Getting Appy Happy with Michael Kaye (OKCupid's Head of Marketing)

Hey, girl. Welcome to the GetYourGuy coaching podcast. My name is Anwar White, but you can just call me your own personal dating and relationship coach. Each week you'll hear actionable advice, tips, and strategies that you can implement in your own love life. I'm talking about healing your heart, dating effectively, and understanding men so that you can, you guessed it, get your guy. Are you ready to level up your love life? All right, let's go.

Hello, hello, hello, my ladies. I hope you're doing well today. Now, I have a very special guest, and I know I say that all the time, but this is actually someone from, from the embers of the. The dating apps. I have the global head of marketing at OkCupid, Michael K. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so happy that you're here.

Thank you so much for having me. And I promise I'll try to be the most special guest yet.

I'm sure you will be. You know, I was just telling you I have a lot of questions from the ladies about wanting to know the inside scoop around dating apps and how to really kind of maximize them. So we'll definitely talk about that. But why don't you tell me a little bit about OkCupid? Like I was saying before, I think that it's such a great app, especially for people of color plus size, individuals and individuals that are very open, liberal and all of that. But I'd love to hear from you. When you think about OkCupid, kind of, how would you describe it and who do you think it's for? Besides everybody.

For everybody. So OkCupid is one of the OG dating apps. I've been working here for four years, and when I joined the company, I completely fell in love with this dating app. You know, OkCupid matches people on what matters to them, and we do that through in app questions. So if you're looking for something super casual or a quick hookup, I'm sure you can find that on OkCupid. But we're definitely never going to be your first app of choice. And, and we understand that, and that's by design. So when you create a profile on OkCupid, we make you do a lot of work. It doesn't take a few seconds. You have to upload multiple photos, you have multiple pieces of the profile to fill out, and then you have to answer at least 15 of our in app matching questions, although most people go on to answer dozens and dozens more. These questions cover everything related to dating, relationships, and sexual, but also the issues that are really Top of mind for people. So you're going to see questions on OkCupid about Black Lives Matter, climate change, reproductive health care, LGBTQ rights, gun control, education reform. These are conversations that are really important to have. And it's also important to understand where a match lines up on any of these categories. So we really want to make it easy for you to find people who are like minded, people who have similar values to you. And the more questions you answer on OkCupid, the more compatible your matches will be. So we tend to bring in a higher intent data, and the majority of people on OkCupid are looking for longer term, more meaningful connections.

Yeah, I love that. Don't hate me because I'm not the head of marketing for OkCupid, but I do tell my clients that if you are leaning a little bit liberal, if you are maybe a bit more quirky and also, you know, a little bit of an intellectual snob. I am, and most of my clients are, then OkCupid is going to be really, really good for you. And to your point, I do Definitely pump up OkCupid, especially for smart and successful black women, as well as plus size women too, because so many of my clients have gotten such great results from OkCupid. I'm really interested to understand because the pandemic was, I think, a game changer for so many dating apps. And so I'd love to hear kind of the inside scoop on how was OkCupid handling the pandemic? How much did it increase? Because as I knew it, everybody was online dating. And then based on everybody getting back on, did you see a huge drop off when things started to, quote, unquote, open up or did many of them kind of stay on?

Yes. So for us, those first couple of weeks of the pandemic, for a multitude of reasons, were a bit nerve wracking. But one of the questions we had was, how is this going to impact dating? Are people going to continue to be on the apps when they can no longer meet up? And what we saw right at the start of the pandemic was that OkCupid user engagement increased drastically as shutdowns intensified. So all over the world, matches on OkCupid increased 10%. Conver conversations increased over 20%. And when you think about these percentages, they might sound on the lower end, but you have to remember there are millions and millions of people on the app. So there was a ton of conversations happening, a ton of matches happening. And really we saw this trend across all countries, all around the world. We then looked at our data one year later and published a whole report about what dating Trends we're seeing one year into lockdown and how COVID 19 has really changed dating. And there were a couple of trends that really came out of the pandemic that we've seen last into 2023. One that I think is really interesting and I, I found fascinating, but also kind of empowering is that on OkCupid, women were no longer waiting for someone to message them. During the pandemic, we saw females on our app saying, I'm taking complete control of my dating life. I am not sitting around waiting for someone to message me. And at that one year mark, what we were seeing is that women under 30 on OkCupid sent 28, over 28% more first messages in January than they did the same time last year. And that's a trend we've seen all throughout the pandemic, is women started sending more first messages than they ever were before. And what's great about this trend is that we see conversations starting by women lasting significantly longer than conversations started by men. So that's one trend we saw during the pandemic. You know, I think it goes back to this idea that women started to feel more in control of their dating lives and started to embrace being the one to reach out and set up a date. Whether that was virtual in the beginning or, or in person towards the the end of the pandemic, that still feels in some way that we're still in. Yeah, but that was one. One trend that we, we saw come out of it. Another, and I think this happened to all of us, whether we're single or not, in various ways, is that I think we had, we all had a moment or moments where we thought, look at what's happening around the world between a global pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, stop Asian hate, a really rough presidential election here in the United States. We all took a moment and thought, what is important to me? And we started to see that tall, dark and handsome wasn't really going to cut it anymore on our app and how people were matching or who they were interested in. We have, we started to see a trend where people were matching over the.

Values during, over the issues that were really important to them. So they didn't really care about how much money you had in your bank account if you were in the C suite at the company you were working at. What they did care about is, do you believe climate change is real? Do you believe a woman has the right to choose what to do with her Body. Are you outside protesting with your black siblings during this historic movement? And that's what people were connecting on during the pandemic. And that's a trend we've seen into 2023 as well, which is we absolutely love seeing it. And we. We use our product as a way to really spark these kinds of conversations amongst daters.

Yeah, I love that. So you said women starting conversation is significantly more. Do you have some of that data? Like, is it like 20% more or longer? Are you talking about, like, actual numbers of messages that are happening? I'm really curious about that number, if you have it. If not, that's totally fine. We'll. We'll put in the show notes some other time. But me being an undergrad statistics major, I'm always very interested in, like, what that really looks like. Do you have data?

Yeah. So conversations that are started by women over men are lasting two to three times longer than conversations that are initiated by men at the beginning. And part of that is probably also because women are probably being more intentional with how they're reaching out to other people on the app. You know, hey, hi. Hello. Actually has the highest rate of being ignored, so you kind of want to ditch that. And I know we'll talk about this at some point in this conversation, but you. You really want to use your profile on a dating app to make it really easy for someone to start that conversation in a meaningful way.

Yeah, let's. Let's get into that because, you know, the girls want to know, how can I make sure that I'm getting seen, that I'm actually. That I'm standing out, that the people that I want are. Are going to see my profile. So what tips do you have for profiles? And I'll also share some of mine that I've also experienced.

Yeah. So I'm. I'm a former online dater, and now I've worked in the industry for years, so there's so many tips. First, we put so much pressure on ourselves to create the perfect dating profile. And it's so important to have a really great profile, but you don't have to do it on your own. So I always recommend, invite a couple friends over, open a bottle of wine, go for coffee, whatever. You know, whatever makes you feel comfortable, and ask them for help. I don't know about you, but I'm always asking for advice from friends on an Instagram caption or what photo I should post or if this story looks good. And you should do that with your dating app as well. Another tip I have is to be really positive with what you're choosing to put on a dating app. You know, the biggest turnoff I see is when are saying swipe left if it's really starting the first impression on such a negative note. And if you don't want to listen to me, that's totally fine because you know I'm going to have data to back up every single thing I say in this conversation.

Love it.

And we, when we looked at it, profiles with terms like pass on me if or don't like me if they actually get fewer messages, they get fewer conversations and have fewer contact exchanges than those who don't. So you really want to. It's all about reframing. So instead of saying what you're not interested in, flip it just to simply say what you are interested in. I also recommend people make lists with what they put on their Hinge profile or their Tinder profile or whatever your app of choice is when you're filling out your profile list things. So what I mean by that is list books that are on your to be read list or vacations that you still want to go on or concerts that are on your radar that you recently been to. This gives something that people can respond to and that goes back to your your profile photos too. No one wants to see five of the same selfies. That doesn't really. It doesn't show who you are. Use your photos to show your hobbies, your interests, your personality. I mentioned I am a former online dater, so I'm not single. But if I were to create a dating profile on OkCupid today, I would upload let's see a photo of me at SoulCycle, a photo of me at the Eras Tour. I love Taylor Swift. And a photo of me hanging out with my college friends. Those three photos alone allow someone to see my profile and say, what's your favorite Taylor Swift album? Or who is your go to soul cycle instructor? Or what college did you go to? And it starts the conversation in a really organic and natural way. You're starting a discussion on a topic that you're comfortable with because you're giving other users something that they can respond to.

Yeah, definitely. It's one of the things that I say too. But it's interesting. So many people swipe based on marrying somebody versus like actually just starting a conversation. One of the things that I always put or I always tell my clients is put questions in your profile. Right? Because the objective of your profile is to start a conversation. So don't, don't just Tell me that you go to Taylor Swift, but also ask me what's the last concert that you've been to. Right. So you can get that conversation started. And the other thing that I share, too, is it's great to share information, but what really starts the conversation is not just the what but the why. So, like, why is Taylor Swift your favorite, you know, artist or someone that you go to a concert with? Then you can start that conversation about, well, what's your favorite? And. And so forth and so on. So I love this. The profile is really about starting the conversation. That's all. That's it.

I love. I'm going to respond to the first thing you said, because if you get me started on Taylor Swift, we can be here for hours. But I love that you recommended someone ask a question. And this happened to me last year with a friend. I was looking at her Hinge profile, and she knows that I work at a dating app. And she said, hey, can you just look at my profile and let me know what I'm doing wrong here? And I'm reading through her Hinge prompts, and I forget the exact prompt, but it was something along the lines of, like, what your favorite meal is. And she wrote in penne a lavaka, really simple. So I said to her, why don't we build off of this, and instead of saying Peniela vodka, we'll actually ask people who come across your profile what their favorite Peniela vodka dishes in New York City. And we made that such a minor change. And over the next few weeks, she texted me almost a month later and said, michael, everyone is now responding to that prompt on my Hinge profile. And it was such an easy thing to do. But again, it goes back to this, like, find a way to help people initiate a conversation and. And get that going. Because I think that's the hardest part, is you see someone you like or that you're interested in, and it's like, shoot, what do I say right now?

Yeah, exactly. Love that. Good. So we were talking a little bit about pandemic. Post pandemic. I think that, you know, after the pandemic, because so many people were online dating, there were a lot of individuals that felt a bit more comfortable being online. But there, you know, I still run across women that are still like, I don't know about that. And I think it has some concern culturally, but also, you know, for women, it's a. Sometimes it's a safety concern. So what do you have to say for those women that are worried about you? Know different kinds of men, whether they be, you know, have any records or things like that. And how does OkCupid or the match group in general kind of compensate or, you know, protect the their users on.

The apps first, before we dive into any specifics, I will say trust your gut. If something feels off, listen to yourself. You always know best. Beyond that.

I, you know, on OkCupid, we take safety and security extremely seriously. We want everyone to recognize that this is a safe space for you to connect. And we're always using our app to give people safety tips, which are also available on our blog, on our website, and we push that to users throughout the year. As a reminder, we also make it really easy to report bad behavior on the app. We want to give you the tools to do so, but we also rely on our users too to also let us know when something that shouldn't be happening is happening. So in a few easy steps, you are able to report a profile, you are able to report a photo, you are able to report a message, you are able to block a user so that you never come across them again. We also have a whole team of safety experts internally, but we also rely on external partners as well. So for years and years we've been working with an organization called Rainn, which for anyone who's unfamiliar, Rainn is the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. We work with them to make sure that our reporting flow is easy for a user to navigate and that we're giving them the tools to report this bad behavior. You also mentioned match group, which OkCupid is a part of. Match Group at the company level has an advisory council that helps advise all our apps. That advisory council includes leading experts from organizations like MeToo, No More, RAINN, the Human Rights Campaign, Thorn National Sexual Violence Resource center, and a few others. So there are a lot of people and organizations and experts that are working, weighing in on our product and our product features to make sure any bad behavior that is happening on the app, people are punished accordingly and that we're making as safe of an environment as we possibly can off the app. We really encourage people to make really smart decisions. You know, in the app we can tell you things like don't share personal information, definitely never share financial information. But when it comes to actually going on the date, we recommend, especially for the earlier dates, meet at a central location, a very public place, and meet separately. Especially if this is someone you don't know yet, do not have them come to your home and pick you up. Make these really smart decisions.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Thank you for sharing that. You know, I think that it can be sometimes a little scary out there for women specifically, and it's really helpful and, you know, relieving to hear all of the steps that you all are doing. So when somebody does report. Right. Is there a certain formula in place and would you consider your OkCupid pretty strict around that or what does that look like? Right, Because I think that, like, I think part of the reason why a lot of women don't report, like, I'm working with clients every day and many of them aren't reporting, they're just kind of moving forward is because they don't want to maybe get into that back and forth. But what I'm hearing from you is definitely report. And I guess the question is like, how serious are the reports taken? Right. Just as in any other reports. And what can you say to that?

Our team really takes the approach that we are going to believe people when they report bad behavior. And almost always it ends in a permanent banning of that person, meaning they can no longer get on our app. No matter how ever they sign up, they choose to sign up with another email. We find them, we ban them again. We never want to be a place where people don't feel comfortable. That is so incredibly important to us because dating is such an intimate thing. It's a space where you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable and open and honest, and you can't do that in a space where, or on a platform where you just don't feel safe.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. So let's get into some questions, honey. Some, some of these ladies had some real, real good questions that they wanted to, to ask. And so one of the questions was around these paywalls. Right. I think that there's this thought out there that, or at least what I'm hearing is if I pay for something, these apps are going to show me a different kind of guy or a different, a higher quality guy or any of that. What can you tell these ladies about that?

That is not the case.

What our subscriptions do. And first of all, for anyone who hasn't been on OkCupid, it's completely free to download and create a profile so you don't ever have to spend a dime on our app. If you choose to spend money on a la carte features or even subscriptions, you're simply going to unlock additional features and you really won't be limited so it doesn't show you any new people. If you are using the app for free or you're having a paid subscription, you're still seeing the same user base of people. It's more about the features that are unlocked for you. So there's no difference in quality of daters or quantity of daters, unless you're thinking about how the paid subscriptions do not limit how many profiles you're shown in a given day, but definitely no change in quality.

Got it? No, this is, this is important. Now I have a lot of questions from my ladies that are in their later 40s and early 50s and one of their experiences is when they're in that age range that most of the time there. And maybe you don't have purview into this, but maybe you do. Their experience is that they are seeing men that are in their 60s and 70s and less so people that are around their age group. And so what they have found is that not only them, but also the men that they're talking to will put their age into, you know, 45, 46, 47 instead of 51, 52, 53 because of that. Have you, have you heard about this kind of phenomenon? And this isn't just with OkCupid or this is kind of the experience on a lot of the apps. Have you kind of. How does OkCupid kind of think about how they show different individuals to a user?

Yeah. So there's a lot of different filters on OkCupid that you can use to help control who you're being shown. These filters include the really basic ones that you would think of, like age and location, also identity, religion, so on and so forth. You get to choose your parameters. So I can go on and say I don't want to see anyone outside 35 to 45 years old. What's going to happen is we will show you everyone within that 10 year range. Once you hit liquidity, depending on how active you are on the app, we might show you someone slightly outside of it, meaning you might see a 33 year old or 46 year old. If you are adamant. I don't ever want to go below this age or above this age. There's a feature on OkCupid called Deal Breaker and you can set a deal breaker to your preferences, meaning we completely respect that filter and we will never go outside it. Even if you've run out of users in your area matching all your other filters.

Yeah.

So you have a lot of control.

Got it. And for the, let's say the other individuals, let's say I'm a 51 year old woman and I'm getting a lot of likes from 60, 70 year old men. Are those going to be seen in my feed as well because they've liked me or my profile?

If you have your settings set to being able to see that age.

Okay. But if not, then no go. Okay, good. Just have to ask a question for the ladies because some of the ladies are interested in that. Okay, so let's. I would love to kind of hack the algorithm with you for a little bit because you know, we always want to maximize our potential or anything that we're doing here. So like, what advice would you give women out there who want to be seen by more individuals that want to quote unquote, and I'm using language from them directly, verbatim, be seen by high quality men, even though I don't believe in that. Like how, how does one hack the algorithm?

Yes. So on OkCupid specifically, we actually have a dashboard that we call Icupid that provides our daters with insider tips to level up their dating profile. So it's actually a tool, a free tool in the app that's right on your profile and it gives you tips based on your personal profile. So these tips could include things like we recommend finish filling out your profile details, adding more photos, expanding your about me section to at least 50 words, answering more in app of our matching questions and following these tips really do help you get seen by more people and ultimately get more matches. One hack that I found out when I first started working at OkCupid years ago that I found so cool is that you should be updating your profile once a month. That does not mean you have to scrub your profile and completely start from scratch. That simply means if you have five or six photos that are up there, delete two, add three, change one or two of your prompts, maybe a couple of sentences in your about me or summary section, whatever it's called on the app of your choosing. What's going to happen to the app then is it's going to see all this activity happening on your profile and it's going to get confused and it's going to say, oh, we have a new user here and it's going to boost you out and show you more and more profiles. So that's just an insider tip that I find really interesting and it's so easy to do. You just have to do it once a month. I bet you you're on Instagram a lot more than that, or LinkedIn or email or texting. So dedicate some time to updating your profile once a month.

I love that that's one of the things I tell my clients. Every month we're going to change a picture, and then every other month or every other month we're going to change a picture. And then the not changing pictures, we're going to change a little bit of our location. We have to keep it fresh. We have to always be the new girl at school. Yeah. So I love that so much. Okay. So I would not be doing my job if I did not talk about that 2014 study. Right. About kind of the least desirable on dating apps being Asian men and black women. So I would love to hear your thoughts, your insights on kind of the aftermath of that study and what we've seen since then, because it's been almost a decade. And do you have any new data for me so I can tell all these ladies around what. What some of that looks like?

Yes, that. You know, when I first joined here and I came across that blog post, I. It was really disheartening. And then I took a step back and I thought, oh, okay, well, this data is from a decade ago. What was happening a decade ago. And I think it was a completely different moment in time. That is not to say we are not dealing with those issues in society today, but it is a really long time ago because that data came out prior to that study being published as well. And what we've seen over the past year, a few years, and it was really accelerated by the pandemic. It was accelerated by the Black Lives Matter movement.

What we're seeing today on OkCupid is that people are actually dating outside their race and religion more than they ever have been before in our nearly 20 year history, we also, in 2020, when we saw what was happening here in the US and also around the world, and I'm referring to the murder of black people all across the nation, is we realized that change really does start with conversation. And the BLM movement was really driving some of the most important discussions of our time. And we recognized that OkCupid is an app that really ignites connection and conversation. And we were uniquely positioned to be a platform that helps accelerate these types of conversations around race and ethnicity. And we used our app to help continue this conversation. So what we did, beyond donating to civil rights organizations and doing that type of work, we took it a step further and we actually released a Black Lives Matter profile badge in over a dozen countries around the world.

We again made donations and worked with naacp, aclu, Black Girls Code, Fair Fight Action. And then we actually started to add new Series of matching questions to our app related to racial equality and justice to encourage these conversations between people we know, especially for white people, these conversations are really awkward and they're uncomfortable. And we are working at an app where we can make it easier for people to self reflect and be introspective and really make them think through our questions. So we started to ask our daters, do you protest to fight inequality? How will you address racial inequality? Is it important that your date fights for racial justice? And we were really encouraged by what we started to see. The vast majority of OkCupid respondents said it is not acceptable to silently support racial equality in the US we had 7 in 10 dater saying they were protesting to fight racial inequality. And we continue to use our app as a way for people to really just take a step back and think about what they're doing and how they can make this world a better place.

Yeah, got it. Thank you for that. So you're saying that more people are kind of connecting interracially. Do you have a level at which that's increasing or is it nominal?

Yes. I don't know the exact percentage off the top of my head, but what we saw, seen during the pandemic was it was steadily increasing. So people were basically deprioritizing finding other people of the same race or the same religion. So we started to see people loosen their preferences in terms of race and religion, but start to look for other things. So it was less about, oh, are you also Jewish? And more about, how do you feel about XYZ issues? Because that's what's really important to me.

Yeah, I love that. Good. So for most of my clients, My clients, for most of my guests that come here, I always want to ask them how they got their guy. And, you know, I wouldn't be doing my job, as you are the second man on my actual podcast. How you got your guy.

Yeah. So I am actually an online dating success story. I. For anyone who has not picked up on it yet, I am gay. And I didn't come out of the closet until after college. And I downloaded a gay dating app, and it didn't feel like a safe space to me. It really reinforced to me this idea that queer love and connection should remain hidden and secretive because I saw a sea of blank profiles, black squares, torso photos, and I turned to the only other dating app that I heard of, which was Tinder. And I felt so welcomed on Tinder. I felt so safe. I felt so comfortable. I matched with a bunch of men on Tinder. But I was so nervous to meet up with any of them. And there happened to be one Friday night where I thought, oh, I'm going to delete Tinder. Maybe let me just scroll through it real quick before.

It's really always when you're about to delete the app that something always kind of pops up.

They know. The Tinder gods knew. And I match with this guy on Tinder. We started talking that night. I actually bailed on our first date, which was a couple later, because you were that guy. You were so nervous and I was still in the closet for anyone listening. That's why. And he was so patient with me. He said, do this on your time. And we spoke for every day for a month while he was away. He. His work took him away that summer. He came back on a Sunday and. Or on a Friday. Our first date was on a Sunday. Our second date was on that Thursday we start. We made it official that Thursday. And this past July, we celebrated nine years together.

Congratulations. I love that so much.

I love, love, love Tinder. I think it's a beautiful app and there's a lot of meaningful connections to be found on Tinder and OkCupid.

Of course, of course. Well, thank you so much for sharing that story and thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your wisdom. And a bit of tea for all of us to learn a little bit more and level up in the way that we interact with apps. Is there anything else you want to share before we go?

Yes. Well, I know that I mentioned OkCupid is completely free and I didn't lie to you, it is. But I also really love our subscriptions. I think it unlocks some pretty awesome features. So for the first 50 listeners who email subscriptionsokupid.com, that's plural, so subscriptions with an S at the end. And if you let us know in that email where you heard us, I will upgrade you to our premium version on me. Because why not spread the love?

I love that so much. You always taking care of us. We love, we love a good. We love a good freebie. Thank you so much for that. It's so special and nice of you and generous. Appreciate it.

Of course. I love the place you bed.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. So, so, so appreciate your time. And ladies, you heard it here first from the dating app's mouth, literally. As head of marketing, I hope that this was a helpful episode for you all. And if you have any additional questions, please don't forget to email@supportetyourguycoaching.com so that we can continue this conversation about how to best level up your your app life. I call it getting appy happy.

Yeah.

Awesome. Thank you so much everyone. See you on the flip side. Bye.

Hey girl. Thank you so much for listening to the get your guy coaching podcast. If you like this episode and want to talk with me personally, please book a free consultation at www.getyourguycoaching.com. apply or subscribe and leave me a review wherever you you listen to your podcast, talk soon.