Facebook’s Open Graph: Collecting Contact Info & Social Data

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One important stipulation in Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines is that you cannot contact a contest winner via Facebook. This means that you need to collect an entrant’s email address and/or phone number upon entry in order to contact them.

You can collect entrant’s email addresses automatically via Facebook’s Open Graph, but having entrants opt-in by entering their email address manually is the best way to go to avoid being marked as spam.

What is the Facebook Open Graph

The Open Graph is Facebook’s database of user data that includes every Facebook user’s personal information from their age, to who their friends are to which Pages they like. It is also the platform that 3rd party apps connect to in order to pull valuable user data to help businesses target their customers more effectively.

How do 3rd Party Apps use the Open Graph

When a user enters a contest, they will be asked to connect with the contest app in a pop-up window that appears. This pop-up will describe the app, which data will be transferred through the app to the business running the contest, and what the business has permission to do to their account.

These are the two Permissions that Wishpond apps (and most other Contest apps) ask for in this transaction:

1. Basic Information: This includes age, gender, location and Facebook Likes of a user. This information allows you to analyze who your users are – and send targeted emails by segmenting users based on these data points – directly within your Wishpond account

2. Ability to Post on the user’s behalf (optional): This allows our application to make a post on the user’s wall that invites each of their friends on Facebook to enter your contest

Wall Post

News Feed Post

What is the typical drop-off rate due to thistransaction?

Businesses normally see a ~10% drop-off due to some users not wanting to complete this transaction. This is definitely worth the drop-off – not only do you get to see in-depth analytics about your users, but you also get reach to each entrant’s entire Facebook network through the invitation that is posted on their wall. And this reach is much more effective than an ad.

Check out “Like-Gating Explained”