Data mining, at one time, was deemed as an invasion of privacy. These days it’s an acceptable method to making your web experience tailored to fit your desires. Companies will use the data that you voluntarily put online , or that they acquire from you using their services, to market you and others that are like you. Have you heard about or walked by a billboard that said, “Dear person who listened to ‘Sorry’ 42 times on Valentines Day, What did you do?”  or “To the 1,235 guys who loved the ‘Girls’ night’ playlist this year, we love you.”?  Here is why.

Spotify recently came out with a new marketing campaign called “Thanks 2016, It’s been weird.” The Swedish media streaming service company launched in 2008 and now, eight years later have created a new perspective on data marketing. First of all, what is data marketing? Data marketing is when companies use their database to obtain information about their consumers. This information could be anything from geographical location to age demographic, your shopping habits, or even your web searching habits. This is the way marketing companies can directly sell to their target market.

Recently, data marketing has been fading while content marketing has been key to increasing consumers. Content marketing is when a company puts value and relevance to having their target audience come to them. Corporations have done videos, blogs, billboards and more to tug on the consumer’s emotions or opinions.

How did Spotify combine these two techniques? They acquired all the information from their user database, discovered the most unique and interesting listening habits from their subscribers all around the world and created fun billboards about the weirdest listening habits they found. These advertisements are turning heads around the world. In turn, Spotify’s rank as the top music streaming application by having over 50 million subscribers. Spotify is not directly selling services to their consumers by data mining but creating content from the data to grab the attention of their target audience. We can Utilize the same techniques, by obtaining data we acquire from our own consumers, to reach our own audience.

Image credit to Spotify.