Will Social MDM be the New Spam?

Jun 13, 2012 by Jim Harris in Master Data Management

In my previous post, I briefly examined what I see as the three biggest challenges for Social MDM (Identity, Relevancy, and Privacy) from the perspective of organizations looking to integrate social media data into their master data management (MDM) implementations. In this post, I want to shift the perspective to how customers of these organizations will perceive Social MDM.

As I noted in my previous post, perhaps the only reliable way to overcome the identity and privacy challenges would be to have customers opt into Social MDM by providing the organization with their social media profiles while accepting the terms of a privacy policy.

The most common business case for Social MDM is to enable the organization to perform social media marketing, such as analyzing customer sentiment and contacting customers with promotional offers. This is essentially the same business case as e-mail marketing (with sentiment analysis done via e-mails to participate in on-line surveys).

However, e-mail marketing could hide behind a non-marketing customer value proposition – electronic billing. Many customers were willing to provide organizations with an e-mail address in order to switch over from paper billing. Most of these customers would then opt out of e-mail marketing after receiving the first promotional offer. And with the prevalence of spam, most people decline to provide an e-mail address to any organization with which they have no customer relationship.

Why would a customer want to provide their social media profiles to an organization?

From my perspective, there is no non-marketing customer value proposition with Social MDM. I assume that no one wants their bill sent to their Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn account. I also assume that no one wants to contact customer service (another non-marketing customer value proposition for e-mail) via social media since I don’t consider complaining about a company, product, or service on Twitter or Facebook an attempt to open a customer service support ticket.

If all it does, from the customer perspective, is enable organizations to use social media to send promotional offers, doesn’t that just mean that Social MDM will be the New Spam?

What Say You?

Would you opt into Social MDM? Would you provide your social media profiles to organizations?

Please Note: I am not asking about online services (e.g., iHeartRadio) that allow you to sign up using your Facebook account. I am asking about, for lack of a better term, traditional service providers, such as banks, insurance companies, credit card companies, brick-and-mortar retail stores, etc.

Read this related Jim Harris blog post: How Social can MDM get?

Tags: Facebook, Master Data Management, social MDM, social media, Twitter

8 Responses to “Will Social MDM be the New Spam?”

Marcelo V Silva

Jun 13, 2012

Jim,

I don´t understand when you say that you “assume that no one wants to contact customer service via social media”. Twitter is an excellent place to have very quick customer service as I´ve already proved it when getting some information about problems in my Samsung Android Smartphone. Many intelligent companies are creating twitter customer service that act much faster with our doubts than normal e-mail.

Reply to this comment
- Jim Harris
  
  Jun 13, 2012
  
  Thanks for your comment, Marcelo.
  
  I agree with your example, but I do not consider mobile phones, as I noted at the end of my post, for lack of a better term, to be an example of a “traditional service provider.”
  
  So, yes, I too might use Twitter for quick customer service from my mobile phone provider, as long as I didn’t start getting promotional DM messages from them (which, of course, I could avoid by not following them).
  
  But when I think of the types of companies that are looking to implement Social MDM, I think of traditional service providers, such as banks, insurance companies, and credit card companies, from which I would not want customer service via social media, nor would I want them tracking my social media activity, since the primary reason they want to is not to provide customer service, but instead to target me with advertising. That is the scenario I fear will turn Social MDM into the New Spam.
  
  Best Regards,
  
  Jim
  
  Reply to this comment
Jean-Michel Franco

Jun 13, 2012

A key topic covered there, Jim. The web is moving towards conversations and personalization, and this makes the case for identity management as a core element of digital marketing. For example, when I connect to amazon.com, the first thing I see in “Hello, Mr Franco”, and the fact that I’m recognized provides some benefits, both for the customer and the retailer . This opens of lot of use case that mix interactions and transactions, including for customer service.
But managing identity is a huge responsability for a company (see the multiple story of hacked sites from Linkedin to Sony), so using social sign-ons as a way to manage personalized on line interactions is a good solution because then you delegate some tough security issues to the Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter…, while still getting the benefits of personalization.
But as you mention, this can be a double edged sword depending on the use case . For example, I’m somewhat happy that Amazon makes recommendation when I need to find an idea of gift for my daughter. But I’m annoyed when I receive in my box a mail suggesting to buy the books that correspond to the keywords she used while searching on the web on my iPad (taht just happened to me today). In the latter case, this makes me nervous because not only this is unsolicited, like spam, but also very intrusive and irrespective of privacy. By doing such thinks, I feel that amazon is hurting itself because it is diminishing the trust I have with them as a customer.
Last thing : you mentioned in a previous article that it is difficult to find the real identity behind a twitter account. This is in fact one of the reason why I personnally prefer to provide opt in through my twitter account that for others, like Google not to mention Facebook. Because twitter shares very few things with the third party who request for the opt in. Therefore, if the provider wants to know more things about me, he has to ask explicitely.

Reply to this comment
- Jim Harris
  
  Jun 13, 2012
  
  Thanks for your comment, Jean-Michel.
  
  As always, you make several excellent points.
  
  Digitally-native (born and based on the web) companies like Amazon.com have a significant identity management advantage over their non-digitally-native competitors (brick-and-mortar retail stores in Amazon’s case).
  
  Amazon and other e-commerce companies also have a significant master data management advantage, since their customer master data is validated by the online credit card transaction used to establish an account, and is likewise re-validated with every subsequent transaction.
  
  Also, unlike Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, Amazon actually has customers and not just users. For the most part, companies like Google don’t care about customers in the MDM sense, which makes identity management less important to them, because their primary revenue model is based on selling advertising by anonymizing and aggregating their users’ demographic data.
  
  Personalization to Google is making sure that you as a user (not a customer) are assigned to the right demographic buckets (combined with, as you mentioned in your Amazon example, keyword matching while using a Google service such as Gmail), so that you are targeted with relevant ads paid for by Google’s real customers — the companies buying advertising.
  
  As you noted, a personalized customer experience (i.e., the “market of one” buzz-phrase of digital marketing) often comes at the expense of sacrificing privacy, since in order to be truly personalized, you have to be comfortable with sharing a lot of your personal data. It is indeed a double-edged sword, which might make many customers realize that they really don’t have that big of a need for a personal sword (i.e., a personalized customer experience).
  
  In closing, I obviously agree that the web is moving toward conversations and personalization, which is why it is understandable that companies, vendors, analysts, and consultants are discussing concepts such as Social MDM. However, the fundamental challenge is that people want to have conversations and get personal with other people, not companies.
  
  Best Regards,
  
  Jim
  
  Reply to this comment
Loop Withers

Jun 14, 2012

Jim, Phil Simon re-Tweeted your article. I clicked the link and read it and benefited from the information you give, having previously not known of this site.

This to me is the only perfect ‘choice-led’ relationship.

Notwithstanding the many good arguments mentioned in the comments above, one can see that any attempt by a marketing department to pervert this ‘pure’ linkage between you and I would result in a train crash of epic proportions.

As Phil might say, you, Jim are the rail-tapper who is caring for the line between platforms, for the benefit and safety of the user.

(actually, he probably wouldn’t say that but you know what I mean…)

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Shelly Lucas

Jun 14, 2012

Jim,

I certainly hope Social MDM won’t become the new spam. Social data privacy is a valid and very real concern, and your suggestion of requiring customers to opt in when sharing social information sounds like a viable solution.

Setting aside technical definitions for a moment, let’s think about spam from a loose psychological perspective. Something isn’t “spam” (it’s acceptable to me, as a customer/prospect) if it’s something I care about. Relevance is my quick and dirty “spam” filter.

Which brings me to your blog’s parting question…When would I share my social profile with a brand? If I expect to receive relevant content or VIP access to something that matters to me. What makes social media data gold to sales, marketing, and customer service pros is the ability to enrich CRM profiles so that they have a good idea what customers/prospects/influencers care about. Ideally, this data wouldn’t be used to blast product-centric promotions, but to personalize content according to the preferences of the person receiving it.

Believe it or not, 60+% of Millennials are willing to share more information about themselves with trusted brands for more relevant content (Edelman/StrategyOne); they define their own personal brand by aligning with brands they favor. What about other motivations for sharing social profiles with businesses? Here are a few:
• Affiliation – connecting with a company whose values mirror my own; brand advocacy
• Helping others – sharing expertise, solving problems
• Product involvement – shaping product development
• Online community participation – discussion forums, customer peer support

Shelly Lucas
Senior Marketing Manager
Dun & Bradstreet

Reply to this comment
Shelly Lucas

Jun 14, 2012

It’s also important to remember that social data has value beyond “pushing” promotional material and/or sales pitches. It’s also fertile ground for conversations (just as social platforms are themselves). This includes customer service; I can testify to the fact that more and more customers use social media to obtain assistance or receive answers from vendors…and their expectations for “social” customer service are climbing. According to Conversocial, 30% of customers expect companies to reply to social media messages within hours; 16.6% expect a response in less than 10 minutes. Given that 55% of consumers call their customer service experience via social media “disappointing” or “mediocre” (you’d be surprised how many vendors ignore these requests), I’d be willing to bet that some customers would share their social data if it would grant them VIP customer service.

Shelly Lucas
Senior Marketing Manager
Dun & Bradstreet

Reply to this comment
- Jim Harris
  
  Jun 15, 2012
  
  Thanks for your comments, Shelly.
  
  You make excellent counterpoints to my spam concerns by emphasizing the positive potential of Social MDM.
  
  Many of the companies guilty of exploiting social channels for pushing promotional material are not interested in conversations or customer service. Of course, part of the reason for this is that the marketing department of these companies are the ones driving social initiatives, and historically marketing has been a bullhorn for sales pitches, and not a customer service or customer advocacy function.
  
  Therefore, companies looking to launch successful Social MDM initiatives, would be wise to focus on non-marketing customer value propositions, such as you noted, sharing relevant information and offering VIP customer service.
  
  Of course, some industries and brands are more suited to social media engagement than others, which is why some attempts at Social MDM would likely be perceived as spam even with the best of intentions — and especially without first receiving permission via an opt in initiated by the customer and not automatically initiated by the company. And a quick, easy, and comprehensive opt out also has to be provided.
  
  But my fear is that Social MDM initiatives will follow the old adage “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission”, which is exactly what earned e-mail marketing its spumy reputation.
  
  Best Regards,
  
  Jim
  
  Reply to this comment