE is a brilliant way to offer our members a discounted membership at an amazing 50% off! With this offer we hope to not only ease the January blues away for our members, but to give them the added bonus of spending less on a one months membership offer!

To take advantage of this offer, members simply needed to access the online payments page - choose the one months subscription price band and enter JANSALE into our offer code box. On clicking “Apply Code” - the membership price is automatically dropped to half price.

We have been working hard to improve our customers journey with us, and what a great way to start the New Year!

Good Feedback

We are pleased to say that the good feedback is still coming in, we have chosen the two below to share with you this week:

We received a message from Michael, Single50’s.co.uk

“Thank-you for your reply!
Your site seems to be a good one. There are lots of suitable ladies … near-by; they appear to be very decent. I am unemployed at present, but am seriosly considering becoming a member
Regards,
Mike.”

We have another message to share from Emma, Dateline.co.uk

“Brilliant thanks very much. Your support is excellent!”

YesMrsRobinson.com is a site for “the sexy older women and beautiful young men”, and helps out women who may have a slight fetish for the younger man!

The site recently carried out a online survey of 2,000 women over the age of 40 and found out that 40% of them would like to experiment with a toyboy, which is excellent news for the site. The survey was picked up by a variety of different newspapers and magazine, including The Daily Mail, the Sun and the Metro. It also received some great coverage over the net. They all tended to pick up the story and relate it to celebrity couples who tend to have that slightly bigger age difference!

Using an online survey of your members if a great way to get noticed, giving people numbers and stats that they can relate to and use for an article or press release is a perfect way for getting your site name out there and getting realised as an online brand. Having your site name so widely publicised will also help with those all important conversion rates.

Well OKCupid.com have done a little survey to help you on what kind of pics get the best results. The site did a survey on 7,000 pictures posted to the site and found some very interesting results. From the results found we have put together a little tip list for you to have a look at for when you are deciding on your next profile picture.

So lets start with you boys…

Tip 1.

The male “ab shot” which is supposedly looked down on in the Internet world actually works wonders! It does however help if you have the abs to show off, so boys if you have it flaunt it!

Tip 2.

Another thing to take into account is what you have on. If you decide not to flaunt your bare chest, the results showed that men who dress more casual come out higher than those who made more of an effort. So I think the moral is boys, lose the shirt or lose the tie!

Tip 3.

Right then, onto that all important face shoot. According to the survey the best look for guys is to not smile and to look away from the camera. That sounds easy enough hey?

Tip 4.

A pet, posing with one is a huge plus for a guys profile. It’s apparently nearly as good as showing off those abs! So whether it’s your little pooch you pose with or the neighbours cat get a cute fluffy animal involved, they can work wonders for you!

Tip 5.

One final tip to add is to try and do something interesting in your pic. Us girls are suckers for a musician, a pic of a guy playing a guitar for example can make a girl become interested in you without even reading your profile. Always a good start!

So ladies, time for your pointers…

Tip 1.

Lets start with cleavage, the questions is.. to show or not to show?? The results from the survey show the cleavage shot is very successful! So get them out girls.

Tip 2.

The head shot, it’s all about eye contact and flirting! Smiling sweetly does work but is not quite as effective as flirting with the camera.

Tip 3.

Women get great results from “the universally maligned MySpace Shot” the hold your phone above your head and click look. So girls, if you’re looking to get some extra messages the simple “MySpace Shot” is “the single most effective photo type for women”. Get involved girls!

Tip 4.

Finally bringing pets back into the mix, unlike guys girls should stay far away from posing with our furry friends as it can rapidly drop your repossess, it’s even worse then posing with a drink. Ladies, you have been told.

Hopefully these results have given you a bit of help and guidance on what to do for your profile picture. So go get snapping!