Senior marketing manager Lynsey Tomkinson of online dating platform eHarmony chats with B&T about the changes within the dating world and how the company is adapting.

eHarmony has just completed an extensive audience segmentation project of its 2.6 million Australian members. The research data has influenced the direction in which eHarmony’s advertising campaigns take. Back in 2007 it was all about the ‘testimonial style’ of advertising.

“So our testimonial style ad which eHarmony launched when we first launched in Australia worked really well. It was a very successful campaign that we managed to expand over a couple of years,” Tomkinson said. “When we launched the testimonial style ads, online dating was still a taboo subject, whereas now it’s a lot more accepted and people are happy to talk about it.”

“At the beginning of 2014 it was apparent that more new free apps were coming into market, such as Tinder, so we did a big research piece last year to try to understand what is going on, how does a customer perceive online dating. Tinder has made online dating a lot more acceptable, it created this talkability factor which has meant that we can almost benefit from that.

“It was the result of this research and knowing for the Aussie consumer humour is really important when you’re trying to find your match. It just felt like it was time for a change and this new style of advertising just resonates better with consumers.”

So what does the future hold for online dating in Australia?

“We’ve actually just tested some door drop activity, which is specifically aimed at the older demographic, because what came out from the segmentation study was the sort of media these people consume. Everybody was quite different, you would expect the younger demographic to be much more online, whereas the slightly older demographic were still using more traditional print media.”

“We’re looking into 2016 planning now, particular with our content market strategy and looking at new media opportunities that we can test,” said Tomkinson.

“In the future it will be interesting to see how the online players try and have partnerships together. It’s something we’re doing a lot of investigation into at the moment, looking for the right partnership opportunity for eHarmony. Music partnership is certainly something we’re looking into and online chat features as well. It’s just about finding the right thing, which i’m sure it will develop over the next year or so.”