Customer service integral to what differentiates M4marry: Smitha Vasudevan
Vasudevan, GM of the matrimonial website M4Marry by Malayala Manorama, talks about its organic growth, legacy of its mother brand, festive offerings and more
“We will be focusing on consolidating our presence in the other Southern market for one year for sure. And hopefully, thereafter we should be able to take on all markets,” said Smitha Vasudevan, GM, M4marry in a conversation with exchange4media.
M4Marry is the matrimonial website from Malayala Manorama and it is focused on matchmaking for South Indians. Originally launched just for the Keralite community, the website has now expanded further to every South Indian state and people across the globe can use it to find their partners within their preferred communities.
“In 2009, we launched M4Marry for Malayalis alone. We were only targeting one community at that point in time. From this space, we grew organically. When we started the matrimonial website in 2009, there was a lot of scepticism, especially among parents. We used to do a lot of hand-holding and we said a lot of parents actually went into digital because of M4marry matrimonial website. Infact, one of the first things that we did was to have a very robust customer care team. They used to demystify the entire digital experience. So that has gone into the brand’s DNA. Customer service is the integral part of what differentiates M4marry," said Smitha.
Since Malayala Manorama already built a user base through its matrimonial page in their newspapers, for M4marry it was about growing that base further and using digital as the platform to do it. “So we’ve taken a lot in terms of the legacy, in terms of building trust, because we are the biggest media house. So there is a lot of trust in the brand, but the trust has to be earned. At M4Marry we knew the journey would be a little longer, because we do not tag Malayala Manorama there. However, the brand value has always been built with the mother brand.
"We’ve done a lot of print in terms of marketing because that is our core strength. We used television through all the channels of Malayala Manorama. We use digital, and we use a lot of direct customer interaction. And when I’m thinking about customer interactions, this is the 15th year that we are operating in a core market like Kerala where we have market leadership. Yes, we do close to 600 plus customer interactions in a year.”
Smitha spoke about the recent campaigns done by M4marry as part of Onam. They recreated a royal wedding with a M4Marry couple during the first day of Onam, in the famous Athachamayam procession in Thripunithura, Kochi. “Wherever possible, we bring our own people there because we believe there is no better endorsement than people who have been matched to marry on M4Marry and want to give back.”
Speaking about the upcoming festive season plans, Smitha said, “Because we’ve expanded into the other southern states, we are there for the Tamil, Kannada and Telugu audiences as well. So the two major features that we released on M4Marry are the festive photo and the festive shots option. So all the profiles can add their festive photographs, as well as have a festival celebrating video shots added on the profile. This is very unique.
We had 1000s of people who added their festive photos and their festive shots for Onam in Kerala. For the other states, we will have the festive features released along with this this. The next focus state for us is Tamil Nadu. We will soon start digital as well as television campaigns very soon. We also have the print campaign already on for Tamil Nadu.”
Smitha also explained the entire premium services process of M4Marry. “When we started off, there were two types of services on M4Marry. One is what you call the self service option, where you use a website and we have external matchmaking tools and it's very easy for you to use and marry on your own. The others are what we call the assisted packages, one is the Active Plus as well as the Royal. These are assisted packages, where you have very trained, experienced M4marry personnel, helping you connect with your prospects of partners and families, and then do the matchmaking for you.
When we started off, this is one of the services that only few people used. For example, maybe NRI, who are on a different timezone altogether, or they were extremely busy, so they were finding it difficult to conduct the matchmaking on their own. So, this is restricted to those users. Now, if you look at the amount of people who use the service now, I say around 20 to 23 percentage of the people now use any one of these, either the Actual Plus or the Royal. So from a handful, now this has become around a quarter of our entire sales.”
Lastly, speaking about future tool developments and innovations for the website, Smitha says that M4marry is trying to grasp the dynamic nature of its users and build tools for capturing that on the platform. “What we are looking for is to create tools to capture this diversity, capture what is unique about you, and to showcase who you are, what you like to do and what your family is. So this is what we are planning to do.”
