Whose On Your Email List? Flowtown Will Tell You.
You've got hundreds, even thousands of emails on your mailing list. But who are they?
Many email programs use ISP addresses to pinpoint with some accuracy the email address owners location to about the zip code level. But Flowtown goes farther. The new service trolls the web and can often also find out the name, age, gender, occupation and all the social networks of the fans that signed up for your email list.
It all sounds a little bit like invasion of privacy until you remember that every bit of information that Flowtown gathers was knowingly posted by the user on the social web. The result can be much more targeted marketing, engagement and retention campaigns; for example emailing details of a Twitter campaign only to fans who already use the service.
Watch a demo video:
Sorry. I need to go grammar Nazi on this post.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/who%27s.html
“Who’s on your e-mail list” is a contraction of “Who is on your e-mail list”.
If you wanted to use the word “whose”, it would need to be phrase “On whose e-mail list are you”, which is different meaning altogether.
Sorry, it’s still an invasion of privacy from the end user’s point of view. See Danah Boyd’s recent talk: “Just because something is publicly accessible does not mean that people want it to be publicized. Making something that is public more public is a violation of privacy.”
http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html
This makes me feel icky. This is the opposite of permission marketing. Bands, brands, etc should just ask for this info up front or not at all. This is secretive, sneaky market research that the consumer never OK’d.
@Jeremy, you’re right to quote Danah – it’s irrelevant if this information out there. The whole key is getting permission which Flowtown isn’t doing.
Bruce, Thanks for the post.
In regards to the privacy issue – what we provide is nothing more than multiple google searches done more efficiently. Our goal is not to compromise anyones privacy, and we do offer a global opt-out for those who don’t wish have their information shared.
Our goal is to help companies engage with their customers and so far that’s been the result.
Were very sensitive to this issue and will continue to evaluate how we surface this.
Thanks for your comments.
Dan
Co-Founder
@danmartell
If you went around asking people to sign up for your email list with a big disclaimer up top saying “YOUR INFORMATION WILL BE USED TO COLLECT ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU” I’m willing to be you’d watch your signup rate take a nose dive.
Then again, you can get people to do just about anything in a bar at 2 am.
^im not sure how I feel about this…as a marketer, very dope. As a user/fan…kinda feel violated.