Twitter Announces Lead Generation Cards for Targeted List Building

The traditional practice of driving traffic to a company site or blog in an effort to convince a visitor to sign up for a news letter or insider club can be a daunting task. Often times the email sign up form is off to the side of the page or worst yet is in a pop up box, egging on the reader in a spammy fashion.While for many sites this is standard practice, it is not a precise mechanic for gathering leads.

In the case of social media, consider the fact that brands spend their time, energy and money to build a massive following on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc., only to not have fully access to those hard earned fans. Businesses never actually ‘own’ their fans, the network does and their terms of service ultimately decides how you can market to those fans.

Twitter has taken this into consideration and today they have launched ‘Lead Generation Cards’. When a perspective customer clicks on one of your tweets they will see a headline and a link to your service. Once they click to expand the tweet, they are presented with an offer to join your “club” (email list). Now you have a highly targeted email list of fans that you know are definitely interested in your product and services.

In Twitter’s words:

Marketers regularly talk to us about their goals, and for many it boils down to one major theme: generating leads, and ultimately driving purchases.

When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the Card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you.

[caption id=”attachment_5425" align=”aligncenter” width=”520"]

Twitter Lead Generation Card[/caption]

The one draw back to this new ad tool is whether or not people will click through to expand the tweet and see the full offer. Essentially Twitter needs to prove to advertisers via hard stats that this new format leads to sign ups and ultimately conversion to customers.

What do you think of Twitter new Lead Generation Cards, are they innovative enough to include in your ad campaign?

You can follow me here: @KevinMinott