eHarmony CEO Interview

MARKET WATCH -- Greg Waldorf is a founding investor and CEO of eHarmony. 

Has the cost to acquire subscribers gone up now people are more comfortable meeting on social networking sites?
I don't think social networking sites have affected our acquisition costs. If anything, the social networking sites give people a taste of what it's like to be like online and it allows them to clearly differentiate a social service vs a more serious approach to online matching.

Match.com grew sales 22% to $80 million in the recent quarter.  Are you growing faster than Match.com?
We're growing at about the same rate as Match.

How are you going to grow your revenues next year? 
Most likely through more people coming onto the site. Between 15 and 30 million people will be a unique visitor to one of the major online dating sites. At any given time, only several million people are actually subscribing. There's a high degree of interest, and now we need to get more of them to convert. 

How many subscribers did you sign on this year and what do you expect for next year?
Many hundreds of thousands. 14 million subscribers since inception.

What is the average lifetime value of a subscriber?
Well over a $100.

Comments

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

"14 million subscribers since inception."?

I think that is a typo - should be trial users:-)

Otherwise 14 million x $100/subscriber = $1.4B.

[Sean Barbera, Relationships.com]

I am sure he meant 14 million registrations, not paying subscribers. That is still a big number. I would think the bigger question is how much have they paid to get those registrations and how many are actually converting to paying customers.

[Anthony C Jenkins]

The real question is how much do they spend on advertising

Anthony C. Jenkins

[Fred]

Review of eHarmony.

I liked the idea of creating a profile that would identify compatible matches based on various personality factors. That is why I chose to try eHarmony. After spending a great deal of time trying to answer the questions honestly I completed them, filled out the introductory info, and uploaded some photos.

I was extremely disappointed at the superficiality of the compatability of the matches it sent me. I provided sincere, heartfelt, genuine responses to the questions which are used to generate the much vaunted personality profile and was rewarded with very few matches. I found that the four step communications process encourages people to form preconceived notions based on the most superficial of principles.

I signed up for a three month membership. Over the course of that time I received about fifty some matches. A little more than half of those apparently found me immediately incompatible. Out of the remainder I found about eighty percent of those incompatible. That left about five I pursued communication with. I was never able to complete step three with any of these prospects before they either stopped responding without bothering to close the match or finally did close the match after being "nudged" two weeks later.

At this point I decided to look over the Dimensions advice newsletters for some inspiration and was instead confronted with the following article which I found highly offensive.

Copy and paste the following link into your browser:

http://advice.eharmony.com/newsletter/volume55/dating-advice-0807.htm

From issue 55 of the Dimensions newsletter, from item number six, called "Underestimating a personality or behavioral problem.", of the eHarmony Dating Advice column entitled "7 Fatal Flaws of Faulty Mate Selection" I discovered that Dr. Warren casually encourages users to exclude those suffering from depression and other emotional illnesses from consideration as a compatible partner characterizing emotional illness as a “fatal flaw” to a serious long term relationship. His statements are not only insensitive but prejudicial and bigoted. It is irresponsible of a therapist who presents himself as an authority to so callously express such a viewpoint with so casual a disregard for the sensibilities of human nature.

I had a great deal of trouble trying to get a response from eHarmony to my query regarding this article in a timely manner and eventually gave up hope. I did not renew at the end of the the three month period.

I would not recommend the eHarmony approach.