Oracle Helps Online Dating Service eHarmony Engage & Convert Members Based on Large-Scale Analytics

The Short Version: Oracle Marketing Cloud uses data-driven analytics to craft effective marketing strategies with targeted messaging. This tech giant offers tailored support to businesses of all types, including acclaimed dating websites. For the past few years, eHarmony has partnered with Oracle to hone its emails and advertisements across multiple channels. As a result of this partnership, the dating site has seen high relationship engagement and increased user conversions. Oracle draws conclusions from data-driven analytics to inform over 25,000 partners on how best to reach their markets, convert their users, and generate revenue. Since Oracle’s founding in 1977, the team’s marketing prowess has earned them praise from all corners of the tech industry. Now, Oracle’s marketing solutions for lifestyle services are taking the dating industry by storm and transforming the way dating brands communicate with singles online.

Getting your way in a big family takes forethought and flexibility. You have to know who to talk to and what to say to make the most persuasive argument possible.

If I’m asking my big brother for a favor, I have to come up with several logical bullet points about why it’s needed and then explain how I’ll compensate him for, say, loaning me his laptop. If I’m asking my twin brother, however, I would take a different approach — something along the lines of, “Hey, give me your laptop.”

To elicit the response you want, first you need to understand who you’re talking to and what message appeals the most to that individual or group. This is true in family matters, and it’s true in the online dating industry. If you want singles to flock to your website and join your user base, you have to appeal to their specific wants and needs.

Oracle and its cloud-powered marketing solutions have mastered the art of targeting, engaging, and converting niche audiences by using large-scale data. The company’s partnerships yield fantastic results for leaders in the dating industry, such as eHarmony, who want to connect more effectively with singles on the web.

Oracle’s analytic and marketing resources help dating websites raise conversions and revenue.

From coordinating ad campaigns to automating targeted email blasts, Oracle Marketing Cloud enhances the messaging power of partnering companies with an array of supportive, cloud-based products.

“On the customer marketing side, we partner with Oracle Marketing Cloud as our primary vendor for email marketing to our registered members,” said Tracy Kobzeff, Senior Director of Acquisition and Product Marketing for the dating site. “They’ve remained a great partner to us, especially in terms of their products and how flexible they are to meet our needs.”

In the current online landscape, targeted messaging has become increasingly prevalent for one simple reason: it works. A banner ad offering a discount promotion to a dating site you were just browsing makes a compelling case to click and convert into a member. Targeted ads can prompt singles who are already interested in dating services to take that added step to paid membership.

The people who visit your dating site are essentially low-hanging fruit — easily converted thanks to Oracle’s data-driven insights. The company’s resources can improve conversion rates, and thereby increase revenue, in a number of niche markets.

Oracle Marketing Cloud excels at identifying where partners can improve and grow by implementing more personalized marketing messages.

“We’ve certainly expanded our acquisition of Oracle products in recent years,” Tracy told us. “Oracle’s been very flexible in enabling us to store a lot of nuanced customer data to use for targeting and segmentation.”

Oracle brings decades of experience building a relational database for commercial use and, through its marketing platform, offers valuable tools to improve the content, social, and campaigns of dating brands and other web companies.

According to the company’s website, “Throughout its history, Oracle has proved it can build for the future on the foundation of its innovations and its knowledge of customer challenges and successes analyzed by the best technical and business minds in the world.”

Oracle Marketing Cloud has seen demonstrable success in its work with the dating site. According to the case study,” eHarmony uses Oracle Marketing Cloud to achieve much higher engagement in digital marketing relationships with deeply personalized campaigns, sophisticated segmentation, and targeted promotions.”

Oracle’s diverse and forward-thinking products give the dating site the ability to capture members’ attention via multiple channels.

“We can target tailored promotions to members who are no longer engaged with email,” Tracy explained, “so that allowed us another customer channel to send targeted communications and offers.”

“The lifecycle marketing programs we’ve built with Oracle Marketing Cloud have changed the way we do marketing.” — Tracy Kobzeff, Director of Product Marketing at eHarmony

Primarily, the dating site relies on Oracle Responsys to facilitate excellent consumer experiences as well as effective messaging across multiple devices and channels. This product delivers targeted messages to targeted audiences in a relevant and timely way.

Tracy pointed to Rapid Retargeter as a tool they’re excited to use more often. With this feature, if someone abandons the website’s questionnaire or the checkout process, the team can send specific emails to prompt that person to resolve their unfinished business on the site.

Such a function is useful as a reminder to someone who got distracted and as encouragement to someone who got cold feet while considering joining. In many cases, a simple follow-up can motivate singles to sign up for a paid membership.

“We can send real-time targeted emails based on actions taken on the website,” Tracy said. “It’s a lot more timely in sending those communications out.”

Oracle enables marketers to plan an effective digital campaign with personalized messaging in ads and email blasts. Its premium marketing solutions streamline online content, social, email, and data management to effectively engage and activate certain demographics.

Over the years, Oracle’s automated solutions have benefited more than 25,000 partners and more than 420,000 customers. In 2016, the company generated over $36 billion in total revenue. Clearly, what the team is doing is working.

“Designed for cloud computing, the world’s number one database enables the consolidation and management of databases as cloud services,” according to the company’s fact sheet. “Companies can accelerate analytical performance — while achieving new levels of efficiency and availability.”

Oracle Marketing Cloud automates cross-channel marketing for thousands of industry leaders.

It’s essentially a marketing starter’s kit, providing insights, software, and support to business partners looking to expand their reach and influence in the online world.

“Oracle is one of the top providers of enterprise email solutions for brands like us that send a large volume of emails,” Tracy said. “They have great technology stability — we’ve very rarely had any issues or bugs — so we can really trust that our messages will get out to our members when we need them to.”

Sometimes getting a person to say “yes” takes a little finagling, and you have to carefully craft how you pose your request so it appeals to your audience. Whether you’re in a big family or a big market share, it’s important to figure out what message is going to get your desired response from a particular person or group.

Just as little sisters need to know when to rationalize and when to bully to borrow a laptop, companies need to know when to send an email offer and when to issue targeted ads to get that coveted click.

Oracle’s enterprise-proven database gives modern businesses the tools to execute a targeted marketing campaign and increase conversion rates. Decades of data gathering has informed and fine-tuned Oracle Marketing Cloud’s methods and strategies, which the company provides to some of the top names in the tech, commerce, and lifestyle industries.

To grow a brand, dating websites can follow eHarmony and connect with Oracle Marketing Cloud.

“Oracle helps us bridge the gap between customer marketing and acquisition marketing because they have so many different products under their umbrella,” said Tracy. “Within Oracle, we send out targeted communication based on each stage of the member’s lifecycle from completing their relationship questionnaire to engaging with matches on the site.”