6/22/09

Twitter shopping engine lets e-retailers set up ‘stores’ promoting deals

CheapTweet.com has introduced CheapTweet Stores, a program that enables e-retailers with Twitter accounts to set up a social presence that focuses on special offers and prices. A store aggregates tweets as a social shopping resource.

Twitter shopping search engine CheapTweet.com has introduced a program that enables e-retailers with Twitter accounts to set up a social presence that focuses on special offers and prices. The search engine’s new functionality, called CheapTweet Stores, aggregates tweets from an e-retailer’s Twitter account or accounts into one location on CheapTweet.com as a social shopping resource for shoppers on the web. Twitter messages are called tweets.

“The Overstock.com Store from CheapTweet enables us to pull all our Twitter deal postings into one central location and in front of the eyes of the many CheapTweet users,” says Patrick Byrne, chairman and CEO of Overstock.com Inc., the first e-retailer to set up shop on CheapTweet.com. “Social media, including Twitter, is a key initiative for us to interact directly with our customers and share special discounts with our most loyal shoppers. With CheapTweet, we get our deals in front of an established audience of enthusiastic online bargain hunters.” Overstock.com is No. 29 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

With CheapTweet Stores, e-retailers can better manage their multiple Twitter accounts and more effectively communicate with consumers, says Hayes Davis, founder and CEO of Appozite, the social e-commerce software start-up that operates CheapTweet. Benefits, he says, include:

• Consistent corporate branding-a CheapTweet Store is a branded, searchable index hosted on CheapTweet.com, including both deal tweets and general tweets from a retailer’s multiple Twitter accounts.
• Maximized Twitter presence-a CheapTweet Store complements a retailer’s Twitter presence by making it easy for customers to find and act on deals shared on Twitter, even if a user doesn’t subscribe to a retailer’s Twitter stream or missed the original deal tweet.
• Ability to reach the “ready-to-buy” consumer-the majority of CheapTweet visitors, Davis says, are already looking to buy and are simply searching for the best price. A CheapTweet Store puts deals in front of these shoppers who are ready to make a purchase with the best deal they can find.

“With Stores, as well as additional professional features coming soon,” Davis says, “we’re encouraging companies to add to their traditional marketing and advertising efforts and embrace social commerce and real-time promotions.”