Oracle links to LinkedIn so its salesware can sniff you out

Your LinkedIn profile just got a little bit more useful … for marketers, because Oracle has done a deal with Microsoft's social network.

The arrangement means that Big Red's Marketing Cloud can now integrate their own data with in LinkedIn data, the better to “increase conversion rates and generate more sales by helping marketers personalize and orchestrate campaigns across multiple channels, including email, websites, and digital ads.”

Users of the Marketing Cloud will be able to blend their own data with stuff from LinkedIn. No personally identifiable information will be visible to marketers, who will be offered a list of good candidates rather than profiles explaining why each listed person is felt to be a worthy target.

Oracle's own data trove contains at least 400 million records. Others, like Wayin, also have hundreds of millions of records and argue the world's better off as a result becuase you'll recive targeted marketing rather than spam.

Salesforce also integrates to LinkedIn, with an API that's been around since 2011, well before Microsoft buddied-up with LinkedIn. Earlier this year it also hooked up to LinkedIn's Sales Navigator.

Microsoft recently countered by adding deeper integration between Dynamics and LinkedIn, seemingly as a way to make its own CRM more potent that Salesforce.

Whoever's doing what to whom, one thing is blindingly clear: anything you add to your LinkedIn profile is valuable to marketers. And the more LinkedIn can sell access to your profile, the more profitable it will be for Microsoft.

Readers are doubtless aware of the maxim that when a service is free, the users are the product. This deal proves it yet again. ®