Site Visitors Magically Turned Into Email Subs

[eliquid]

So...

I do a lot of viewing competitors for clients I work Google Ads/Meta Ads for.

Not so much to look at their ads, but for other reasons like what pages of their site is most popular.. language they use to their customers, etc.

What I'm about to tell you had happened to me several times before, but I decided today to write about it.

I'm looking at this website, lets call it Custom Food Company.. and I browse around but I don't purchase anything, I don't add to cart, I don't submit my email to them. I'm just collecting high level data.

This morning ( the next day ), I get a welcome email from them for 15% off my 1st order.

WTF?

I realize prior, and this company, are using tools similar to:

1. https://www.visualvisitor.com/
2. https://www.snitcher.com/
3. getgobot.com/
4. and it looks like now Klaviyo now has this option

What sucks is, I'm assuming this is based on IP since I've never been to this website before... and if true, that means if this tech spreads that my wife, daughters, son, or guest who browse websites on my WiFi could maybe trigger these and now Im getting emails?

Just guessing on that.

Anyways, seems like a neat little hack atm to get people on a mailing list before some loophole gets closed up on the tech. I'm sure something will change about this in the next few years.

I consider this some wild west stuff atm.

I know of some other tech that is simiar to this that Instantly has too, but I am not sure if it is automated to send out the email on your behalf or just gives you the email data for you to email youself

 

[UFO]

I am using something similar to those you listed (private platform). The tech is pretty cool, I get first names, last names, minimum of 1 email address (sometimes 2), and full street address including apartment numbers (if applicable), city/state/zip AND the page they landed on. Sometimes I get 1-2 phone numbers as well but the phone numbers are not guaranteed and automatically verified through the system like the email addresses are.

Through this particular platform, the leads are delivered to a Google sheet which you can send out to various email platforms, CRMs, etc via Zapier.

Here's the kicker, getting prospect data from your own sites is pretty powerful, but I can also get data on people that search for specified search terms that DON'T visit my sites (not sure if the tools you listed can do this). For example, if someone searches "Custom food company" and meets certain criteria, I can capture that contact data, all WITHOUT them hitting my site.

I am currently building out the funnels for a company and in addition to email, we plan on piping the leads into Facebook to build custom audiences and sending direct mail using both visitors that have hit the site and those that didn't.

 

[CCarter]

based on IP

I think something else is going on. Very few residential homes have their own IP Addresses anymore since there are no more IPv4 addresses to allocate. ISPs have switched to a scenario where you are sharing an IPv4 Address with your neighbors whether you know it or not.

In the building I live in I have a specific IP Address through my internet provider inside my condo. However when I go to the lobby or am in the courtyard I switch to the building's wifi - which is the same IP Address I have inside my home! I was baffled when I first saw this.

I checked with an infamous YouTuber streamer that lives in my building and he is streaming from the same IP Address as me. Then I go to my office 2 blocks away - same IP Address. A coffee shop within walking distance - same IP Address.

ISPs in the last 2-3 years or so have largely switched to CGNAT (CGNAT (Carrier-Grade NAT) is a variant of NAT that is used by internet service providers (ISPs) to provide internet access to their customers. CGNAT works by allowing multiple customers to share a single, public IP address).

So blocking by IP Addresses could mean you are blocking whole blocks of a city from your website. That's why I doubt Reddit is blocking by IP Address only.

Knowing you I assume you clear cookies upon closing your browsers. However the technology to know it's your computer via Fonts, Canvas output and webGLData, along with your IP Address makes it easy to know with a high degree it's You.

Now imagine if you went to a Shopify eCommerce store and logged in or inputted your email - they "sell" that information (or keep it) to a 3rd party provider with data about your Fonts, Canvas output, and webGLData - identifying YOUR computer, and now whenever you land on a Shopify site or similar network boom they know it's you that just landed.

Getting rid of 3rd party cookies just means the tracking is more invasive AND harder to combat.

The idea of the technology is quite simple though.

Unless your family is using your computer they aren't likely to get the spam email. They'll get their own spam emails from websites they visit on their own computers. Check your wife's emails to see.

 

[goldmercury]

I use a service called leadinfo it reports businesses that visit my site. As part of the service they list the employees scraped from LinkedIn. It’s real easy to identify the email of the decision maker in these businesses so I hit them up with an email if they visit my site and hang around for a while but don’t take an action. Works well in the b2b space.

There are lots of similar providers of this service - I used to use clearbit but they were bought out by hubspot.

 

[Hanuman]

I am interested to learn more about the technical aspects of how this works. I know some services that do this for B2B businesses - they basically use the IP address of the visitor to identify the organization the visitor belongs to, and then identify decision makers to reach out to.

But how does this work in your case? How can they extract your email address? Can a tracking cookie be made to read stuff from beyond the website it was installed from?

VisualVisitor looks like a pretty big company. How are they navigating this from the perspective of GDPR or other privacy laws?

 

[finnegan]

4. and it looks like now Klaviyo now has this option

Is Klaviyo's "Anonymous Visitor Activity Backfill" the same as the others? It seems like they're just gathering data and waiting to give that to you once the user is identified down the road. Sounds like the same tech as what a tracking system like Segmetrics uses.

 

[eliquid]

Is Klaviyo's "Anonymous Visitor Activity Backfill" the same as the others? It seems like they're just gathering data and waiting to give that to you once the user is identified down the road. Sounds like the same tech as what a tracking system like Segmetrics uses.

I could be wrong about Klaviyo.

I mistakenly thought they were doing it, based on some feedback from someone else. However, that may not be the case afterall.

 

[Politico]

So this tripped me out and I was baffled how they can claim "fully permissioned emails" without having filled out a form or added to cart, etc.

On the getgobot site if you read up on their "AI Identity Pixel" it looks as if they're tracking users whove consented via another website altogether

It's all 100% compliant through our already-opted-in shopper network

So my guess is something very similar to Carters Shopify example. A bunch of shopping websites (probably shit like temu and wish or something like that since they're able to identify a HUGE portion of visitors) where people have bought before or opted in for emails and in the fine print they're actually opting in to "our emails" and "our partner's emails" or whatever.

Can't see this lasting long because it's basically cousins with straight up spamming imo. Pretty cool while it lasts though.

 

[mrkarl]

Here's the kicker, getting prospect data from your own sites is pretty powerful, but I can also get data on people that search for specified search terms that DON'T visit my sites (not sure if the tools you listed can do this). For example, if someone searches "Custom food company" and meets certain criteria, I can capture that contact data, all WITHOUT them hitting my site.

Any ideas on what tool can do this? I am guessing the criteria would need to be well refined. Something that connects with google / GSC, and, then pulls the info across to tools like albacross which can ID using various digital fingerprints (beyond IP) to pull contact info.

 

[UFO]

Any ideas on what tool can do this? I am guessing the criteria would need to be well refined. Something that connects with google / GSC, and, then pulls the info across to tools like albacross which can ID using various digital fingerprints (beyond IP) to pull contact info.

Outside of the platform I am using, I haven't seen this anywhere else.

As far as how it works and the way it was explained to me is that their tech monitors searches across the internet. When someone searches for the phrases I am targeting and consumes content around that, their "digital fingerprint" is matched to big data providers. The prospect contact data is sent over to me as long as that prospect falls into the geo location I am targeting for that specific campaign and I haven't capped the number of leads I want to get for a particular period.

Forgive me for my naivety as I am not a developer but if anything is unclear and you have any questions feel free to DM me.

 

[mrkarl]

Outside of the platform I am using, I haven't seen this anywhere else.

As far as how it works and the way it was explained to me is that their tech monitors searches across the internet. When someone searches for the phrases I am targeting and consumes content around that, their "digital fingerprint" is matched to big data providers. The prospect contact data is sent over to me as long as that prospect falls into the geo location I am targeting for that specific campaign and I haven't capped the number of leads I want to get for a particular period.

Forgive me for my naivety as I am not a developer but if anything is unclear and you have any questions feel free to DM me.

Sorry, I thought I responded to this mate so I just logged in and cannot see it. So I was asking, is this a tool you can use for others or can you say what the tool is?