Perfectmatch.com® Commits to CJ Associate™

For online dating and relationship site Perfectmatch.com (Perfectmatch), tapping into the high dissatisfaction with casual dating sites and serving a more qualified and quality audience has been the key to both market differentiation and continued growth in a very crowded space. To better reach and serve this audience, Perfectmatch incorporated Commission Junction’s CJ Associate™ affiliate service into its integrated marketing efforts to cost effectively build its brand and continue to improve its customer acquisition efficiencies. The results? An impressive 300% jump in affiliate sales in the past 18 months with even greater upside for next 12-24 months.

To achieve its goal of driving brand awareness and realizing aggressive sales growth, Perfectmatch developed a strategic partnership with Commission Junction, a ValueClick company and a global leader in the online advertising channels of affiliate marketing and managed search. “The Commission Junction team truly operates as an extension of our company,” said Perfectmatch Founder/Chief Executive Officer Duane Dahl. “We expect, with their assistance, to double our sales in each of the next two years.”

A recent JupiterResearch study found the online dating industry is growing despite user saturation, and by 2011, online dating is expected to be a nearly $1 billion business. The study also concluded although U.S. dating sites excel at converting browsers into subscribers, to remain competitive, brands need to offer unique and differentiated paid services to existing customers while reaching new audience segments.

Unlike other dating and relationship sites that only allow visitors to either search for casual dates or choose from scientifically based matches provided for them, Perfectmatch.com provides both highly compatible matches and comprehensive search capabilities giving its members significantly greater success in finding just the right person. Perfectmatch’s Duet® Total Compatibility System analyzes and matches members based upon Personality, Life & Love-Style, Values and Preferences; key traits that create the most successful, lasting relationships. The company targets online users 26 and older, and has achieved the most growth with the over-50 segment.

“When choosing to partner with Commission Junction, we had initially selected the CJ Vantage™ solution, which provided us with a variety of benefits including a customized deployment strategy,” continued Dahl. “While the program achieved strong early growth, we quickly realized we needed to do an even more effective job of communicating our unique offering to attract top publishers, which is why we added CJ Associate™. This solution provided a dedicated program manager with expertise in customer support, sales and performance marketing, and a network of high-quality publishers.”

The Commission Junction program manager reworked Perfectmatch’s program terms to offer publishers tiered compensation; diversified Perfectmatch’s publisher base by developing coupon offers to attract coupon and deal publishers; coordinated the company’s search efforts; recruited and optimized quality publishers efforts; and updated creative and content. This led to immediate increased sales by 29% after the first month and triple sales after nine months.

“Commission Junction has also delivered a truly integrated marketing approach by leveraging our extensive offline movie and TV initiatives to drive the most traffic to our Web site. With the assistance of Commission Junction and the building of our brand over the past two years, our affiliate program revenue has increased by 300% since implementation of CJ Associate in December 2005,” concluded Mr. Dahl.