Read our updated Tips and Tricks for the Free Communication Weekend
The emails are out. It’s on TV. Every non-paying eHarmony registrant — 10 million of them — received the following email message:
Get to know your matches this weekend by communicating with them for FREE. Experience the excitement of discovering that the deeper you go, the more compatibility you will find.
Log in and start by sending your first set of questions to the matches you are interested in. You will be able to experience every step of the communication process free of charge until Sunday night. No credit card is required.
Hurry, Free Communication Weekend ends
Sunday, September 17th at midnight.Free Communication Weekend begins Friday, September 15th and ends Sunday, September 17th at 11:59pm PT.
So what does this mean for us subscribers?
For what it’s worth, I joined eHarmony to meet people who are compatible with me in so many deep levels. Does it matter if they don’t pay their membership? Not to me. Who do you want to meet: a paying member 300 miles away, or a nonpaying member in the same city?
Today until Sunday, eHarmony is attempting something new by holding an open-house free-for-all weekend. Anyone can touch base with anyone! If I were you, this weekend I’ll do everything I can to communicate with as many matches as possible. Here are some ideas I came up with this morning:
- Say in my profile that I am a paid member.
- Add a note to the profile that I look forward to answering/sending all questions this weekend because of the event.
- Add a note instructing matches to request FastTrack when they think they’re pressed for time. With FastTrack, the two of us can decide to explore the match outside eHarmony.
- Nudge everyone! Matches will see the “Free Communication” email alongside my nudge email.
- The idea is to invite communication, not eliminate. Send relatively easy 1st questions this weekend instead of tough ones like
- “What do you feel about premarital sex?”
- “If I had a bad day, what is the first thing you would do for me?” and
- the favourite of my matches: “When in a relationship, how much personal space do you generally find you need?”
- Respond first to those who started responding on Friday, Saturday or Sunday — they are probably those who are using this promotion. Remember, they only have ten active matches on their screens — and one is you!
- Respond promptly, respond early. Free Communication weekend ends on Sunday midnight PDT. I predict the eHarmony website will be slow on Sunday because of the additional web traffic.
- Have a throwaway email address ready to give out immediately to matches who request FastTrack or reach Open Communication. Remind them to jot it down elsewhere before the end of Sunday. Tell them that eHarmony will block access to your message after Sunday.
Well, these are just my thoughts. No one, not even eHarmony, knows if this Free Communication weekend will succeed. I bet some matches will take advantage of it and just give out email addresses. We’ll never know unless we try. The worst thing that could happen is that no one replies.
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