From My Perspective – Official DateHookup Blog

Cute, aren’t they? What if I told you these little icons held the key to success in online dating? What if I told you these little graphics determined whether you would get a reply to your message or not? You might think I’m crazy, but it’s true! For fun I decided to do some number crunching on message data for DateHookup.com (okay, maybe it wasn’t FUN, but interesting).

The question: Does sending virtual gifts to people help you get more replies?

Virtual goods are all the rage these days. Facebook makes tens of millions of dollars a year on them. Most FB applications generate most of their revenue from virtual goods. And some dating sites use them in the form of ‘gifts’ you can send to singles. While it’s nice to see that companies are profiting from virtual gifts, the question is can it help your chances in scoring more dates? My conclusion is that yes, sending gifts to singles you’re interested in on dating sites DOES help you get more dates. In fact it makes such a huge difference in your chances of getting a response to your messages that I would say NOT sending them is a huge mistake.

I ran some stats on messages sent on DateHookup over 2 different sets of days(I ran each report twice, using 2 sets of days to verifiy the numbers were accurate). One report was for people who sent a message without a gift attached, the other was for people who sent a message with a virtual gift. These were all ‘first-contact’ emails, meaning I only included people who have never had communication with each other before. I calculated the percentage of messages that received a reply. Below is a chart showing the success rate of sending a gift vs. not sending a gift:

As you can see, people who sent a gift with their message were nearly TWICE as likely to receive a reply than those who did not send a gift. The actual percentages were 26% vs. 14%, meaning on average 26% of messages that include a gift get a reply vs. only 14% of messages that don’t include a gift. I bet you thought virtual gifts were silly. Well, maybe they are, I don’t know. But I do know they lead to more replies. And more replies will ultimately lead to more dates and more success.

Why does sending a gift get you more replies?

There are a few reasons why they work so well. For one, a gift stands out a lot more than a regular old message. And we all know those who stand out always get more attention, as annoying as that is sometimes Another reason they work is because people appreciate a nice gesture. So they say thanks, and bam, you’ve got your foot in the door. Sometimes it’s the little things that determines whether you get a date with someone or whether they ignore you. Getting the conversation started is the hardest part, and sending a gift is a great icebreaker. It gets the ball rolling. People love getting gifts, even if they’re virtual!

So what have we learned from today’s lesson? We learned that if you want to double the replies you get to your messages on dating sites, just send a gift! It’s at least worth a try, right?

Happy dating!
DateHookup.com – 100% Free Online Dating

(about the data: The sample size was around 1 million messages sent in the month of February, 2010. The only messages included in the data were from people who had never sent a message to the target user before, and had never received a message from the target user. First-contact messages only. The report was run on 2 sets of days in 2 different weeks to ensure no anomalies. Both reports showed approximately the same results. Just for fun, I ran the report again, this time seeing whether users with a photo in their profile got more replies than those without photos. Surprisingly there was little difference in reply percentage, meaning whether you had a photo in your profile or not did not help or hurt your chances of getting a reply on average.)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under DH, Online Dating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.