Move over Dell. You're not the only company looking to turn social media into a medium for loyalty marketing.
If you wear shoes (who doesn't?) and want to be part of an exclusive club of VIP shoe buyers, you have less than 200 minutes to become a Zappos.com VIP. Zappos.com, of course, is the online shoe retailer whose CEO, Tony Hsieh, has made extensive use of social media, namely through Twitter, where he has over 50,000 followers.
Now Zappos.com is leveraging its social media popularity to promote a limited-time offer - the Zappos.com VIP.
Zappos.com VIPs "get exclusive features and benefits available only to our VIP customers!"
One major benefit being promoted: guaranteed free overnight shipping (within the continental United States).
Not a bad deal. But with less than 200 minutes left to go in this round of the VIP offering (Zappos.com started offering VIP memberships last month for short periods of time), you have to be quick.
And being quick is largely the result of being on social media services like Twitter, which is obviously the point.
Clearly, companies are getting more creative in using these types of services to extract value and build relationships with those who 'follow' them, and in this case, Zappos.com is cleverly using Twitter to promote a program that results in registrations that it be stored in its own database.
And just as with Dell's program, Twitter isn't getting paid a cent.
Patricio Robles is a tech reporter at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter.
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UK Social Media Statistics
Econsultancy's UK Social Media Statistics document is one of 11 individual downloads that make up Econsultancy’s UK Internet Statistics Compendium, a comprehensive compilation of statistics and online market research with data, facts, charts and figures that are essential to understanding the marketplace as a whole.
Alternatively, see our Twitter for Business or Customer Engagement Report 2011.
7:28PM on 5th February 2009
Using Twitter with time limited offers is very clever.. Twitter is very much a speed of interaction thing.. People respond incredibly quickly to news, and offers. So having a time limited offer of only a few hours is very clever..
Mark Shaw
http://twitter.com/markshaw
4:34PM on 14th February 2009
you are amazing.
3:22AM on 9th October 2009
Yes I think clever. Get more people that way.