The tool requires people to store their payment information with Twitter
If ads on Twitter weren't annoying enough, some will start asking for your credit card info, in the hopes you'll load up on store discounts.
Twitter Offers, launched Tuesday, lets companies incorporate in-store promotions in ads that appear in users' feeds. This is not a way to buy things on Twitter; it's a tool to add a discount to your credit or debit card, which can be redeemed in physical stores. The data stands to give Twitter a huge leg up on gauging the effectiveness of its ads on in-store sales.
If enough people go along with it, that is.
Starting in the U.S. only, a handful of brands will include a "get offer" button in their ads on Twitter. It could be, say, $2.00 cash back when spending $5 or more at a particular coffee shop. Click the button, and Twitter will ask for the user's credit or debit card information. The promotion is applied when the user makes the purchase with that card in the store, and the cash back savings appear on his or her statement within a few days, Twitter says. There is no charge to use the offer.
People's stored payment information is encrypted on Twitter, the company says. Users can remove their payment information at any time from within their settings.
It's not the first offers tool to be offered by Twitter. The company has let American Express cardholders earn discounts by linking their credit card with their Twitter account and having them tweet specific hashtags.
Twitter Offers does away with the hashtag requirement. It also has big e-commerce applications for Twitter down the line. By getting more people to hand over their payment information, Twitter hopes to reduce some of the friction as it scales out the ability to make purchases directly on the site.
Twitter, along with Facebook, has said it's working on a new service to let people make purchases directly from within tweets.
Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com
Creating a strong company culture may sound like a daunting task, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. In fact, company culture is created in exactly the same fashion as a religion or democracy. Behaviours created from the organisation’s inception are reinforced over time by leadership, attracting like-minded people and eventually reaching critical mass to become an accepted ‘truth’.
The question I get asked most regularly these days is: ‘Do I need to rebuild my company’s systems on Blockchain?’ And the answer, every time, is ‘No, you’re asking the wrong question’.
Throughout my career, I have witnessed a litany of brand names that profess to have a unique customer value proposition (CVP). In reality, however, they’ve had little more than a ‘value proposition’: A simple list of benefits applied to a general audience.
In this bonus last episode of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with former ANZ group general manager of marketing, Louise Eyres, talks about the importance of thinking like a customer and using intuition to solve customer painpoints.
What is your opinion about chatbots serving your customers? My belief is bots are going to be the future of customer service and fulfilme...
Giridhar Prathap Reddy
NAB taps power of AI chatbots for business customer service
Thanks for writing about chatbots. Definitely bots have the exciting future when it comes to customer engagement, transactional and conve...
Giridhar Prathap Reddy
Deloitte TMT Predictions: AR and mobile crucial for marketing success in 2018
Hi there! Thanks for this interesting article! I love to read about new technology and software that makes our lives easier. I'm looking ...
Julia Summer
Wartsila overhauls Web platforms to create ‘seamless’ brand experience across all devices
RE: Sales and marketing SLAs, often the choke point isn't the teams but them getting the data into the tools they want to use with the da...
Ed Fry
Why sales and marketing alignment is more important than ever
Thank you for the good and very helpful information. It is very interesting. I love all the things you share and see your beautiful creat...
รัตนาวดี ภูมิวรรณ
Former eHarmony marketing chief joins telco startup