Halifax’s LeadSift Launches Social Media Marketing Platform

Halifax social marketing platform LeadSift has unleashed a new tool for marketers called AIM (Audience Intent Miner) to help advertisers target users based on monitoring social conversations and then mining for data which had previously been difficult to decipher on Twitter, namely building out profiles of user demographics and purchasing intent.

Demographics are one thing: knowing where a customer is located, as well as their gender and age and class can convey a lot of insight as to how and when they intend to spend their money.

The real X-factor is in what the company calls purchasing intent, which it also refers to as “psychographic data”.

Twitter has 255 million active users, who post over 15 billion tweets per month.

Recognizing that 92% of Twitter users trust recommendations referred by their “friends” and families and followers over online advertisements, LeadSift’s platform is designed to drill down into that user intent to create actionable profiles and behaviour patterns.

“We automatically take social conversations and group them into one of the four buying journeys that a consumer goes through,” says CEO Tukan Das. “Starting from brand awareness, to identification of need, to consideration and evaluation and finally post purchase. If I’m an advertiser I know where my customers are and I can target them based on where they are in the buying journey.”

Determining Twitter demographics is a challenge for marketers because, unlike on Facebook, Twitter does not require users to offer up a full array of profile information.

The company claims that through the development of its software, it has demonstrated a 47% cost-per-action (CPA) reduction and a 500% increase in time spent on site by users.

LeadSift’s AIM tool analyzes and filters more than 100 customer attributes to follow each user through their purchasing journey, from lead generation to conversion.

LeadSift was founded in 2012 by Chief Product Officer Sreejata Chatterjee, CTO Hatem Nassrat and CEO Das, after studying at Dalhousie University in Halifax and then collaborating on a way to predict World Cup 2010 victories by developing an algorithm to monitor Twitter sentiment around teams in advance of their matches.

Since their launch, LeadSift’s stated goal has been “to mine all the user intent on the social web.”

The aim of LeadSift’s platform has been to help enterprise clients and small- to medium-size marketers get a handle on conducting 1-to-1 real-time interactive research with potential customers or leads.

In 2012, the team, joined by CIO Daniel Allen, raised $1.1 million, of which $500,000 was invested by OMERS Ventures.

Their other backers include Gerry Pond, CEO of Fredericton’s Radian6, as well as Jevon McDonald, founder of GoInstant, which was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2012, and Clarity’s Dan Martell, a Moncton native who has made investing in other companies a priority.