• by Jess Nelson , November 12, 2015

Targeted and personalized email marketing improves ROI and sales conversions, but many marketers still lack the critical customer data that’s essential for data-driven marketing campaigns. Spredfast, an Austin-based social software company, hopes to mitigate marketing’s pain when it comes to collecting and using data with a tools designed for companies who might not have the resources.

Spredfast Promotions -- a social content builder that can collect customer data through sweepstakes, sign-up forms, and social contests -- aims to help social and email marketers collect unique customer data such as product preferences, birthdays, and vital contact information like email addresses.

Customers benefit from an opportunity to win prizes or discounts, while marketers benefit by collecting and then implementing that data into their advertising campaigns.  Data collected can be exported into CRM, marketing automation, and analytics systems across channels.

The launch of Spredfast Promotions today stems from Spredfast’s acquisition of Shoutlet, a CRM company, in August.

Database management is a critical issue in email marketing today, but the holidays are the perfect time to begin collecting customer information to inform future campaigns.

Marketing data, such as email address, are estimated to degrade by 3% each month according to SiriusDecisions. A fifth of Big Data users (19.2%) state that the quality of data is the biggest problem with their programs, according to a recent report by Evans Data Corporation.

Missing data is also considered a leading cause as to why only 6% of B2B companies have optimal email deliverability ratings.

Email marketers should consider collecting and implementing data as an integral component of their 2016 plans.