I spent a morning a couple of weeks ago at a Twitter event at the London Film Museum – a surprisingly good one with lots of great swag – and amongst other things they talked a bit about the recent introduction of their Lead Generation Cards.
This is something that particularly caught my eye, as in my previous life working at various digital agencies we would spend hour upon hour poring over how the lead generation forms (various sign-up forms, from test drives to newsletters) on a website should be built to help increase sign-ups and data capture.
A few years down the line, the web becomes social and this handy little tool comes along: .
So what exactly is it? In a nutshell it’s an expandable tweet that allows a brand to include a promotion: an offer on a product or service, sign-up to a newsletter, etc. When the user expands the tweet, they will see a small button below that’ll allow them to instantly opt-in to the offer without having to leave Twitter. The user’s email address and Twitter handle are automatically pre-filled into the Twitter Card, which, especially for mobile users, makes it the essence of simplicity. And for the brand, it means super quick data capture with a much higher lead generation.
I was interested to see how this had been used over the past few weeks, and the overall consensus from brands has been positive, with a big focus on ‘deeper engagement’ with their followers.
Just yesterday Channel 4 News announced it was teaming up with Twitter to use the Lead Generation Cards to increase subscribers to the daily ‘Snowmail’ news update, so I’m hoping we get to hear how that works out.
As with any marketing or social media engagement, it all comes down the quality of the content, and it’s no different here. In order to be successful when using this tool, you need to be sending out compelling content that really resonates with your audience, and then measuring your results. Taking into the account the small amount of real estate available – essentially the tweet and expended photo/copy of the offer – you need to be very clever with your choice of content.
My only slight concern is because this is so easy, somewhere down the line there’s the danger that Twitter might become awash with ‘buy one get one free’ type offers, which I think will cheapen the space for brands genuinely trying to engage.
Lead Generation Cards are still only available to Twitter’s managed clients, but keep a close eye out as it’ll be opened up to small and medium sized businesses in the near future.
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