, was Director of Social Media Consulting at Lyris Technologies in Emeryville, Ca., she now is an independent Social Media Consultant.If I was a marketing director for a consumer brand, one of my primary objectives for 2011 would be to capture the email addresses of my Facebook fans and bring that data into my customer database. Believe it or not, Facebook is in a prime position to mediate your customer data and customer relationships.
During the last two years, brands have driven their customers to “Fan" or "Like” their Facebook pages. They measure success through metrics such as: percent growth of Facebook fans, number of comments, posts, shares, etc. Some companies have even ventured to understand the value of a fan.
However, as Tim Berners-Lee argued in a recent Scientific American article, "Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web", and he warned that, "If we, the Web's users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands."
In other words, social networks such as Facebook have collected a tremendous amount of consumer data that is only accessible within their walled garden. This begs the question: What if Facebook decides to monetize its massive collection of data? Who owns the data on Facebook? While Berners-Lee's statement was directed at Web users in general, marketers specifically need to consider the impact if Facebook restricts the use of fan data.
How many marketers with a Facebook page have created a link between their customer email lists and their fan base? Not many. How many marketers know the match rate between their Facebook fans and their email database? Match rates can vary, but based on work I did earlier this year, the match is usually around 30 to 50 percent.
A New Year’s resolution for marketers should be to connect their Facebook fans to their customer database. Tactics may include expanding email preference centers to include social preferences such as Facebook email address and "I am a Fan on Facebook", or creating social applications that encourage fans to add their email addresses.
Facebook contests require fans to enter an email address in order to qualify or submit entries. The Nike Women’s "Get Fit" tab on Facebook is a more elegant approach to acquiring email addresses. “Ask Marie Your Fitness Questions” encourages fans to input questions about training, and the trainer will reply to those questions. In order to submit a question, a fan must input an email address; however the answer to the question is posted on Facebook.
It’s not clear whether Nike uses the email addresses collected for marketing purposes - I submitted a question and never received an email from Nike, nor did they disclose the purpose of collecting my address.
However, marketers must always be transparent about the purpose of collecting personal data. A Facebook “Like” is not exempt from CAN-SPAM regulations if the address acquired is to be used for future commercial email communications. It's simply not worth the risk of high spam complaints, being blocked by internet service providers (ISPs), and potentially damaging your online reputation.
Acquiring the email addresses of your Facebook fans is a critical component to the future of one-to-one marketing. Marketers would be wise to begin laying the groundwork to acquire all email addresses of their Facebook fans, before Facebook decides to monetize its rich data and charge for interactions with your fans. An email marketing goal in 2011 should be to match the Facebook member ID or Facebook email address to the email address and enrich your data with social attributes.
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