Early users of the tool include newly-minted New Jersey Senator
Cory Booker, who asked his Twitter followers to help his campaign
by providing their email addresses in a tweet sent out on the June
day he announced his candidacy. And Arby's used lead-generation
cards in promoted tweets,
peddling coupons and deals to drum up sign-ups for its email
newsletter.
In September, analytics firm Webtrends embarked on a four-week
test of the tool. John Lee, the company's manager of brand and
social marketing, said it fared so well that he's shifting spend
away from Facebook and LinkedIn and toward Twitter as a result.
Extra step
A key difference to help explain the gap in performance is that
email opt-ins can happen directly on Twitter with the click of a
button within a tweet, while users on other social channels have to
be driven to a landing page to provide their email address,
according to Mr. Lee. The extra step proves to be too much for many
of them.
Webtrends drummed up almost 10 times as many leads on Twitter during the
month-long test as it had during the previous quarter. And the cost
per lead -- which in this case is someone who signs up for
marketing materials about shopping-cart abandonment or email
remarketing -- was $10 to $11, a 500% drop from what it had
previously cost on Twitter.
Social has historically been a challenging channel for b-to-b
marketers, and lead generation has been especially difficult,
according to Mr. Lee. "No one's going to buy five to six figures
worth of software through a tweet," he said. "B-to-b decision
makers go to social to inform decisions, but it's not the main
driver."
The notion is that Webtrends can start grooming potential
customers once it has their email address, sending them marketing
materials on a more frequent basis.
"I can't offer you a discount on marketing software [on
Twitter]," Mr. Lee said. "But I can make sure you see content
that's valuable to you as a digital marketing resource and from
there it's the start of a relationship."
