Securing the first date (and making sure you get a second one) – how digital marketers can learn a lot from online dating

Dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is a lot more than get­ting cus­tomers to vis­it your site. To be suc­cess­ful, your mar­ket­ing needs to give them some­thing they’ll like once they get there, so they will stick around for a while and you can get to know them bet­ter, so you can make rel­e­vant offers in the future that suit their needs and desires. One anal­o­gy that occurred to me when think­ing about the steps behind per­son­al­i­sa­tion and per­son­al­is­ing the expe­ri­ence for your vis­i­tors, is the online dat­ing process. Much in the same way that dig­i­tal mar­keters want to attract the right cus­tomers, when we post online dat­ing pro­files we’re hop­ing to make the right match with prospec­tive part­ners. Let’s take a look to see how they cor­re­late in real life.

Step 1: Seg­men­ta­tion (Choos­ing your type & cre­at­ing a profile)

Seg­men­ta­tion is a crit­i­cal first step in any dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing pro­gram. This is when you will assess your cus­tomer base and divide it into groups based on com­mon needs/wants, allow­ing for the cre­ation and imple­men­ta­tion of spe­cif­ic cam­paigns tai­lored for each tar­get mar­ket. You need to use your ana­lyt­ics tool to work out who your poten­tial seg­ments are. If this was an online dat­ing pro­file, you would spend time assess­ing what you want in a part­ner and then build a pro­file to attract just the right per­son by high­light­ing your best attributes.

Step 2: Mes­sag­ing & Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (Reach­ing out to prospec­tive matches)

Once you’ve iden­ti­fied your tar­get audi­ence for your next dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing cam­paign and have estab­lished your goals, it’s time to take the plunge and try out your key mes­sages on your audi­ence. Don’t wor­ry! There will be time to assess and revise inef­fec­tive mes­sages along the way. In dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing terms this means A/B and mul­ti-vari­ate test­ing, in the online dat­ing world, this is where you post your dat­ing pro­file, cross your fin­gers, and wait to see who responds. Pleased with the respons­es you’re get­ting? Great, con­tact those online match­es to arrange a first date…If not, it’s time to tweak.

Step 3: Analytics/Feedback Loop (Post-date analy­sis and review­ing with friends)

With any dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing pro­gram, you’ll want to run ana­lyt­ics to ensure the mes­sag­ing res­onates with your cus­tomers. Our ana­lyt­ics tools enable you to track results in real time and make changes on the fly for the best results. Are cus­tomers respond­ing to your call to action? Are they stay­ing on your site long enough to col­lect their data? Are they engaged? At any time, you can make changes and mon­i­tor the progress. The ana­lyt­ics the Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud, are much more effec­tive in assess­ing the val­ue of your lat­est cam­paign than the post-date con­ver­sa­tion with friends is at assess­ing whether you’ll get a sec­ond date.

Step 4: Voice of the cus­tomer (Learn­ing more about your date)

Anoth­er key aspect to ensur­ing that your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing pro­grams are effec­tive is to ask cus­tomers them­selves what they want and how you can help them. There are a vari­ety of ways to do this. Direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion such as inter­views, sur­veys, and focus groups are well-known tac­tics for gath­er­ing cus­tomer feed­back — and you can use email and SMS to con­tact cus­tomers direct­ly. How­ev­er, today, you’re bound to learn just as much by mon­i­tor­ing social media chan­nels. Once you have a strong sense for your tar­get cus­tomers, you can opti­mize the pro­gram for best results. You can also use social media to bet­ter under­stand your date, but I advise actu­al­ly using the date as a way to ask ques­tions and learn more in a one-on-one setting.

Step 5: Opti­mi­sa­tion of the process (Ensur­ing a sec­ond date)

If all signs are point­ing towards suc­cess, con­grat­u­la­tions! Con­tin­ue what you are doing. You have the option of dupli­cat­ing or expand­ing your pro­gram to reach more cus­tomers — and there are tools you can use like the look-alike mod­el­ing capa­bil­i­ties of Adobe Audi­ence­M­an­ag­er to do this intel­li­gent­ly. There will be some small tweaks along the way, but the goal here is to find what works! From a dat­ing stand­point, either your efforts paid off and you’ve got a sec­ond date or you are back to the online dat­ing pool to meet your next poten­tial match.