Dark Social: The Invisible Decision-Making Tool in the CFO's Hands
When CFOs seek quick answers to work challenges, they no longer rely solely on traditional advertising or meetings, but turn to dark social—untraceable shares and conversations in private channels like Slack and WhatsApp. Written by Zviki Shimon, CFO of Datarails, this article analyzes the rise of dark social among CFOs, its impact on sales leads and marketing attribution, and how it provides more authentic feedback.
Editor's note:Zviki Shimon is the CFO of Datarails, a New York City-based financial planning and analysis (FP&A) platform. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.
When looking for quick answers to work challenges, CFOs are no longer turning to the usual places for inspiration.
In the past, finance executives might have been drawn to buy software by a creative advertising campaign or something they learned at a CFO conference on the other side of the world.
Today, decision-making CFOs seeking quick answers to people, process, or technology issues are turning to a very different channel—so-called "dark social." Even if you've never heard the term, you've almost certainly participated in its evolution.
Dark social is not as secretive or unusual as its name suggests, nor is it part of the dark web. The term describes the "invisible sharing" and conversations happening at all times in Slack channels, WhatsApp groups, or text messages—essentially web traffic that cannot be tracked. Journalist Alexis Madrigal brought the term to prominence in a 2012 article published in The Atlantic.
It's also where you can find CFOs: in closed environments where they discuss work, careers, various challenges, and needs for process and automation.
The CFO community in particular is embracing dark social at a rapid growth rate. A private Slack community called "Off The Ledger" is run by spend management platform Airbase, which announced last year that its membership had surpassed 2,500 people, up from just 50 in January 2020. They attribute this to "a growing need among finance professionals for an online hub of interaction."
Blurry sales leads
Another spend management platform, Spendesk, has 6,500 members in its closed Slack channel. The benefits of dark social CFO communities are manifold: these groups are moderated, strictly "no-sales" zones, and many are highly exclusive. Some are paid, while others even require a referral from an existing member to join.
However, the entire dark social funnel also presents broader financial challenges. The private nature of dark social channels makes it difficult for marketers to fully track the source of their business traffic.
When someone visits a website via a Google paid ad, the customer journey—from clicking the ad to finally pulling out a credit card—is clearly visible. But sales leads generated by dark social cannot be captured by traditional attribution software. Of course, many FP&A teams provide deeper data-driven attribution decisions through marketing mix modeling.
But as we know, you can never achieve complete accuracy. We must accept that this is both an art and a science. Dark social is a reminder that we can never achieve perfect precision and must make some assumptions about customer sources.
Authentic feedback
Putting on the vendor hat for a moment (as a provider that also offers SaaS products to CFOs), the impact of such groups on sales is obvious. I see at least 20 sales leads a month coming from the depths of dark social: these word-of-mouth private communities where we have no visibility and no participation.
Many companies report this as their most reliable marketing funnel. I'm not sure such large numbers are universal, but dark social is indeed more authentic in chat and feedback than other more open forums like LinkedIn groups.
I have personally observed the impact of such channels on my own purchasing behavior. I was in a CFO WhatsApp group (aimed at startup finance VPs and CFOs) asking about specific software for managing and scaling corporate travel management. This led to a longer call. I spoke with a CFO who was willing to share the ups and downs she experienced using the software. I was able to delve into my biggest concerns, and my greatest worry was another painful implementation—something I had been burned by in the past.
Filling the gap
Looking at our company's sales call records, I see evidence of dark social's power. A finance VP at a workforce safety software company said: "We're talking to you because on our company Slack channel, you were mentioned as potentially useful."
Another potential customer from manufacturing came from the Slack channel run by Airbase mentioned above, where a finance VP said: "Someone mentioned Datarails, and I wanted to learn more."
Dark social is filling a gap. As CFOs, we prioritize technology spending, but we see more and more service providers vying for our attention. On the day I wrote this, I counted about 10 emails from finance vendors trying to get my attention. But when I see a Slack channel buzzing, I inevitably take a quick look. Being part of a community seems to be a basic and powerful human need—even for CFOs.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the number of members Spendesk has in its closed Slack channel.