The last decade-plus of marketing has been all about data—collecting as much information about your customers and potential customers as possible. But now that the landscape is changing as a result of privacy regulations, new consumer preferences, and the evolution of tech platforms, how will great marketers communicate the right message at the right time to the right consumer?

NFTs.

Yes, you read that right. Beyond the hype and speculation, NFTs present a real opportunity for marketers. They create a new, permissioned, pseudonymous way for brands to connect with their customers. They satisfy customers' need to have appealing advertisements appear on their phones without feeling like their identity is too transparent to the brands advertising to them.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are the traditional way to manage your customers' identities, and a good CRM should have four key aspects: contact management, interaction tracking, real-time communication, and workflow automation.

An NFT, or non-fungible token, is an asset on a blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that make each one unique and distinguishable from any other. NFTs function as a receipt, storing who bought or received or interacted with what at what time, in a permanent record saved to the blockchain. That record of two parties interacting creates a foundation for NFTs to function like a CRM.

So, are NFTs up to the challenge?

Functions of a CRM That NFTs Could Replace

1. Contact Management

One of the goals of blockchain transactions is transparency: that is, the owners of NFTs are inherently visible to the brand (and anyone) by virtue of NFT transactions' being stored publicly. Right now, those owners are identifiable only by their wallet, a string of random numbers and letters, which may not offer much functionality for linking to an IRL identity. But all of the other transactions of that wallet are visible, which can create a series of data points to flesh out the demographics and interests of the holder.

Moreover, some visible activities in a wallet are explicitly revealing, such as buying the yourname.eth domain—which is kind of like a domain name (e.g., www.metaxmoda.com) but for Web3. Such activity can make it apparent that a specific purchasing address belongs to a particular person or company, AKA "yourname."

As the space develops, new technologies will merge those identities to give marketers a clearer picture of their customers and prospects. And as people are explicitly buying or receiving transparent NFTs, there may be an implicit solution to privacy concerns—though that will likely be a topic of contention and debate in marketing.

2. Interaction Tracking

Imagine this scenario: You host an event, either in person or in the metaverse. There's a POAP token available to attendees, a "Proof of Attendance Protocol." Those POAP NFTs would be like concert T-shirts, if T-shirts were forever tied to the original attendees who bought the item at the specific gig and wanted a way to show that they were there. They are nontransferable; each one is unique, and they are saved to a publicly distributed ledger or blockchain. The attendance of that person, by way of a pseudonymous crypto wallet, is permanently recorded.

A POAP is the embodiment of authentic and exclusive; there's no way to transfer that POAP to another person or to pretend to have been at the event. Attendees can highlight or show off the POAP to friends and acquaintances across the digital world. The technology for that isn't seamless now, but it will be in a matter of months, much like Twitter verifying NFT profile pics.

3. Real-Time Communication

One B2C example that highlights NFT's real-time communication options starts with selling a physical item, say a pair of shoes, that comes with its mirror image, a digital counterpart that you can wear in augmented reality, on social media, or in a game such as Fortnite. A "phygital" offering, if you will. Buyers download the NFT to their crypto wallet, alerting the brand immediately to pieces of data that form their identity. And if the original transaction came with an email address, the marketer has an even more complete picture of the customer.