Coffee Meets Bagel Success Rate

Coffee Meets Bagel allows users to send a first message along with their “like.”. According to the app’s internal data, including a message increases your chance of matching by 25%: PRO TIP: When it comes to sending a Coffee Meets Bagel first message, don’t blow it. Kick off the new year right with tips for success on the top dating apps in 2019. Chances of being Liked on Coffee Meets Bagel by 31 percent.

By Su Qin, PhD candidate, Department of Management, CUHK Business School

Coffee Meets Bagel

Founded in San Francisco, Coffee Meets Bagel is an online dating agency which provides services all over the world, including Hong Kong. The company started in 2012, but has grown rapidly over the last four year through providing differentiated dating services for both men and women. Ms Dawoon Kang, its Chief Operations Officer and Head of Marketing credits the company’s success to how they position their services and tailor it to suit customers.

Success of Coffee Meets Bagel

Positioning

Normally, the positioning of a dating service provider could be differentiated in two dimensions: The purpose of the service (i.e., entertainment or relationship) and the friction (i.e., the service fee). The two dimensions: purpose and service fee divide the market into four categories: (1) entertainment – low friction; (2) entertainment – high friction; (3) relationship – low friction; (4) relationship – high friction.

In United States, the positioning of most online dating service providers concentrates mainly on the “entertainment – low friction” and the “relationship – high friction” category. This is because one of the characteristics of online dating services is that participants voluntarily provide their personal information to the site to be matched with compatible individuals, and there is no guarantee of the authenticity of information provided. So for users who want to build serious relationships, they have to pay a high fee. But Coffee Meets Bagel positions itself at the quadrant of Relationship – Low friction. Though challenging, it clearly states its position and sticks to it.

According to my analysis, the most popular dating websites in China haven’t got such a clear positioning: while Momo and Tantan falls in the category of “entertainment – low friction”, Jianyuan, Baihe, Zhenai, and Youyuan are mixed in the “relationship – low friction and high friction” categories, as illustrated in the following graph.

Brand and Reputation

According to Kang, the biggest challenge facing Coffee Meets Bagel is to screen users effectively without increasing its fee. Based on the information disclosed in its webpage, more than 650 couples find each other through their service every week. It is a big success among dating sites. Kang believes it has to do with their brand and reputation.

“We have turned down many offers from venture capitals; we don’t want to expand in the expense of losing core customers. At the same time, we invested a lot in learning the behaviors of users who want to find long-term relationships through us. We want to learn about their concerns and needs. In the process, we can improve our service and provide an excellent service to our customers,” she said.

However, in the Chinese market, most dating companies focus more on the expansion of scale. For example, the active users of Jiayuan are more than 5 million and for Zhenai and Baihe, more than 1.3 million. The strategy they adopted is like providing FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods). They recruit customers through advertisement and sponsoring popular TV shows, such as “You Are the One” [非诚勿扰]. However, after customers registered on their website, they mostly depend on computer program to recommend matches based on the information provided by participants. In the large pool of users, it is difficult to find the right one for each user, not to mention some of the information provided is fake. A report from Analysis[1] showed that “user-friendliness, brand, and reputation” are the top three factors in customers’ decision making.

Retaining Female Users

Kang also mentioned that how they tried to maintain female users.

“Statistics from US market show that among users of online dating, around 65% are male, and around 35% are female. And I think the user composition in Chinese market is similar. But male users are usually more active in the use of the online dating services than female users. The implication for company strategy is that the key of success is to increase female users and to motivate their activeness,” she said.

“However, most companies would focus on male users in their webpage designs. They will put attractive female pictures on the home page. Coffee Meets Bagel used a different strategy to attract female users. We recommend “bagels” (male users) to female users first, only those liked “bagels” could see the profiles of female users who will decide whether to start conversation or not. This special design whips up a new wave among females, which facilitates the spread of the new brand,” she added.

“For Chinese online dating service companies, how to attract and retain female users is also a key issue.” Ms Dawoon Kang, Coffee Meets Bagel

China’s Online Dating Market

However, when we look at online dating service companies in China, most of them don’t have clear positioning. They mostly emphasize on the size of the company and their user pools. Though these companies used friction to differentiate their customers, the percentage of paid customer accounts for only 60%, and the rate most customers are willing to pay is less than 200 RMB per month[2]. This reflects that these companies need to do more to differentiate or to customize their service.

Implications for Chinese Dating Market

For Chinese online dating service companies, how to attract and retain female users is also a key issue. Statistics from the China National Bureau of Civil Affairs show that till the end of year 2010, the population of singles in mainland China reached 22.79 million, with 13.07 million males and 9.72 million females[3]. This is a huge market for companies providing dating services, especially with the popularity of the internet nowadays. In 2010, the market of Dating Site was 600 million RMB. By 2015, it already reached 3.15 billion RMB. In the first quarter of 2016, based on the revenue, the top four players in the Chinese online dating market are Jiayuan (26.6%), Youyuan (17.0%), Zhenai (10.3%), and Baihe (6.5%)[4]. However, these homogeneous companies are struggling in the fierce competitive market. The success of Coffee Meets Bagel would provide some insights to them.

References:

[1]易观咨询，新功能与新兴技术成为互联网婚恋交友厂商未来应用重点 – 中国互联网婚恋交友市场季度监测报告2016年第1季度。http://www.analysys.cn/view/report/detail.html?columnId=8&articleId=1000079

[2]艾瑞咨询，中国网络婚恋交友行业报告 – 2016 年。 http://report.iresearch.cn/report/201602/2534.shtml

[3]Tabulation on the 2010 Population Census of the People’s Republic of China http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/pcsj/rkpc/6rp/indexch.htm

[4]艾瑞咨询，中国网络婚恋交友行业报告 – 2016 年。 http://report.iresearch.cn/report/201602/2534.shtml

Online dating has shaken up the romantic world in ways both good and bad. But whether we like it or not, one thing is for sure—online dating is here to stay.

Not one to get left behind, I’ve been trying my luck on a smorgasbord of dating apps over the past few months. And being the gigantic nerd that I am, I turned the entire experience into one big social experiment.

Today, returning as a battle-hardened veteran of love, I’m going to share with you my personal experiences, and tell you which apps I think you should get, and which apps I think aren’t worth your time. Juicy statistics included.

THE SETUP

Location

Coffee Meets Bagel Success Rate Calculator

I’m currently living in a relatively conservative Asian country. So naturally, that’s where I was swiping from. The residents here are pretty closed-minded for the most part when it comes to things like dating and relationships. Doubly so for more promiscuous activities like casual sex. That being said, there seemed to be a substrata of people that were more down with the times, so to speak. These people were my target demographic. More on this later.

I also live on the outskirts of a city, so I had to broaden my search radius quite a bit to actually find people to match with.

Apps Used

I used 4 dating apps in the experiment, they were:

  1. Tinder
  2. Coffee Meets Bagel
  3. Bumble
  4. Hinge

Most dating apps are badly designed and are headaches to use. I chose these 4 because I felt they were the least buggy ones out there (spoiler: they were still pretty buggy).

I also picked these apps in particular because they were primarily designed to be used on mobile devices. Who even uses dating sites anymore?

Orientation

I was swiping as a male looking for a female.

Is Coffee Meets Bagel Profitable

Age range

18-32. I needed to cast a broad net because so few people were on dating apps.

Distance

I set my search radius to 50miles. This is a really, reallywide range. You wouldn’t normally need to do this if you live in a city, but I don’t. So, I had to cast the widest of nets. I did end up going downtown for most of my dates (~20 miles from me), but thankfully never had to go any further.

Ethnicities

Yup, you guessed it. I was swiping on all of them.

Pictures

I used 5 pictures on my profile. I thought 5 was the perfect number because it didn’t seem like too few, nor did it se— Ah, who am I kidding? I’m not particularly photogenic so I wasn’t spoiled for choice here. I took my best 5 photos, slapped them on the apps, and called it a day.

The first picture was a half body shot showcasing my face, the next 3 were travel pictures, and the last one was a group shot with my friends in which you could clearly identify which one I was.

I won’t post my exact pictures for obvious reasons, but I’ll do the next best thing—show you some pictures very similar to mine so you get an idea of what kind of profile I was rocking.

Just imagine the poses in pictures 3 and 4 in front of interesting travel backdrops, and in 5, I was the only guy in focus so you could easily identify which one I was. Also, the pictures I used were pretty average quality. They weren’t shot with a Canon-MP9001-with-automatic-hot-ification like these ones. That being said, they weren’t gas-station-bathroom-selfie-quality either. If you do have the option to use great, professional-looking shots, then you should definitely use them.

The Bio

Again, I’m going to completely fabricate a bio for you in the same style as the one I used. So, it’s not going to be my exact one, but something closely resembling it.

8’10 Martian, majored in Intergalactic Gender studies

Worked as a former cow abductor back in the day, but wasn’t quite feeling the vibe of the job. I’m an accountant now.

I like working out, doing math, and drawing giant dicks on the cornfields of nearby planets with my spaceship’s laser cannon

Your mom will love me 😉


The idea was to give the ladies an idea of who I was, and what my life was about while throwing some humor into the mix. If you bore them, you’re as good as gone (unless you’re hot). To be clear, I had my actual life story in my bio. The alien stuff was a fabricated example.

The Prompts

Some apps give you the choice to answer a few fun questions about yourself to give your potential matches an idea of your personality. Definitely use them if you have fun answers. These are the ones I used (also fabricated but in the same style).

2 truths and a lie…
I dated both twins of the same family, I’m a professional chess player, I send chain mail for fun

I appreciate when my date…
Takes care of herself and can handle my jokes

I like…
Big butts and I cannot lie

As you can see, the prompts were all pretty lighthearted and most importantly, not boring. In hindsight, I probably spent way too much time crafting those.

THE GAME PLAN

Competition Analysis

The first thing I did on my online dating journey was to suss out the competition.

How did I do this? Well, I did a little recon. I borrowed some pictures from one of my female friends and set up a dummy profile for her on Tinder (remember to ask for permission). Doing this, I gained first-hand insight into what my competition was like.

And it wasn’t pretty… for them.

Coffee Meets Bagel Success Rate

I mentioned this before, but swiping from a conservative Asian country reduced the size pool of my potential matches by a shit ton. Just because so few people were on dating apps. But, unbeknownst to me, my terrible location also had a silver lining: My competition was way worse.

Most guys on online dating had terrible profiles. A handful had high quality shots, but most were weird selfies or pictures that didn’t even show their faces.

Competition was low—moderate at best. Good news for me.

The Ranking System

Seeing as how I lived 45 minutes from civilization (and also with my parents) at the time, I had to come up with a very unique dating strategy if I was going to get any private time with my dates.

What followed was a deviously simple but effective ranking system to prioritise which dates were worth bearing the 2 hour long journey downtown for, and for which matches I’d be better off staying put at home.

The ranking criteria were as follows:

  1. Coolness – This is a measure of how ‘cool’ the potential date was. So things like looks, similar interests, and background all played a role in their cool score. This was the #1 priority
  2. Logistics – Simply put, this was whether the potential date lived alone or with their parents
  3. Everything else – This includes things like whether the girl had 3 legs, didn’t speak English, or lived in a dodgy area of town. Just everything else really

The importance of coolness is self-explanatory, but I put so much emphasis on good logistics mainly because I’m kind of an introvert. I’d take a quiet date at home with soft music cooing in the background over seeking out adventurous and potentially life-threatening experiences any day.

I believe this more low-profile type of date helps eliminate distractions from the outside world so both parties can more easily focus their attention on each other. And also, privacy is good if things take a romantic turn.

Quick disclaimer: Inviting a girl back to your place for the first date isn’t a great idea. I would suggest doing this on the 3rd or 4th date.

So, when I was chatting to potential dates on the apps, I ranked them and prioritized them accordingly, going out with the ones with the highest ranking first, working my way down the list. Don’t get me wrong, the list was either non-existent or very short most days. I’m not a giga-chad by any means. But it did come in handy a couple of times (mostly to decide whether it was worth going out at all).

Swiping Strategy

My strategy was to only swipe on members of the opposite sex I found attractive. For the first few days, I swiped until I ran out of likes on every app. This turned out to be way more draining than I thought.

Very quickly, I came to realize that Hinge didn’t have a particularly large user base in the country I was in. I ran out of people to match with within a day. For the remaining 3 apps, I continued swiping until I ran out of likes for 3 straight days.

After that, I cut-back on the swiping on Tinder and Bumble (liking ~10 profiles a day now instead of 100), while pretty much still swiping through my daily set of Bagels on CMB (liking ~7 profiles a day).

After a couple weeks, I looked at the results I got (number of matches) and decided to drop Bumble from the running for reasons I’ll explain later in the article. Now, only 2 apps remained: Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB).

I carried on swiping on the 2 apps for a few months.

First message

In an effort to be as efficient as possible, I thought of the most original lame joke I could, and assigned it to a keyboard shortcut on my iPhone. I would then send this message to every single one of my matches when we matched. The exception was if they had something that I found really cool on their profile, then I commented on that instead.

Vibe

I tried to keep the vibe of the text conversations fun and casual. It was usually a few get-to-know-you style questions mixed in with some banter. I also tried to get as much information as I could during these exchanges on 1) how cool they were and 2) their logistics situation—in as much of a non-creepy way as possible. The whole name of the game at this stage was to get the girl on the other side of the app comfortable enough with me to agree to meet.

Asking for the Date

After a few rounds of back and forth, I would start to hint at the idea of going out on a date. How much back and forth I needed to do depended completely on the individual match. Some were comfortable meeting within 3 exchanges, while others would seem to never want to hang. I also came up with a pretty lame-but-endearing way of asking them out, and stuck that onto another keyboard shortcut on my phone to save labor.

THE RESULTS

I’ll keep this section short and sweet, only showing the outcome of my online dating adventures. Check out the next section for a breakdown of these numbers and a short review of each dating app.

The Success Rates

Raw Data

BREAKDOWN OF EACH APP

Tinder

Tinder fared decently with a match rate of 6.53%. This was the lowest out of all 4 apps by far, but I still say “decently” because it’s still pretty good considering when I last used Tinder, I got something like a 1.50% match rate. Since then, I got better pictures, actually wrote a bio, and moved to Asia, where the competition is absolute garbage. I suspect the combination of these 3 things improved my chances to what they are now.

Anyway, from these matches, I got the phone number at an 11% rate, which was alright. But the real magic happened when trying to convert the numbers to dates. Almost half of the girls who gave me their numbers from Tinder eventually agreed to meet. This was the highest of the 4 apps by a mile.

I have this sneaking suspicion that the reason why girls on Tinder are more likely to meet is because they’re looking for hookups more than anything else. And when you’re on the lookout for hookups, you don’t screen your matches nearly as hard as when you’re looking for a relationship. This lowered bar was probably the main reason that more girls were more willing to meet with me (yay for low standards).

Coffee Meets Bagel

CMB felt like my secret weapon. With an astoundingly high match rate of 15.5%, I was in match heaven. From the matches I got, I number-closed 1 in 10, and slightly over a third of those numbers turned into dates. Pretty good odds considering the sheer volume of matches I was getting on the platform.

I think people are more willing to swipe right on CMB than the other platforms simply because the app limits the number of profiles you have access to in a day. Unlike Tinder or Bumble, where you have 100 right swipes and infinite left swipes a day, CMB only shows you 25 profiles. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.

Coffee Meets Bagel Success Rate 2020

Bumble

With Bumble, I got a match rate of 11%, got the phone number from my matches 18% of the time (about every 1 number for every 5 matches), and from those phone numbers, 3/10 of them turned into dates.

Bumble was weird. I was getting match after match the first 2 weeks I was on there. After that, nothing but crickets. It seems like Bumble gives a boost to their new users and promotes their profiles to more people during the first one or two weeks. But when this newbie boost ends, then you’re doomed to the bottom of the pile—unless you’re hot.

Hinge

Unfortunately, Hinge doesn’t have a large enough user base in the country I’m in. The sample size was too small to pull out any meaningful data from. However, when I was using Hinge in the past in countries with much larger user bases, I did experience a decent amount of success. In fact, more success than the other 3 apps at the time. So, definitely don’t count Hinge out if you’re swiping from the US/UK.

CONCLUSION

Coffee Meets Bagel Success Rate Chart

After 4+ months and over 15,000 swipes, I can safely say that the apps that yielded the best results for me were Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel. Bumble was great for the first week or two, but then completely flatlined. And there weren’t enough people on Hinge where I live for it to compete with the others.

I found that CMB gets you more matches, but girls from Tinder are more likely to want to meet. Also, the matches from Tinder seemed to primarily be looking for entertainment and not a serious relationship. The matches from CMB on the other hand, were mostly looking for serious relationships. Surprisingly, the matches I got from Bumble seemed more open to casual relationships. Less so than the Tinderinas, but more so than the CMB-ers.

This makes sense if you think about it. Apps like Tinder or Bumble let you choose from hundreds of profiles every day, and people looking for hookups will appreciate the wide selection. While people looking for something more concrete will appreciate the pseudo-commitment CMB is designed to offer by limiting the number of people you can interact with a day. This makes it more likely that you’ll talk to your already existing matches instead of just running off to find someone new the second you get bored.

So, which app(s) should you use? I’d personally recommend Tinder & Coffee Meets Bagel. Bumble falls off way too hard after a week if you aren’t gorgeous. And there’s no one on Hinge where I’m from. Also I should note, if your pictures aren’t great, then Tinder is going to be horrible for you too—speaking from experience. So if your photos are bad and you don’t want to take better ones, try CMB (and Hinge too, if you’re in the US/UK).

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