How e-retailers are putting Twitter to work for them—140 characters at a time
By Katie Deatsch
News travels fast on Twitter, as Amazon.com Inc. discovered last month.
It was largely through Twitter, an online social network that lets users exchange messages up to 140 characters long, that word spread about gay-themed books disappearing from best-seller lists and search results on Amazon.com. Major media outlets soon picked up the story and within days Amazon admitted it made an error in classifying thousands of books, many unrelated to gays and lesbians, and that it was fixing the mistake.
Delight.com, a much smaller online accessory and gift boutique, also found itself in the midst of a Twitter controversy recently—one that worked out quite differently.
A promotion of a $130 cashmere scarf sparked a comment on Delight.com’s web site that marketing the item was “tasteless” in light of the economic downturn. Tracey Tee, Delight’s co-founder, head buyer and designated tweeter, wanted to know if others thought the same, so she sent the message—called a tweet—to Delight.com’s Twitter followers. That sparked a furious debate on Twitter—and a burst of sales of the item at Delight.com. “We blew through all the scarves within a few hours,” Tee says.
These examples illustrate the peculiar appeal of Twitter: because it only allows short messages, people respond quickly and frequently, and the sense of instant community has made Twitter the hottest thing online. Twitter.com attracted 14 million unique visitors in March, up from just 1.1 million a year earlier, according to web measurement firm Compete Inc.
Twitter has emerged so quickly that most online retailers are just beginning to consider how to use this free medium for communicating with millions of potential customers. Web merchants on Twitter have found it can generate positive results, as long as a retailer adapts to the idiosyncratic Twitter culture and technology.
Getting started
Getting started on Twitter is easy. Anyone, companies as well as individuals, can set up a free Twitter account and begin sending out brief messages. For a retailer, a key part of making Twitter effective is attracting other Twitter users to sign up to follow the retailer—which means the consumer can see the retailer’s tweets on her own Twitter page, or choose to have them sent immediately to her computer or mobile device.
Rather than sending overt marketing messages, considered a Twitter faux pas, Delight.com’s Tee tweets helpful tips, such as updates on the availability of popular products. She recently sent a message when the retailer received a shipment of popular iPod speakers and the new inventory sold out in less than a day. “I’ll say, ‘Okay everybody, we only have 12 left!’” Tee says.
She recently tweeted about a sale to mark Delight’s anniversary, generating a 10% to 20% increase in sales in the merchant’s discount section. “March was our second anniversary and we had a great sale,” Tee says. Because she thought many people did not take full advantage of Delight.com’s sale section, Tee sent out a tweet. The bump in sales the retailer received was too much to be a coincidence, Tee says.
While traffic from Twitter is still relatively low in volume, it’s high in value, Delight.com reports. “Our traffic from Twitter has been low—about 1% of all site traffic, but the conversion rate has been 15% higher than average, and the average order size is 20% above our average cart,” says Lynda Keeler, president and co-founder. The e-retailer receives about 100,000 unique monthly visitors and generated about $1 million in sales in 2008.
Beyond using Twitter to drive sales, Delight also uses it for customer service and market research.
Tee recently asked Delight’s followers if they had completed a purchase at Delight.com and was surprised to find that mothers and daughters tend to be fans of the boutique together. “So many responses were, ‘Me and my mom both shop on Delight,’” Tee says. “That’s some powerful marketing insight.”
Tee, a dog owner, also tweets about her furry friend, prompting lots of responses. Not every tweet has to be about the company and its products, she says. “Twitter is a great way to show people there are humans behind the brand.”
Friend to friend
Twitter was initially designed to enable friends to exchange brief messages. And Michael Serbinis, executive vice president and chief information officer at Indigo Books & Music, says it’s a great fit for a bookseller.
“A key part of reading is being able to talk about what you are reading with friends,” Serbinis says. “Twitter makes this really, really easy.”
Serbinis heads up the retailer’s Shortcovers division, launched in February, which sells electronic books and other publications in a variety of formats for mobile devices.
When Indigo launched Shortcovers, it also opened a Twitter account, and the retailer has attracted about 1,000 Twitter followers in less than three months. The natural instinct to chat about books has made for some interesting Twitter tales.
Top of the charts
For example, the Shortcovers program allows any author to submit content. One obscure short story, “The Virus Coder’s Girl,” about forbidden love in a hostile workplace, quickly became a top tweeted story among Shortcover users. Amid the flutter of Twitter chatter about the story, the piece became one of Shortcovers’ top 10 most-read titles, ranking alongside such popular books as Malcolm Gladwell’s novel “The Outliers,” Serbinis says.
In the short time the company has used Twitter, Serbinis has learned that you never know who might be reading your messages. One of the first followers to comment on a tweet about a bestselling book was the author himself. The tweet, sent by Neil Gaiman, award-winning author of the children’s book, “The Graveyard Book,” sparked a flurry of tweets from avid fans.
Serbinis says the retailer’s three customer service associates send out a few tweets a day with useful info such as the book of the day. And he says he’s considering trying out Twitter-only promotions or deals.
Computer manufacturer Dell Inc. already is tweeting deal offers to its Twitter followers. Dell started using Twitter in March 2007 and now has more than 11,000 followers. It mainly uses the network to tell its Twitter followers about general sales, but also has used it for Twitter-only promotions, including an offer in February for 30% off a notebook computer. The retailer says it’s generated at least $1 million in additional revenue from the network.
Because Twitter is so new, many retailers are still learning their way around. As they do with other online marketing campaigns, merchants can create a custom URL so they can track clicks from links embedded in Twitter messages.
However, the 140-character limit on Twitter makes it important to embed short web addresses so as not to use up valuable space—URL-shortening tools such as Tiny URL, Bit.ly and Ow.ly meet the need, says Susan A. McKenna, CEO of McKenna’s Marketing, a firm specializing in online social media, and former vice president of e-commerce at health and vitamin supplement company Nature Trade Network.
She says retailers also may want to use a tool called TweetLater that allows them to schedule tweets in advance.
Another tip is to use the # symbol in messages so that Twitter users can see all tweets related to a particular retailer or topic en masse. For example, if someone searches Best Buy, the search results will show every message with the words “best” and “buy” in them, not just ones with “Best Buy.” If a Best Buy tweeter wants to create a discussion on the retailer or on a subject, they include #bestbuy or #electronics—savvy Twitter users know to search for such #-oriented phrases, and know to include the phrases in their own tweets.
Using the @ sign is another trick. It makes a reply to a tweet public and viewable by anyone on the sender’s follower list. So, for example, if a retailer wanted all its followers to see an answer to an individual’s question, it would simply tack on the @ symbol in front of that follower’s user name. Retailers also can add automatic Twitter updates to their blogs, web sites or Facebook pages.
McKenna says being upfront about the purpose of the account is key. If a retailer sets up a Twitter account called BestDeals4Vitamins, followers will expect marketing and promotion-focused tweets. If the account is called VitaminInformation, they will be miffed by such offers, she says.
The right tone
It’s best to pique the interest of Twitter users before hitting them with marketing messages, says Jeffrey Mann, vice president of research at consultancy Gartner Inc. and author of a recent report on how businesses are using Twitter. “Earn the right to talk about the marketing aspects by saying amusing and interesting things first,” he says.
And retailers should be cautious not to be overly positive about their brand or overly negative about the competition, Mann says. “You have to understand the etiquette,” he adds.
Mann notes that retailers can follow what others are saying about them on Twitter, using tools such as Search.Twitter.com or an application called twhirl to scan for references to a company or product.
They can also use Twitter to offer advice, generating goodwill and promoting their brand, Mann says. For instance, a gardening supplies retailer might have an employee set up a Twitter account and offer gardening advice, peppering his tweets with the retailer’s name. The employee might also tack on a line to his e-mail signature encouraging recipients to follow him on Twitter.
Delight’s Tee also uses Twitter to try to generate publicity. “There are tons of reporters on Twitter,” she says. “So it’s a great way to connect with them.”
She also has generated some beneficial relationships with other companies through the network. For example, Tee found a make-up brand that was willing to partner with Delight.com, providing samples Delight.com could send customers in exchange for a banner ad on the e-retailer’s home page.
Connecting with the right types of people on Twitter is an important part of building an effective Twitter presence, McKenna says.
“I train my staff—a small army of interns—to find what I call sneezers, subject matter experts or people that others look to for advice,” she says. “We look for people like that and then we follow their gurus or people they respect.” Hopefully, they will find her Twitter account interesting and follow her back so they can receive updates about her.
There are so many Twitter users, and opportunities to communicate with them, that Twitter can easily take up a lot of time, which is something Tee is realizing. “You start digging into accounts and finding cool people,” she says. “And before you know it the dog is barking and your staff is wondering what you’ve been doing the past three hours.”
It’s too soon to say whether time spent on Twitter will generate a lot of sales. But it’s not too soon to say that Twitter has become part of the daily lives of millions of consumers, and that, as Amazon learned, online retailers must pay attention to their tweets.
katie@verticalwebmedia.com
