On July 8, 2010, Twitter announced its new @earlybird profile. With just 2 tweets published on July 8th and 1 tweet published on July 9th, the @earlybird profile had nearly 40,000 followers by July 12th. Not bad. Check it out below.
What’s so special about this Twitter profile that people want to follow it? Simple — they believe the promise of what this Twitter profile, called Twitter @earlybird Exclusive Offers, claims to be able to deliver — real-time deals and exclusive, limited-time only discounts. If you follow @earlybird, great discounts will appear in your Twitter stream, so you can take advantage of them before they disappear.
Here is how Twitter describes @earlybird Exclusive Offers on the Twitter Help Center:
“Twitter @earlybird Exclusive Offers are special time-bound deals, sneak-peeks, and events that are promoted by the official Twitter @earlybird account. We partner with select advertisers and retweet offers that they have crafted only for the Twitter community. Our advertising partners determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and price. As with other forms of advertising from Twitter, we are focused on bringing value to our users and will keep your interests in mind as we develop this program.”
Twitter partners with advertisers to choose the deals to promote on the @earlybird profile, which will always be time-sensitive or supply-sensitive. Of course, Twitter will make some money from these partnerships, too. At first, advertising partners will represent large, international brands or be focused on the U.S. market, but in time, Twitter plans to roll out more diverse deals, location-based deals, category-specific deals, and more.
As the success of the @DellOutlet Twitter profile demonstrates, consumers truly do use Twitter to find useful promotions and deals. Twitter might just have something with the @earlybird Exclusive Offers program. The company certainly needs to find ways to make money, and since the @earlybird Exclusive Offers program is opt-in, consumers only see the tweets and deals if they take an action and follow the @earlybird profile. Advertisers also benefit from the opt-in feature, since followers are likely to be more receptive to the promotions they hear about through @earlybird.
I think it’s safe to assume that if the deals tweeted through the @earlybird profile are good ones, we’ll see that list of 40,000 followers grow quickly. What do you think?
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
it is Interesting how a Twitter Profile managed to get so many followers