Irony of the Week: Date.com's Email Revenues
According to an article in Direct Magazine, subscription site Date.com has redirected 60% of its email marketing budget into other online tactics to acquire new subscribers because they feel filters are eating too many of their promotions to 3rd party lists.
They don’t say why filters are targeting them so much — but I’ll bet it’s a combination of the fact that their copy probably contains innocent words that may be common to spammers (such as dating), and that some rental lists on the B2C market are mis- represented as permission based, when they are actually junk names and thus would be filtered more.
Anyway, here’s the funny part of the story — while Date.com’s marketer tests various online ad tactics to raise sub sales that email formerly brought in, the company is covering part of the revenue shortfall by putting their own email list on the rental market. And, it’s so successful (after all these are direct response buyer names with lots of fabulous demographic selects) that they are considering also putting their snail mail list out there too.
Online sub site revenue tactics look more and more like offline sub product tactics every day. I know plenty of B2C print sub newsletters (Boardroom Reports, etc.) who’ve depended on list rental income for profits over the years.
http://directmag.com/ar/marketing_datecom_moves_away/index.htm
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