About Cupid Media
High tech meets traditional match making. Cupid Media specializes in bringing together couples whether it be next-door or halfway across the world. Established in 2000, Cupid is a leading online dating network. In that time, Cupid has helped over 30 million people look for love across the world, covering North and South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. Cupid sites are equipped with the latest and most progressive technology to make online dating an enjoyable and interactive experience.
The marketing team at Cupid Media works in all disciplines - search, social, display. This lends itself well to working with fewer vendors across channels, preferably in one integrated platform. We found this with Marin Software. What’s impressed me about Marin’s client service team is that they are knowledgeable across all channels (search, social and display). We often work with vendors where they are usually only experts in one particular area. Marin also delivers insights and recommendations that go beyond a typical SaaS partner which shows they have our best interest at heart.
Challenge
The challenge for Cupid Media was efficiently and effectively buying media across search, social, and display for their diverse array of business. They operate 30 domains and 500+ publisher accounts across many international publishers. With virtually unlimited sources of inventory, Cupid Media needed a centralized view of their performance metrics in order to compare their results and know where to invest their next dollar.
In addition, Cupid Media needed to make sure its employees were making the best use of their time and talents. To date, its advertising operation has been run in-house with a team of experts using Excel and publisher-provided tools. Cupid’s management team determined that employing a technology partner was the best way for its marketing team to continue scaling the online advertising program. Cupid set out to find the best technology partner for this task, and ultimately decided Marin Software was the right partner to help them continue to execute their cross-channel marketing strategy.
Centralized Cross-channel Stack Improves Workflow and Future Strategies
Marin Software’s platform provided Cupid Media with a one-stop technology stack for its search, social, and display buying needs. Cupid made use of Marin’s bidding tool - Budget Optimizer - to drive down the costs of converting subscribers from free to paid. In addition, Cupid leveraged Marin’s scalable campaign deployment to launch quick tests and syndicate the successful bets to their other lines of business. The ease and speed of campaign management and experimentation allowed Cupid’s marketing team to focus on being strategic in all channels, while relying on automation to execute the rote business tasks.
Bidding Algorithm Finds Users Whose Revenue Contribution is 23% Above Average
Cupid Media optimizes to “free signups” since they operate on a “freemium” business model. Their objective is to convert a portion of those free users into paying subscribers. Marin’s bidding algorithm helped Cupid Media drive 78% more free signups. What’s particularly noteworthy is that these free signups contributed 23% more revenue than Cupid’s average free signup. This indicates that Marin’s bidding algorithm was effective at isolating valuable media buys and acquiring it at highly cost-effective bids. The bid efficiency is evident by the 28% decrease in average cost-per-conversion. In short, Marin’s bidding algorithm delivered Cupid Media more net revenue, on a reduced cost basis. For Cupid Media’s management team, the decision to partner with Marin Software has paid dividends.
Integrated Workflow Across Channels for Quick Testing, Quick Learnings
Beyond bidding and budget automation, Marin Software has enabled Cupid‘s Marketing to move fast, test more ideas and rapidly syndicate the winning ideas to the rest of their business. This workflow is foundational to Cupid’s marketing assembly line. Cupid’s legacy process for campaign management and testing had become overwhelming for the Cupid team and was negatively impacting productivity. Fortunately, Marin’s platform simplified each of these steps enabling Cupid’s team to focus their attention on being strategic and dreaming up new ideas to test, while leaving the rote mechanical tasks for Marin cross-channel automation to execute.
