Data is the lifeblood of many businesses. For our business at Inner Architect , it has been the linchpin of our strategy, growth, and expansion. The following article was first published on our Inner Architect blog as a warning to all marketers that social data was about to become inaccessible.
Note: The availability to purchase automated social network (url) addresses for your marketing database of consumers is available until December 31, 2011. Nothing is certain as to the status of this information in 2011.
The recent lawsuit leveled by a Virginia woman against Facebook, RapLeaf, and Zynga, along with a spate of other reported lawsuits in waiting, have created a sea change in the way social data can be used, bought, and sold by marketers. RapLeaf, the largest social data provider, has been banned from mining social data on Facebook. This denial of access by Facebook has opened the flood gates for other social networks to put a stop to the practice of selling social data.
Appending Social Data to Your Database
Before Facebook’s decision to pull the plug, companies were able to purchase social media url addresses for their customers list(s) with only an email address as input information. For pennies on the dollar, marketing departments could receive automated lists that included:
- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn customer urls
- Demographic information
- Full name
Value of Social Database Enrichment
There is huge value in being able to identify and append social network urls and demographic information to a marketing database. The key benefits:
- Preferences: understand your customer’s communication preferences
- Channels: identify new direct marketing channels your customers participate within
- Segmentation: companies can create segmented campaigns within social channels like Twitter and Facebook
- List Fatigue: social media campaigns will reduce the “fatigue” placed on the overused email channel
- Reactivatation: reactivate old customers using social network channels
- Customer Lifetime Value: measure the value of each customer of the life of his/her relationship with a company
- Channel Lifetime Value: measure the dollar value of Twitter, Facebook and other social networks vs. the traditional direct marketing channels of postal, telephone, and email
What Happens Next?
Until December 31, 2010 one social data provider is still selling information for companies to append to their databases. Beginning in 2011, companies will not have sources in which they can receive automated lists of social data. The cost to manually harvest data will be very high if available at all. In essence the ability for companies to truly align with their customer’s communication preferences and create one on one engagement will be significantly hindered.
Courtesy 
Social media marketing has become a bridge to consumers with companies all over the world. Target uses Facebook to “crowdsource” ideas for where they should donate their charitable contributions. Dell crowdsources their audience on 
