July 20, 2010

Mailing list companies and direct marketers have always practiced the art of data appending to create better, more personal lists. 

The idea is to take a list with basic contact data and add details acquired from other data sources, such as magazine subscriptions, association membership and even specific purchasing behavior. The end result is a list with a much richer level of information that allows the mailer to personalize offers and communications based on this greater level of personal information.

In today’s socially driven world, marketers are also able to append lists with data given and acquired freely in social networks. Now, adding a customer’s Facebook or Twitter data has become a smart and powerful way to create more relevant offers and socially driven customer relationship management.

Some companies still claim that their customers and prospects don't use social media. I doubt that's true these days for any industry. But this is sure a great way to know for certain.

In addition, this kind of information makes it much easier to identify your advocates and champions -- the ones that are out there spreading the word in social channels and who might be really good candidates for you to target for special attention.

While you can probably search and find the most important social data available for, say, your top 25 clients, adding social data to a list of 1000 prospects could prove a bit tougher.

All kinds of services and tools are evolving to tackle this growing need. Below are several tools that small businesses can use to add social information to their contact records.

1. Flowtown – All you need is an email address to get social data on a contact.

2. RapLeaf – This tool started as a monitoring tool and now offers full appending.

3. Xeesm – A bit more comprehensive search lots of networks and creates a Social Address Book.

4. BatchBook – Full featured online CRM tool was one of the first to bake social appending into the mix.

5. ACT!2010 – The simple desktop CRM allows you to add social data right into records. 

6. Outlook 2010 – With the addition of something called the Outlook Social Connector you can add social data to Outlook.

7. Xobni – A popular Outlook plugin that brings social CRM functionality to Outlook.

8. Rapportive – Social CRM built into GMail.

9. SocialCRM for Salesforce – Add on to Salesforce.com to bring social data into records.

10. Twitter Export – Export all of your Twitter followers and then add them to tools above.

John Jantsch is a marketing coach, award winning social media publisher and author of two best selling books, Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine.

Join the conversation ( 8 )

• Di Chapman 1 year 6 months and 9 days ago

  

  Thanks for bringing us "late adopters" into the know! I still have to work very hard at understanding all that social media has to offer .... and mastering the "mechanics" of them still challenges me - but with advice like yours, I'm getting there!

• Mary Conley Eggert 1 year 6 months and 9 days ago

  

  Thanks, John!... Susan Cato of CompTIA had turned me on to Flowtown, and it's pretty incredible in its ability to show where your clients are congregating online. Instantly answers the question: "Are my customers on XXXX?" I can't wait to check out these other resources. A good weekend project. Thanks again for collecting!

• Mary Conley Eggert 1 year 6 months and 9 days ago

  

  Thanks, John!... Susan Cato of compTIA had turned me on to Flowtown, and it's pretty incredible in its ability to show where your clients are congregating online. Instantly answers the question: "Are my customers on XXXX?" I can't wait to check out these other resources. A good weekend project. Thanks again for collecting!

• Yonsal Ltd 1 year 6 months and 10 days ago

  

  Hey Jhon you are rock. I am not aware of this area but after reading your article I am really very happy. I try Gist, Flowtown and twitterexport and found them very helpful in the growth of my by business.
  

• John Jantsch 1 year 6 months and 10 days ago

  

  @Katherine I'll look at Etacts thanks
  
  @Phil and Tyson - I do use Gist, just not much and I'll look at the hub product, looks interesting.

• Tyson Goodridge 1 year 6 months and 11 days ago

  

  Hey John- as always- providing value here. Have heard of Gist (decent) and Awareness Networks' new social marketing hub is great. Anyone interested in FourSquare should look into Awareness' new "perspectives"- gives instant data on checkins/users, etc...
  
  Tyson
  @goodridge

• Phil Lauterjung 1 year 6 months and 11 days ago

  

  Hey John, another great post. One more tool to add is Gist (www.gist.com), can be used as a stand alone app or also an Outlook plug in. I've been using it for a while and it works really well.

• Katherine Melick 1 year 6 months and 11 days ago

  

  Thanks! I use Etacts to connect to my Gmail