When customers talk with us about their Twitter Marketing strategies, direct message (DM) campaigns are one of the most appreciated and used features. (Nov 2017 - UPDATE: Direct Message campaigns are no longer available. The new way to send automated direct messages is through Twitter Chatbot.) Considering the results, it’s not surprising: customers have hit a high CTR rate of up to 71%, far outstripping their email efforts. A competent, creative DM strategy that is sensitive to your followers’ needs and desires will become a tremendously effective pillar of your marketing activities.
There are many uses for DM campaigns, especially now that sending DMs with multimedia content at scale is an option. If you haven’t used direct message campaigns, or have thought a campaign could have performed better, we bring you a collection of use cases and examples of how other brands have used them to achieve success in their marketing activities.
1. Product launch
If your latest product is coming to market, you want to get the most out of your big moment. Use DM campaigns to work on your relationships with micro-influencers and ambassadors.
Once you have identified your key influencers, begin the conversation about involving them with the launch. You can communicate far more in a DM compared to a Tweet, plus with good personalisation and segmentation our clients are regularly seeing response rates that beat email.
Identify followers who are part of a key target audience, and build a DM campaign to offer discount codes for the product you are launching. Alternatively, if you have a specific date in mind, DMs are the perfect way to organise a “thunderclap”, where everyone Tweets about the campaign at the same time.
2. Competitions and contests
Are you running a contest on Twitter? DMs can be a great way to get in touch with the participants and keep them informed about the development of the contest.
You can let them know that their entry has been registered, announce the different phases of the competition, deadlines and key dates, what the final result are or who are the winners... And of course you can say thank you to them for participating! Remember to create a follow-up campaign and build the audience with all those who joined your contest to let them know them and invite them to join next time you run a new competition.
Did you know that Carlsberg achieved a 96% retention of the new followers they got with one of their competitions during the Euro 2016 and outperformed key competitor’s Twitter campaign for the tournament by 3-to-1? Find out all the details of this case study and follow its example.
3. Publishing news or other content
Twitter’s quick replies and welcome messages open up a whole world of possibilities for brands to communicate in a personalised way with their followers.
Our Audiense Experiences solution is built on these direct message types, and empowers major publishers such as The Economist and El País provide a tailored news service to Twitter users who can choose the topics and news that they want to receive by DM.
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/793486163671560192
4. Targeted welcome DMs
The era of generic and substance-free welcome messages ended a long time ago. To welcome your new followers and have those DMs get warmly received, deliver something valuable in that message.
How? Study what you can offer to your new followers, beyond a simple "hello" or requesting them to do something that doesn’t obviously benefit them. That’s what UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) does. New followers of its global account are analyzed and segmented, and receive a welcome DM informing them about the existence of their local Twitter accounts, so fans could find more appropriate information.
Read what the results were and see the keys to their success.
5. Lead generation
Just because someone follows you on Twitter does not mean that they are in your CRM database - but it’s a reasonable assumption they have some interest in your brand, products, or services. In exchange for their contact details, offer them something relevant to their interests, which they’ll be keen to get hold of.
6. Events
When people are on the go, Twitter is often far more practical when you need to spread information at events. This is due to the high volume of people partaking in the digital conversation surrounding it.
Build an audience with all people registered in your event (you can import them from your email base) and communicate with them before and during the event through personalized DMs. These should be updates and reminders for the most important things related to your event: registration deadlines reminders, agenda, opportunities, changes, and information related to other participants.
An after event strategy is important too. Share a summary of the event, or an invitation or a discount to attend to the next edition? The possibilities are unlimited.
7. Brand awareness
Did your company recently re-brand? Are you going to make a corporate announcement? Do you want to share your latest CSR report?
DMs can be a good vehicle for brand messages to reach users, especially now that you can include multimedia content in them. A good GIF, a stunning image, or an engaging video gives your message the strength you need.
These are also good opportunities to engage again with those customers and other contacts you have lost contact with. Build an audience of contacts in your CRM that have not opened any emails from you in the last six months. Customise messages to them to get them engaged with your brand again.
There are many different DM tactics for you to use on Twitter, which will produce astounding results. Do you use direct messages on Twitter for your marketing strategies, or do you want to start? Develop these tactics today by starting your Audiense trial and get down to work!
