SumAll Launches Instagram Audience-building Tool

Instagram-Windows-Phone-LumiaData analytics firm SumAll has launched SumAll Audience Boost, which is designed to turn a company’s email list into an Instagram (or other social network) audience. SumAll Audience Boost builds an Instagram audience by engaging customers and prospects who already know the brand. The company said the service will help companies build a quality following and generate sales from Instagram.

SumAll Audience Boost was designed to challenge ‘click farms’, the shady businesses that pay workers to like and follow brands for less than pennies per click. Many click farms also use ‘bots’ that impersonate social media users and generate clicks. Click farms, mainly based in the developing world, are known to operate like sweatshops and produce very low quality followers that care nothing about the brand and will never buy its product.

SumAll Audience Boost takes a company’s email list and then automatically identifies, follows and engages with Instagram users that have already expressed interest in the brand. Companies simply connect their Instagram account to the SumAll platform and import an email list from their chosen email service provider. The email list remains strictly confidential. SumAll Audience Boost then finds members of the email list on Instagram that are most likely to be highly engaged, enables the brand to follow them, and encourages them to follow the brand back.

SumAll Audience Boost users can keep track of their progress with a simple dashboard that displays the number of matching contacts found, contacts followed, contacts that follow the company back, and other data about the audience. In testing, SumAll has found that SumAllAudience Boost audiences have a 16 to 25 per cent follow back rate, compared to 5 per cent with click farms.

In beta until today,SumAll Audience Boost was tested by a select group of ecommerce businesses. Justin Winter, CEO of Diamond Candles, participated in the pilot program. He said: “We had an enormous email list but only a small following on Instagram. SumAll transformed our contact lists into Instagram followers. This new touchpoint in our customer ecosystem is basically printing us money. Because of SumAll, we are engaging with our most influential fans and with those who love to engage with us.”