The e-mail landed in my inbox and I immediately had 2 reactions. The first, was that of marveling at the brilliance of the idea—one of the ways Klout will seek to monetize will be through targeting influentials in a new kind of e-mail marketing initiative based on ones influence. I can see a great deal of brands signing up for this—who wouldn't want e-mail access to individsuals on the Web with large and effective social footprints?
My second reaction was that of surprise. Why was I being targeted by Nike basketball? I never talk about sports, don't follow teams and am not all that involved in local sports sans whatever my boys are interested in doing which at the moment is tennis. So why did the e-mail proclaim that I had "serious basketball klout"?
I don't. What I do have is a larger than normal "social graph" that shows signs of life as measured by certain digital factors (and this is only Twitter and Facebook)
Klout's scoring system is highly imperfect, BUT seeing the e-mail caught my attention because I realized that the future of tapping "influentials" will come down to targeting, and the quality of how well this gets executed. So when the next e-mail comes from something closer to my interests—I'll know they are on to something. The future of harnessing influence will be highly targeted.
