Lover.ly

Last updated
Dubblee Media, Inc.
IndustryBridal, technology, wedding planning
Founded New York City 2012
FounderKellee Khalil
Headquarters
United States
Key people
  • Kellee Khalil (Founder & CEO) [1]
  • Peggy Fry (COO and President) [2]
  • Meredith Howard (Chief Brand Officer) [3]
  • Rachel Sklar (advisor)
  • Jason Davis (advisor)
  • Jenny Lefcourt (advisor)
  • Alexandra Wilkis Wilson (Mentor, co-founder of Gilt) [4]
  • Joanne Wilson (board member) [2]
ProductsCurated bridal content and virtual wedding planner
Number of employees
13
Website lover.ly

Lover.ly is a virtual wedding planner and media platform that allows brides, grooms, and enthusiasts to discover wedding ideas, receive tips, purchase wedding products, evaluate whom to hire for their weddings, and share their findings. Their virtual wedding planning app uses AI and chat technology to service their customers. They have a database of editorial content that uses a proprietary tagging program to aggregate content from wedding blogs, wedding magazines, as well as retailers, brands and vendors, creating relevant searchable content. Lover.ly was launched in 2012 in New York City. [5] [6] [7] [8]

Contents

History

Kellee Khalil, the company's founder and chief executive officer, was inspired to design the wedding discovery engine after helping to plan her sister's wedding. Khalil says of the experience "I was 40 pages deep in a search on Google, then if I found what I wanted I'd drag it over to another page, then start e-mailing links. It was kind of a nightmare," she says. "And I figured, if it's this hard for me, what's a bride in Wisconsin who may be on a budget and has no sister to give up her life for 12 months to help going to do?" [5] [7] [8] Khalil officially launched Lover.ly on Valentine's Day of 2012. [5] [9]

Kellee moved to New York and launched Lover.ly with a mission to provide an all-in-one resource where couples could discover wedding ideas, shop designers, organize events details, and hire their wedding day team. [7] [9]

How it works

Lover.ly offers a searchable database of aggregated content from blogs, magazines, retailers, and brands, and provides wedding planning tips from its own wedding editorial experts. Once on Lover.ly, users can search by keyword, category, or color, and as of 2013, hundreds of thousands images were available to browse on the site. [10] As part of Lover.ly's commerce functionality, users can also purchase items that they discover. [9] [11]

During a 2013 interview in USA Today's Change Agent column, Khalil said that "the idea [of Lover.ly] is simply that your wedding binder lives in the cloud... I'm building this for my generation of brides. For us, it's all about the visual web, whether you're on a computer, tablet, or your phone." [7]

Retail partners

Lover.ly has partnered with retail brands such as Nordstrom, Minted, Etsy, and Anthropologie. [5] Through these partnerships, brands can raise awareness, syndication, and sales, while users can more easily access content and make purchases. [5] As of August 2013, Lover.ly has 250,000 shoppable products from 2,000 brands on site that appear alongside a collection of wedding related images. [12]

Monetization

Lover.ly utilizes four primary monetization methods.

Editorial blog network, native advertising, email, and events

Lover.ly works with its blog partners to implement monetized display sponsored content campaigns, allowing brands to reach a larger audience than traditionally possible. [5] As of December 2013, the company is testing category sponsorships and CPA (cost per acquisition) ad models. [12]

Lover.ly offers native advertising on its website, allowing brands to introduce their content to Lover.ly's audience in the context of Lover.ly's "inspiration made actionable" environment.[ citation needed ] [13]

In addition to display advertising and web traffic, Lover.ly utilizes email marketing campaigns to drive its monetization efforts. [5]

Lover.ly also partners with brands to reach brides, grooms and wedding attendees in offline environments. Lover.ly partnered with BaubleBar and executed a pop-up shop in SoHo and partnered with Donna Morgan to hold a secret soiree for industry insiders at the Ace Hotel. [14] [15]

Developments

In February 2012 Lover.ly raised $500,000 from Joanne Wilson, Michael Edwards, Michael Yavonditte, Charles Smith, Anu Duggal, Jordan Levy, and Rick Webb. [16]

In January 2013, Lover.ly unveiled a new version of its website and branding strategy. When asked about the overhaul, the company's CEO was quoted as saying that Lover.ly was "leaning towards becoming a lot more sophisticated, more modern and more tech-centric." [17]

In August 2013, Lover.ly launched a new "Popular" tab which lets users see exactly what's trending on the site in real time, giving brides and grooms a new way to uncover content. [18]

In 2013 Lover.ly released an updated iOS7 application in an effort to further optimize the platform given that 30 percent of the company’s overall traffic, and 60 percent of its total engagement, happens in its mobile app. [12] As of December 2013, the iPhone application had garnered 75,000 downloads. [18]

In 2016 Loverly launched the first ever virtual wedding planning iOS application offering couples a wedding concierge service. [19] Through the Loverly Weddings app, couples can plan their wedding by chatting with a Loverly wedding concierge in Loverly HQ. Wedding planning packages start at a flat fee of $49. [20]

See also

Related Research Articles

Dotdash Meredith is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, home, food, finance, tech, beauty, lifestyle, travel, and education. It operates brands including Verywell, Investopedia, People, The Balance, Byrdie, MyDomaine, Brides, The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Liquor.com, Lifewire, TripSavvy, TreeHugger, and ThoughtCo. In August 2012, About.com became a property of IAC, owner of Ask.com and numerous other online brands, and its revenue is generated by advertising. In addition to its Manhattan headquarters, Dotdash Meredith maintains offices elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area, as well as in Des Moines, Iowa, and Birmingham, Alabama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plex Inc.</span> Streaming media service

Plex is a network for streaming that provides free ad-supported shows and movies to users worldwide, and allows them to discuss and discover content across all major subscription streaming services. Plex also provides a media server software and series of apps that allows users to stream their personal media collections from their home to their various devices. In 2019, Plex launched an ad-supported streaming service of movies, television shows and music that is accessible from its applications. Plex Inc. is based in Campbell, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitly</span> American link management platform

Bitly is a URL shortening service and a link management platform. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, and email. Bitly makes money by charging for access to aggregate data created as a result of many people using the shortened URLs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SoundCloud</span> German audio streaming service

SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming services in the world and is available in 190 countries and territories. The service has more than 76 million active monthly users and over 200 million audio tracks as of November 2021. SoundCloud offers both free and paid memberships on the platform, available for mobile, desktop and Xbox devices. SoundCloud has evolved from a traditional online streaming platform to an entertainment company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instagram</span> Social media platform owned by Meta Platforms

Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social networking service, available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 25 languages including English, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinterest</span> American photo sharing and saving website

Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information like recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the internet using images and, on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards. The site was created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp and it is operated by now Pinterest, Inc., and headquartered in San Francisco.

Viber, or Rakuten Viber, is a cross-platform voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) software application owned by Japanese multinational company Rakuten, provided as freeware for the Google Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS and Linux platforms. Users are registered and identified through a cellular telephone number, although the service is accessible on desktop platforms without needing mobile connectivity. In addition to instant messaging it allows users to exchange media such as images and video records, and also provides a paid international landline and mobile calling service called Viber Out. As of 2018, there are over a billion registered users on the network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shopkick</span> American shopping app company

Shopkick is an American company based in Denver that created a shopping app for smartphones and tablets offering users rewards for shopping activities on both online and offline platforms such as walking into stores, scanning items, making in-app or in-store purchases and submitting receipts. Users are awarded "kicks" for these actions, and can exchange them for rewards in the form of mobile gift cards. The app is currently available for iOS and Android devices.

Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users' "Stories" of 24 hours of chronological content, along with "Discover", letting brands show ad-supported short-form content. It also allows users to store photos in a password-protected area called "my eyes only". It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use in the future.

140 Proof is an advertising company that uses social data from many sources in targeting relevant ads based on consumers' interests as indicated by their social activity across networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News360</span> Personalized news aggregation app for smartphones, tablets and the web

News360 was a personalized news aggregation app for smartphones, tablets and the web. It attempted to learn a user's interests by analyzing their interaction with news stories on the app and using semantic analysis and natural language processing to create an Interest Graph and construct a unique feed of relevant content for each user. The app claims an audience of more than 4 million users.

Wanelo is an e-commerce company headquartered in San Francisco’s SoMa district. It was founded in 2012 by Deena Varshavskaya.

Swell Radio was a mobile radio streaming application that learned user listening preferences based on listening behavior, community filtering, and a proprietary algorithm. Originally designed for use while commuting to and from work, the service focused on delivering spoken-word audio content to users. Major streaming partners included ABC News Radio, NPR, PRI, and TED

Giphy, styled as GIPHY, is an American online database and search engine that allows users to search for and share animated GIF files.

Flurry is an American mobile analytics, monetization, and advertising company founded in 2005. The company develops and markets a platform for analyzing consumer interactions with mobile applications, packages for marketers to advertise in-apps, as well as a service for applying monetization structures to mobile apps. Flurry analyzes 150 billion app sessions per month. The company's analytics platform tracks application sessions in iOS, Android, HTML5, and JavaME platforms. Flurry has raised a total of $65 million in funding since its founding and in March 2014 announced that it would partner with Research Now to create a panel database on mobile users. Flurry was acquired by Yahoo! on July 21, 2014 for somewhere between $200 and $300 million.

This is a timeline of Pinterest, an Internet service that serves as a "visual discovery tool", as well as the eponymous company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SportsHero</span>

SportsHero is a real-time fantasy sports app and social prediction platform. Within the app, users make predictions on match, game, competition results. These users are ranked based on information provided by other fans and experts in the community, as well as real-time news and statistics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gogobot</span> Online travel service

Gogobot was an online travel business headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company was rebranded Trip.com in November 2016 and acquired by the Ctrip Group in 2017. Founded in 2010, by Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman, by 2014 the company was the fifth most visited travel-planning site in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spotify Live</span> Defunct social audio service

Spotify Live, formerly Spotify Greenroom, was a social audio app by Spotify, that allowed users to host or participate in live-audio virtual environments called "room" for conversations. Each room had a maximum capacity of 1000 people. The app was available on Android and iOS, competing with Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse in the social media segment. Regrettably, it was shut down on April 30, 2023.

References

  1. ↑ "Wedding-Focused Portal Lover.ly Adds E-Commerce Vet Bob Schwartz as Chairman". allthingsd. November 5, 2013. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  2. 1 2 Jordan Crook (31 July 2014). "Wedding Startup Loverly Hires Peggy Fry As President, Joanne Wilson Joins The Board". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 27, 2014.
  3. ↑ Casserly, Meghan. "Loverly CEO Bets On DailyCandy Alum Meredith Howard To Lead Branding". Forbes.
  4. ↑ "This Is Your One-Stop Shop for Wedding Planning". Mashable. September 10, 2013. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Lover.ly Founder Kellee Khalil On Being A Newlywed… With Her Brand Partners". TechCrunch. 22 June 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  6. ↑ "Lover.ly". BetaBeat. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Marco della Cava (August 11, 2013). "Change Agents: Kellee Khalil has Loverly wedding ideas". USA Today. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
  8. 1 2 Adrian Granzella Larssen. "Weddings, Redefined: A Q&A With Lover.ly's Kellee Khalil". The Muse Daily. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
  9. 1 2 3 Michael Carney. "Lover.ly adds shopping to its wedding visual search engine". Pando Daily. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  10. ↑ Alissa Skelton (18 April 2012). "Lover.ly Makes Wedding Planning Simple". Mashable. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  11. ↑ "Wedding Wednesdays from Lover.ly!". The Post. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  12. 1 2 3 Michael Carney (August 30, 2013). "Loverly's updated mobile app brings wedding commerce to users on the go". Pando Daily. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  13. ↑ "A Loverly Gal: Kellee Khalil". Tulle Weddings. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  14. ↑ "THIS WEEKEND: LOVERLY BRIDAL BAZAAR AT BAUBLEBAR SOHO". Merci New York. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  15. ↑ "La La Anthony Parties With TROPIX In NYC". US Magazine. 16 October 2013. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Lover.ly Raises $500K To Be An Online, Visual Inspiration Engine For Weddings". TechCrunch. 14 February 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  17. ↑ Sarah Perez (28 January 2013). "Weddings Startup Lover.ly Scores Content And Ad Deal With Real Simple, Prepares Website Relaunch And New Mobile Apps". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  18. 1 2 Jordan Crook (August 12, 2013). "Loverly Launches New Features To Help Brides Obsess Over Their Big Day". TechCrunch. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  19. ↑ techcrunch.com/2016/03/22/loverly-raises-2-million-more-to-put-a-wedding-planner-in-your-pocket/
  20. ↑ "The I do Crew by Loverly - Join Today for $78".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.