A 6-part Framework for Utilizing Blockchain Ledger Data in Marketing
Marketers in web3 are in a powerful position to do the right thing and establish better precedents for how to engage with customers as stakeholders.
In recent years, in light of emerging regulatory frameworks that are catching up with the pace of digitization, web2 companies have been subject to heavy fines due to their treatment of human data in digital settings. There are likely many reasons for these privacy violations, with one of the biggest culprits being business models that prioritize aggressive user acquisition tactics above human dignity.
With the rise of AI, it’s likely that data privacy violations are only going to increase as marketers continue to venture into the uncharted terrain of rapid technical acceleration. This dynamic has the potential to pose serious threats to human rights, especially in light of rising distrust and polarity in our global institutions.
Marketers in web3 are in a powerful position to introduce a new paradigm and make decisions that prioritize people while remaining attentive to regulators.
“In web3, this dynamic is inverted. Marketers aren’t looking at personal information first,” explains Eric Forst, co-founder at Blocksee.
“The goal is to build community and engagement around purchase activity, with digital records being visible on a public ledger. This dynamic gives marketers a unique opportunity to access more first-party data that is fair and transparent, with a higher ROI as a result. “
Here are some practical steps to take.
implementing the right tools
Eric Forst and Josh Hashemzadeh co-founded Blocksee to help brands, creators, and artists better utilize first party data in a bidirectional, consent-driven manner. You can read more about their background, motivations, and prior careers in digital marketing in this Q&A that we published on nameless mag.
The TLDR is that both have held extensive careers in marketing. Forst sold marketing technology, Hashemzadeh was responsible for media buying. The two met each other through a mutual interest in art and teamed up to develop an NFT platform. After running into the challenges of saturated marketing, Blocksee’s co-founders recognized a need to build a customer relationship management (CRM) to address three limitations:
The ability to extract ledger based data from public blockchains,
Connect meaningful off-chain and on-chain data, and
Integrate this data into marketing campaigns that prioritize human experiences
“Today’s advertising, marketing, and media ecosystems are driven by the mentality of how we can get someone to click something — followed by formulas for engaging that individual and pulling them through a funnel, whether that’s something beneficial to them or not,” explains Forst. “That marketing is done based on our most personal credentials and information.”
Before developing Blocksee, Forst and Hashemzadeh observed that web3 project owners were building their own CRMs since web2 CRMs were unable to ingest public ledger data on public blockchains.
So they built Blocksee with the following capabilities:
Web3 lead generation
Token Gated Communications
CRM Customer Profiles
NFT Airdrops / Marketing
Campaign Analytics
Here’s how these components coalesce into a framework for getting to know your customers better and visa versa.
a look into blocksee’s crm infrastructure
Put short, it’s about reciprocal relationships, based on practices of consent. Brand engagement comes from listening, learning, and engaging rather than pushing people into click-oriented actions and conversion funnels.
component 1: crm as a source of truth
Blocksee’s CRM allows you to paste any smart contract for data ingestion. It will read the information and automatically generate a user profile for you. This profile will include information about the user’s wallet address, their transaction history, and the digital assets they collect — all data that exists in the public domain.
Because most NFTs and digital assets are minted on public blockchains, all of the wallets that interact with the smart contracts of those assets also get recorded on chain. Whether it’s a wallet that placed a bid but didn’t buy, a wallet that used to hold an asset, or the current holders, Blocksee makes it easy to filter to the exact customers and prospects that you want to engage.
With this foundation, web3 project owners can develop holistic user profiles that understand people through the lens of humanity rather than conversion data. This perspective makes it easier to ask and answer the question, “who might be looking to engage?”
component 2: actions that integrate loyalty and utility
Using public ledger data, brands can better orchestrate campaigns that people actually want.
Public ledger data provides insight into buy/sell behavior across web3 projects and brands to identify who is genuinely interested in your project. Through this lens, it’s possible to distinguish between those who are likely to meaningfully engage vs. those who might be caught up in a hype cycle and/or purely profit oriented.
“We’re definitely seeing a shift in the market towards real utility,” explains Forst. “How can NFTs be in-game assets or support credentialing for education in schools? How can NFTs provide digital identification for cattle ranchers who want to use blockchain to record their herd using facial recognition scans? These are some use cases we’ve seen on our platform.”
“We also have a customer, an e-commerce crypto company, that lets you buy gift cards in crypto for almost any major brand. This customer has thousands of wallet addresses that they’re uploading to Blocksee so that they can send out NFT based reactivation coupons that give their customers access to 15% off coupons.”
component 3: airdrop marketing
The foundation of marketing has always been a basis of listening and learning. Successful campaigns are built on signals that humans choose to share.
An airdrop is a marketing campaign that involves giving away free tokens to a specific group of people. This group of people could be your existing community or a targeted list of potential customers. Airdrops are a great way to get people interested in your project and for building brand awareness.
“We worked with our client Bitrefill to send airdrops to prospective customers looking to cash in crypto for gift cards,” explains Hashemzadeh.
Airdrops also provide mechanisms for meaningful campaign data beyond one-dimensional clicks. The availability of ledger based first-party data can help establish a deeper understanding of how different customer segments are likely to engage.
“Even in our preliminary tests, we’re seeing competitive costs per-click results relative to their social media marketing campaigns,” says Hashemzadeh.
component 4: tokengated drops and rewards
With an established source of truth and multi-dimensional first-party data, web3 project owners can create more thoughtful communities.
For example, you could offer a tokengated drop to the first 1,000 people who join your Discord server. This curation will help to incentivize people to join your community. It will also help to identify the most active and engaged members of your community.
“We’ve spoken with entertainment agencies, studios, and creators about offering tickets as NFTs to build in different customer benefits to incentivize things like early purchasing, event engagement, & repeat purchasing,” says Hashemzadeh. “These are all touch points where you get to learn about your community and have them opt in data.”
A foundation of engaged and active people creates a basis for marketing that’s meaningful and informed — that ultimately doesn’t feel like marketing because it’s rooted in relationships.
component 5: gamification of community participation
Gamification is another technique for sparking engagement.
Gamification is the use of game-like elements in non-game contexts. Examples include creating a leaderboard or awarding prizes for completing certain tasks.
“Imagine you’re trying to promote a movie or show to drive sales on opening weekend, so you make your ticket an NFT that gets your audience access to a chat on your website with the writers or director,” explains Hashemzadeh. “Or if it becomes a discount code for exclusive goods/ services related to your IP, you can start to upsell customers and gain valuable 1st party data.”
Gamification can help to make your project more fun and engaging, and it can also help to incentivize people to participate.
“There could even be a resale market to give royalties back to the creators automatically,” Hashemzadeh elaborates. Eventually, you can go to a show and pay for your ticket by selling it afterward.”
component 6: clarity into smart contract parameters
An in-depth evaluation of smart contract parameters can help web3 project owners identify the scope of rights granted to creators and buyers, including permissions for use, reproduction, distribution, and derivative works.
Understanding these licensing terms can provide valuable insights into the flexibility, limitations, and overall appeal of any NFT project. These insights are valuable for two reasons:
Web3 project owners can conduct landscape-level research to inform the parameters of their own smart contracts
With a landscape-level view, project owners can uncover interesting use cases for their own smart contracts
Remember that IP is valuable, and digital assets are a pathway to empowering people with true ownership. That’s the essence of web3 and tokenomics.
final thoughts
Remember that humanity is at the center of web3. That’s why it’s critical to look past screen driven environments to actively engage with people.
Get outside and talk to them. Attend industry events and meetups. Connect with other projects in your space. Be active on social media. Create valuable content.
Offer support and assistance.
Web3 is a mechanism for connecting people at scale, through the lens of data. But every data point and trend has a set of underlying stories at their core. With almost 8 billion people in the world, why not envision a way to connect people in new and interesting ways?
If we get the first-party data equation right, maybe the future of web3 marketing will be something other than “marketing.”
Contributors statement
This work was a collaboration between the nameless editorial team.
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