match.com

Selling love. Isn't there a law against that or something?

From 2004 to '07, I led a team responsible for all of match.com's digital marketing, and occasional behind-the-paywall projects. With an amazing analytics team, we experimented a ton, but everything was guided by one thought; if we made dating easier, we made the site more successful. That covered everything from encouraging people to take the first step to helping them navigate the complexities of modern love. These are just a few of our projects.

It's Okay To Look

Collaborating with the traditional teams, we cast thirty real match.com members from around the country and had Peggy Sirota photograph and film them. In addition to the resulting TV and print, we created a gallery of these currently available members, blogs to follow their dating life, and a Portrait Toolkit to help everyone make a great first impression. With about ten minutes of interactive video, Jay Manuel walked three real users through the process of getting a great photo and avoiding the most common missteps of profile writing.  

Happen Magazine

We made an online magazine that published about six articles a week. Topics covered everything from dating a player to dating after divorce. With an Editor hired from Redbook, and contributing writers from all the latest dating and self-help books, the content was fresh and fun. 

In addition to giving current members a lot of great advice, the magazine enriched match.com's CRM program and doubled as a new-member funnel. Since match.com is the engine behind love@AOL and dating.MSN, the articles ran as content on AOL and MSN with dating modules to bring in new users.

Banners

We ran a ton of banners, pitching new concepts nearly once a week. Many were terrible. These are a couple of our ideas that achieved 10-30x industry average clickthrough.

Our voyeur banners so successful much of the category copied them. We eventually extended the idea of banners with video of members on a platform for people to upload their own. They'd showcase themselves, and our media would drive to their profile with a sign up screen overlay.

Another tactic we used was driving to filtered search results. Like vegetarians? Want someone who wants a redhead? The girl mag style was one of the most successful versions of the many types we tried using that tactic. 

Product Development

In addition to the core match.com product, we played a large roll inventing and developing new products and brands from the ground up. Chemistry.com and the Dr. Phil product were two of our hugely successful launches. Apple said our iTunes integration was the best they had seen but unfortunately that deal never got finalized. 

Credits

ROLE: Creative Direction, Art Direction  TEAM: John Tumelty, Maggie Bradshaw, Carter Debski, Matt Chapman, Harun Zankel, Jessica Findley