Dave,
Exactly! Most of these types of deals are specifically accrued for these provisions. As such, this distinction should clearly be known to the involved parties. Without question, subsequent responders are the 'property' of the of the publisher. The trick is to enable an easy or soft offer to maximize this cultivation if the deal doesn't provide rights initially. A soft offer could easily be part of the original user activation as utilized by virtually every consumer software publisher out there.
While I suspect that this right was not negotiated with any of the deals, it is of paramount importance to develop a proactive mechanism to encourage this secondary registration. Secondarily, have the means to capture and store such resultant data in a commercial capacity. From what I understand, such is not the case currently.
Certainly, being a long shareholder, any lost revenues opportunities, especially considering the scope is concerning. See many firms concentrate all of their energies developing and promoting the product without considering what is appropriate to maximize the resulting database value. As a result, after the fact, they are left with a substandard asset unworthy the cost to enhance or recompile for future usage. Akin to one realizing that those childhood baseball cards they carelessly destroyed are now worth a fortune, I've seen many firms torture themselves when confronted with such losses.
In fact, I've gone to clients requesting consultation only to find their database in the format of skids and skids of collapsed and destroyed boxes of registration cards with nothing beyond names and addresses! Happens everyday and frankly, you almost come to expect the worse case scenario until proven otherwise.
-Scott |
