What if how you’re treated in real life depending on how influential you are online? You walk into your neighborhood coffee shop and because you’re a bigwig on Twitter, you get a special discount. Or maybe you’re not really into spending time online and you have to pay full price. How would you feel if you saw the person in front of you get a different treatment (and price) than you got? A few companies have been trying out this type of scenario…
Palms’ chief marketing officer, Jason Gastwirth, is currently building out “The Klout Klub,” which “will allow high-ranking influencers to experience Palms’ impressive set of amenities in hopes that these influencers will want to communicate their positive experience to their followers.” The Palms is already pulling in data from Klout and referring to it as part of their reservations process. – Need a Reservation? That Could Depend On How Big You Are on Twitter (Really) – David Teicher – Advertising Age
Klout tries to measure the influence you have online by taking a look things like your network, who you’re connected to, how often your content is shared, etc. While Klout self proclaims themselves as the “standard for influence,” they really are only looking a major social networks (really only Twitter, but they’re working on adding Facebook) and tools which provide them open data. If you interact on different social networks, or don’t use the URL shortener that provides open data, your score will be artificially low (I reviewed Klout earlier this year). Klout is also a static score, which isn’t updated unless a user requests an update.
Providing different levels of service based on influence is nothing new — just look at airline frequent flier clubs — if you fly more often you get better seats, board faster, etc. However, airline frequent flier clubs are based on a very accurate metric — how often you fly — whereas Klout is very inaccurate at best. Perhaps a number like number of checkins on Foursquare would be more accurate and fair.
However, what Palms is trying to do is provided different levels of service to people who may be first-time customers. What types of information should you use to determine what type of influence a new customer or potential customer has? Maybe in this case, Klout would give you at least some information to go on. Such appeared to be the case with Virgin America:
When Virgin America opened up its Toronto route last spring, it asked Klout to find a small group of influencers to receive a free flight, in hopes that they’d effectively spread the word. “We allotted 120 free flights for this campaign — all of which were booked within a matter of weeks — so we were very pleased with how much enthusiasm was generated to take advantage of our offer,” said Porter Gale, VP-marketing at Virgin. “We saw a ton of social media buzz and press around the campaign which definitely helped to build awareness for our brand and product in the Toronto market.”
Is this the new way of business? Will online behavior affect treatment by offline businesses? What do you think?
(photo by Cliff)