As marketers we love data.  We love collecting more and more information about our customers.  We spend an awful amount of time prying pieces of information like first name, last name, date of birth, gender, household income, email address, physical address and cell phone number to build our customer “database.”  I’ve been in meetings where we’ve touted that we now have X million email signups for our loyalty program, players club or recipe newsletter.  That’s great in theory.  I mean who doesn’t want more “hand raisers” or doesn’t want to tell their boss we increased our membership by X %?

The problem is, the theory is wrong.  If you have 10,000,000 members, but only 2,000,000 are active, you have a problem.  If you’re simply collecting, or rather harvesting, names and information you’re missing 90% of the battle.  To win, you need to actually act on those names and that data.  You need to test, learn and retest.  You need to be honest with yourself about your data and admit that when only 20% of your membership database is active, you have a serious problem.  Unfortunately, activating generally costs more than harvesting and we still love to report that we’re increasing the size of our lists.  This is why marketers are happy to harvest names, but squeamish about activating against those names.

Taking this a step further, we’ve become obsessed with “followers” on twitter and “likes” on Facebook.  We report on the number of followers and likes – we believe that more is better than less.  I mean think about it, who doesn’t want more people to “like” their brand?  We run contests and promotions to drive those likes up and up and up.  But, why?  What are you doing with your army of likes and followers?  Are you simply carpet bombing them with mass messaging?  I know many of you are, and isn’t that missing the point?  Wasn’t the point of social that we could be a little more real, authentic and personable?  Wasn’t social supposed to make CRM what CRM was really supposed to be about: relationships?  If that’s the case, why are we spending so much time on harvesting instead of activating?

I think the crux of the issue is that when you have 16,000,000 likes, like Starbucks does can you scale the concept of relationships?  Of course not. It’s simply too expensive to build a relationship and maintain it, for 16,000,000 people.  So instead, we focus on growing the number of likes from 16,000,000 to 20,000,000…because it’s easier.  But, is it a better use of time?  I don’t think so.  Maybe we should be more selective as marketers and opt to focus on smaller higher quality “lists.”  Certainly, it allows us to place the “R” in CRM front in center.  It enables us to activate against people who are actually valuable.

What if the hurdle to join was so high that it ensured only the most valuable, important and relevant people could jump over? We see this approach more and more in how online job application systems work.  By making it more difficult and time consuming to submit your application, the company gets only the passionate and in theory the most desirable candidates.

As marketers, I think we can learn from this approach.  It’s not about harvesting just to harvest.  It’s about harvesting so you can actually turn what you’ve harvested into something valuable…

Every day we trade our personal information for something. Our grocery “loyalty” cards provide companies access to our purchase behavior. The email newsletter from All Recipes gets your name, email address, physical address, and cooking habits. Heck when you buy dinner with a credit card you’re trading away your personal information.

Companies want more of your information. They’ve always wanted more of your information. More data and better data leads to smarter business decisions, more precise targeting, and of course a better return on investment. Simply put, without your data, companies would be guessing about who’s buying, what they’re buying, and would be blindly guessing about where to put their money. Come to think of it, aren’t lots of companies doing that right now

But seriously, you are valuable. Well, actually, your data is valuable. As budgets shrink and accountability rises your data becomes even more valuable. If something is valuable, it often means it’s worth paying for. Which begs the question, at what point will we be able to trade our information like commodity or stock exchange?

At the iMedia Agency Summit in Austin, Texas a gentleman from Blue Kai speculated that in the near future you’ll be able to trade your personal information for a trip to Hawaii. The term personal information is loose. You won’t be trading basic information like name, date of birth, and email address for that trip. Nope, you’ll be trading information about where you ate, what you saw, what you bought, why you bought, how many fruity drinks you drank, what music you listened to, and why you ordered octopus when according to what they already know about you, you’re allergic to seafood.

Some people will find sharing that information a fair even exchange. Others will balk at the concept. Me, I’m game. I’d gladly trade a bunch of my personal information for a new BMW M3.

Are you game? What would you trade for a new car or a trip to Hawaii? Would you sell your information? Your middle name might have little value on the exchange, but…allowing someone to monitor your web surfing habits for a year could be worth thousands. Along those lines, would trade your web surfing behavior for free internet? What about your tv viewing habits for free cable?

As consumers become smarter and realize that their personal information is quite valuable they’ll do one of two things:

1. Protect that information, making it harder for companies to learn about customers
2. Demand compensation for access to the information

That’s going to change the entire dynamic of the company-customer relationship. It’s going to be fun. BMW, I eagerly await my new M3.