Love is in the air and it’s not just because Valentine’s Day is around the corner. Making a beautiful reconnection with your top users is the stuff of romance in mobile advertising. And, that romance leads to longer app sessions, higher conversion rates and increased user lifetime value (LTV). With a treasure trove of first-party data at their proverbial fingertips, dating apps are uniquely positioned to retain their top users with hyper-targeted ads and personalized messaging.
For mobile advertising inspiration this Valentine’s Day, we’re diving deep on dating apps, including their recent usage trends and top marketing best practices.
Dating app usage: a love story
In the U.S., dating websites and apps have become the main tool for singles looking to connect with a new partner. In fact, according to the Knot’s 2022 Jewelry and Engagement Study, dating apps are the most common way couples meet today.
According to Data.ai, have fared well in the face of economic headwinds. Consumer spending in dating apps reached $17.8 million during H1 2022. This represented a 16% increase in spending year-over-year.
Who uses dating apps?
According to Statista, there are over 44 million online daters in the U.S. alone. Of this number, 26.6 million individuals use dating apps specifically.
What dating apps do people use the most?
The most popular dating app by user count in the U.S. is Tinder. Tinder’s in-app revenue has been rising steadily since 2018. In fact, the dating app saw a 7% rise in paid subscriptions during the summer of 2022 alone. Furthermore, Tinder’s monthly active users make up the lion’s share (73%) of users engaged with the top dating apps according to Sensor Tower.
Source: Business of Apps
That being said, while Tinder reigns supreme in the dating app category, Hinge and Bumble have grown more in monthly active users than Tinder since 2019. As of 2022, Hinge saw MAUs grow by 344% and Bumble by 96%; versus Tinder’s 1% loss of monthly active users.
The Match Group which owns and operates the largest global portfolio of popular online dating services — including Tinder, OkCupid and Hinge. Worldwide, the Match Group has just over 11 million paid subscribers which contributes to the company’s 2.89 billion annual revenue. The Match Group holds a 43.8% share of overall total monthly active users (MAU) on dating apps.
What is the best dating app to find love?
According to the Knot’s 2022 Jewelry and Engagement Study, Hinge is the best dating app to find a partner (overtaking the 2021 top dating app winner, Tinder). According to the Knot’s study, Hinge was responsible for pairing 30% of couples who met using the app — a 9% increase from 2021. This increase was a result of added voice prompt functionality and changes to their onboarding flow. More specifically, Hinge made their sign-up process more intensive, which contributed to a 25% rise in user drop-off but an overall increase in engagement and relationship success rates.
Dating app mobile marketing strategies to fall in love with
As we mentioned above, dating apps have some of the most robust first party data around. Understanding how data apps use their first party data to re-engage users is helpful to all apps.
Testimonials
What better way for a dating app to market their matchmaking services than through success stories? This is a tactic used by popular dating app, Match.com, which includes a testimonials page on their website. Here, you can click through countless couple profiles to learn how two individuals used the app to meet and connect.
How you can apply this to your marketing
While linking users to a testimonials page might seem counterintuitive to your paid advertising efforts, it’s a soft-handed approach to re-engage users with positive feedback of your brand. For example, your brand could design ads that hook users with positive reviews of your app. Experiment with copy such as: “X% of travelers book flights with our app”. From there, set up a mobile landing page that includes testimonials of your product and/or services and a call to action button to make a conversion.
Gamification
For dating apps, gamification has been a successful tool of engagement. Take dating app Jigsaw which built its UI to hide matches’ photos with a jigsaw puzzle that can only be solved piece-by-piece by having a conversation.
How you can apply this to your marketing
Gamified ad formats are some of the best-performing creatives in mobile advertising. With that said, is there way your brand can gamify your content or services to create a playable ad? If you’re a mobile game, this might be by recreating a short and interactive clip of your game play. For a shopping app, this might be crafting a type of hide-and-seek playable that asks a user if they can spot a popularly-purchased item in a photo.
Original content
All brands have their own data and this data can be used to generate highly-engaging, original content to re-engage customers. Perhaps the best known example of this strategy is Spotify’s annual Unwrapped campaign when the popular music app generates a custom round-up of a user’s top music of the year. But there are also other, less data-driven ways to do this. For example, dating app Once launched a viral blog post that included a personality quiz to help users find their perfect match.
How you can apply this to your marketing
You’ve figured out how to create a product or service that sells, now figure out how to create content that sells. For a shopping app, this might be developing a personality quiz for finding your perfect pair of shoes. For a delivery app, this might be a blog that rounds up the top takeout restaurants of the month based on order data in a certain region. Retarget ads with copy that entices people to use the app to “eat at the most popular restaurants this month”. Deep link users to a mobile landing page with a summary of each restaurant and a conversion button with “order now” underneath each every summary listed.
Takeaways
Making a beautiful reconnection with your top users is the stuff of romance in mobile advertising. With a treasure trove of first-party data at their proverbial fingertips, dating apps are uniquely positioned to retain their top users with hyper-targeted ads and personalized messaging.
- There are 26.6 million individuals on dating apps.
- The most popular dating app by user count in the U.S. is Tinder.
- According to the Knot’s 2022 Jewelry and Engagement Study, Hinge is the best dating app, pairing 30% of couples who met using the app.
- Dating app marketing tactics to fall in love with:
- Testimonials
- Gamification
- Original content
Ready to make a beautiful reconnection with your customers?
YouAppi DSP can get you 2.5x in uplift by connecting people to apps and retaining your most engaged mobile users. Schedule a meeting with our team of mobile experts to make a beautiful reconnection with your customers this Valentine’s Day.
