The Challenge: During Ad Week, Twitter VP Joel Lunenfeld drew a staggering correlation between a user's activity on Twitter and their television watching habits. What could this mean for multichannel customer engagement?
During his IAB Mixx presentation at Ad Week, Joel Lunenfeld, Twitter's global brand strategy VP, shared data that Twitter had gathered about users' brand relationships. According to Lunenfeld, 9 out of 10 users follow at least one brand on Twitter.
While most users followed brands for the sake of receiving promotional news, 87 percent followed brands for entertainment purposes and 80% did so for access to exclusive content.
More interesting, however, was the correlation found between Twitter usage and TV watching habits. "Twitter is the EKG of action for television," said Lunenfeld, citing data that showed 50 percent of Twitter users do so while watching TV. This provides massive opportunities for multi-channel engagement, and brands are capitalizing on this by turning their Twitter conversations into ad campaigns.
Audi, for example, noted that a fan posted a tweet with the hashtag "#IWantAnR8". In response, they brought the fan an R8 to test-drive, and turned the entire experience into a commercial. Instances like this demonstrate that the barrier between advertising channels is blurring every day, and that content is quickly becoming more important than ever.
American Express is also taking advantage of the Twitter multichannel phenomenon with their Sync program, which transforms special Twitter #hashtags into savings for card members. If a U.S. card member is eligible, they can sync their AmEx Card with Twitter, and when they tweet using special offer hashtags, savings are automatically loaded onto the synced Cards, with no coupons or printouts required. In this game-changing example, AmEx is turning Twitter content into commerce by connecting card members directly to merchants and delivering value to both.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR MARKETERS
1. Engagement on multiple channels is essential.
Consumers have come to expect a multichannel experience from their marketing. Twitter may not be the first to attempt multichannel marketing, but it's quickly becoming a bastion for companies that want preference-driven, engagement-rich campaigns.
2. Give people reasons and ways to share.
Giving customers the tools and incentive to share across multiple channels is the perfect way to engage them and enrich their experience. AmEx exemplifies this, giving their customers both value and the means to share that value with others via Twitter.
3. Blur the lines between conversation and marketing.
As we saw in the Audi example, social media marketing can be enhanced by crossing channels and bringing conversations to life for users. It generates positive press, gets people talking, and creates a genuine level of trust between you and your customers.
About Ernan Roman Direct Marketing Corp., (ERDM):
ERDM provides Voice of Customer-driven Customer Experience Marketing consulting services for companies such as IBM, MassMutual, QVC, NBC Universal, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Symantec Corp. They have conducted over 9000 hours of in-depth interviews with customers and prospects of these clients to gain an in-depth understanding of their expectations for a high value customer experience.
Ernan Roman, President, is recognized as an industry pioneer and was recently inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame for creating three transformational methodologies: Integrated Direct Marketing, Opt-in Marketing, and Voice of Customer Relationship Research.
He was also named by Crain's B to B Magazine as one of the "100 most influential people in Business Marketing".
His latest book on marketing best practices is titled, "Voice of the Customer Marketing: A Proven 5-Step Process to Create Customers Who Care, Spend, and Stay." 
Ernan is also the author of the widely read blog, "Ernan's Insights on Marketing Best Practices", (www.erdm.com), and author of "Opt-in Marketing" and "Integrated Direct Marketing".
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ernan@erdm.com