Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Dell Outlet on Twitter


Started back in 2007 by Dell Employee Stephanie Nelson, who experimented Twittering for her company based on hearing about the popularity of this new found technology at SXSW Interactive Festival. By posting offers and responding directly to consumers questions via the Dell Twitter page, Dell Outlet reportedly earned more than $3 million in revenue attributed directly to their Twitter activity in the last 2 years ($1 million of which was from the last 6 months...)
Deal-Hunters are especially attracted to Dell's Twitter presence. Dell Outlet sells refurbished Dell products at great prices, but inventories fluctuate, making it difficult to know when products are available or on sale. Dell uses Twitter as a way to message out coupons, clearance events and new arrival information in real time to those looking for Dell technology at a discounted price.

Exclusive Twitter based offers helped grow their follower base from 11,000 members to over 1.2 million to date.

Interesting Future for Brands:
By the end of 2009 according to Biz Stone, founder of Twitter, Twitter will hopefully add services for businesses that will generate revenue for Twitter as well. Services could include an analytics dashboard to aid tweet monitoring, or verified corporate accounts. Hoping companies such as JetBlue, L'Oreal and Zappos who already effectively use Twitter to communicate with to costumers will now be willing to pay for the service if it offered them greater depth of information on their followers.

Neat way to get around already overused geo targeting and online campaigns offered through Facebook. But will brands now be willing to pay for a service that has proven to pay off for free???

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