Case Studies: Match
Match.com Experiences Immediate Increase in Return - Subscriptions Soar 20% by Optimizing Paid Search Campaigns with Efficient Frontier
Since 1995, Match.com has had one simple mission: to take the lottery out of love. As the nation's largest online personals site, Match.com has created more than a million successful relationships. With more than 20 million members, Match.com has developed many tools for creating profiles and narrowing searches within its diverse community of men and women.
Objectives
Ranked number nine in brand searches, Match.com was tasked with managing an overwhelming amount of search traffic, many of which was not qualified. Its objectives included maximizing qualified visitors to its Web site, ensuring that they performed the desired actions on the site and driving subscriber conversions at a high ROI. For marketers like Match.com, it's not the number of clicks that matter - it's the quality that counts.
Challenge
Match.com originally managed its search marketing campaigns of more than 15,000 keywords using a rules-based bid management solution, with no visibility into the complexities of the opaque search engine markets. Additionally, the rules-based system did not provide any real intelligence into a bid strategy and forced Match.com to spend countless hours trying to manually analyze search data, after the fact.
Like many advertisers who employ rules-based systems, Match.com set up parameters to bid certain keywords to the top sponsored ad position. Because a rules-based system provides no intelligence into the bid landscape, nor can it predict bidding outcomes, Match.com was left with little insight into what was the best bid position. This resulted in overspending for mediocre results.
In addition, the popular keywords in the online dating space were very expensive and competitive. For Match.com to be effective, it was critical to have insight into the competitive landscape to ensure their bid would produce the highest ROI for the paid search spend.
Solution
After evaluating several search engine marketing firms, Match.com decided on Efficient Frontier because of its advanced technology and unique approach to bid management.
Efficient Frontier first reviewed Match.com's historical campaign performance, evaluated business objectives, and collected and analyzed data to develop a clear picture of performance in the competitive landscape.
Using sophisticated algorithms based on Wall Street analytics, Efficient Frontier's search marketing platform created relevant and accurate forecasts for Match.com and then optimized against all possibilities to determine the best options to meet business goals.
Results
Within the first month of the relationship, Efficient Frontier was able to optimize the Match.com paid search campaigns and deliver an immediate increase in return. This saved Match.com valuable advertising dollars, while delivering a 20 percent increase in subscriptions, much higher quality clicks and a 15 percent reduction in CPA. Match.com is now able to predict the return on investment for any additional spend accurately, resulting in its ability to allocate paid search budget more effectively.
"Efficient Frontier has provided us with clear visibility into our search marketing campaigns and removed much of the risk inherent in this highly unpredictable market," said Jared Cluff, Director, Online Acquisition, Match.com.
Given the global reach of Efficient Frontier, Match.com is also now well positioned to extend its reach further into Europe and launch into Asia.
"Efficient Frontier allows us to stay focused on the marketing and expansion of our business, not on manual management of our paid search campaigns. We no longer have to worry about analyzing the bidding specifics or worrying about keyword volatility. Efficient Frontier has greatly improved the ROI of this marketing channel for us here at Match." said Cluff.
