Continuing its push to make life easier for companies advertising on it, Twitter announced two new features that will allow brands to tailor messages to specific audiences.
The jury is still out on whether Promoted Tweets are effective in reeling in new customers, but they can be a powerful promotional tool for reaching existing customers. To that end, Twitter will now allow integration with a brand’s existing CRM system, using it to access the email database of existing customers. The email addresses of the customers are then matched to their Twitter profiles, and those profiles can then be shown Promoted Tweets specifically tailored to them. In this way, brands have an additional channel to reach existing customers, informing them about in-store promotions, discounts or rewards. Conversely, if a brand wants to reach only new customers, it can use the CRM integration to exclude existing customers.
Twitter helpfully illustrates how the targeting works here:
However, in order for this sort of targeting to work, customers would have to use the same email addresses in the CRM database as their Twitter profiles, which isn’t always the case. However, if there is a match, it’s an effective way to mine an existing customer base.
Another way to reach a target audience is to identify them using their Twitter IDs. Suppose a brand wanted to reach only fashion influencers, or food bloggers. It could ask for Twitter’s help in identifying that group using public information in their Twitter profiles. Once the audience has been identified, they can be shown Promoted Tweets that are crafted according to their profiles, in the hopes that these influencers will spread the message to their followers.
And just in case Twitter users don’t want their information to be used for ad targeting, Twitter has an opt-out feature whereTwitter users can simply uncheck the box in their privacy settings next to “Tailor ads based on information shared by ads partners.”
Here’s how it works:
