Blake Jamieson is trying to digitally play his way into women’s hearts, and it might actually be working. The aspiring content marketer applied a little branding to his profile on Tinder, the hot-or-not-style dating app, and said he's now matched with more than 2,000 women.
Some might call his e-dating tactics a form of spam and others might even call them false advertising, but Jamieson says he's simply found a playful way to increase his odds on the app, which at its most basic level is a game.
Tinder users, on their smartphone touchscreens, swipe right on profiles and photos they like and swipe left if they don't. And then matches can begin texting each other. Jamieson, 29, found some interesting dating insights. For instance, only 8 percent of women made the first move, until he made some adjustments to his profile and raised that rate to 18 percent. Jamieson shared his story with Adweek today, detailing how he adjusted his personal branding on the app to increase his love appeal.
What Jamieson learned could be a valuable lesson for content and social media marketers looking to engage with fans—and spark conversations—on new platforms. In his experiment, Jamieson made his profile look as if Tinder had endorsed him with an authentic-seeming logo and "Match of the Day" written on it.
"I hoped it would add more trust and credibility, which would result in more matches," Jamieson wrote in his initial recap on the blogging site Medium.
He said the tactic may have exploited the system, but didn't think it misled women, many of whom recognized that it was a joke, he said. Jamieson is a social media marketer for a pool supply company and lives in Phoenix.
He called his Tinder tests a "win for native advertising," boosting his reach by creating a profile that captured the look and feel of the app. Tinder has experimented with native ads; last year it ran dating profiles of characters in the Fox show The Mindy Project.
Here's how Jamieson made thousands of matches and the real-life results. And oh yeah, he has not been banned by Tinder, he told Adweek:
- He first used a "Match of the Day" logo starting in March, leading to 800 matches. He also swiped right, liking, every profile in every age group—18 and over—within a 100-mile radius, the maximum. That alone increases the chances of matching.
- He also added quirky messages to his six profile photos in the spirit of Tinder, such as: "But those dimples tho;" "He is taller than you;" and "Swipe right."
- After the first 800 matches, Jamieson refined his approach, leading to more than 2,000 matches. He increased the first-response rate from 8 percent to 18 percent of matches who texted him first.
- So how did he increase women who contacted him by 125 percent? He redesigned his fake Match of the Day logo and updated his bio. He borrowed a redesign from a friend of his, CamMi Pham, who used a banner at the top of the profile photo that now reads "Hot Match of the Day." In the original attempt, he used the Tinder flame logo to frame his face in the profile photo and mask everything outside the logo in black and white. He said the new look felt more native to Tinder.
- Jamieson said that updating his profile photo put him back in the pool of singles who swiped him off the first time around, giving him a second chance. Tinder has since said that is not a feature of the service, and changing a profile does not mean it will be seen again by people who already rejected it once.
- His new bio also now says: "And yes I really am your 'hot match of the day.' It’s a new feature." He called that addition "a little humor," but some might call it misleading. "Sure it might have annoyed some people, but everyone that took the time to message me congratulated me for being clever," he said.
- In his old profile, he included a link to his Medium page to boost clicks. In the updated bio, he said the call to action, rather than a click, was to encourage replies. So he posted a question: "If I said, 'I like your style,' What would you say? (There’s only one correct answer)." The correct answer: "I like your moves," from Starsky and Hutch.
- He also now includes Instagram and Snapchat contact info.
- Now, did any of this get him a real-life date? Yes, he set up five dates, and one led to a second and third date.
