CheapTweet Blog

Twitter posted its first @earlybird deal today. We haven’t written or said much about @earlybird yet, partly because we wanted to see it in action before discussing it. But we’re really excited that Twitter is participating in the deals space and we’re honored to be among their suggested users for Deals and Discounts on Twitter.

The first @earlybird deal was a ticket offer for @DisneyPictures‘ new film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. While we think @earlybird is a good idea, their first deal attempt hit some rough spots. They had to repeat (and reword) the deal a few times because redeeming it was a bit tricky.

If even Twitter can trip up a bit, then of course it will be difficult for all the merchants out there to get it right. We thought now seemed like a good time to revisit some of the things we’ve learned running CheapTweet. Posting deals in a real-time, short-form channel like Twitter is actually quite different than announcing deals in email newsletters, blog posts, or even Facebook.

Lots of people tweet about coupons and discounts; the CheapTweet search engine finds about 40,000 deal tweets every day. And each day, we tweet about a handful of these deals to @CheapTweet Twitter followers. We’ve seen every kind of deal you can imagine – the good, the bad, and the oh-so-spammy. And since we find 40,000 new deals every single day, there’s a lot of data to learn from.

We’ve written a few times about how to effectively tweet deals. There is our original post on Twitter Tips for Retailers and its updated companion, More Twitter Tips for Retailers. These posts are based on our experience aggregating and filtering the millions of deals we’ve seen on Twitter the past two years.

What we’ve learned is that tweeting deals comes down to three things:

• Keep it simple
• Don’t repeat yourself
• Offer something people want

Take a look below for some more info on these three things and some examples of where @earlybird tripped up.

Keep it simple

Deals must be simply worded and easy to redeem. The first @earlybird deal required several steps and a coupon code to actually redeem the deal. Ideally, there should be only one click to get to the product for sale. Don’t send Twitter users to your Facebook page before routing them on to your website. Don’t make them fill out long forms, remember complicated coupon codes, or take multiple steps to save a few bucks. Above all, make sure customers can quickly and easily purchase. Don’t make them ask you what to do.

The simpler the redemption process is, the more redemptions you’ll get.

Don’t repeat yourself (much)

On Twitter, it’s easy to miss a tweet. Things move so fast and many of us follow hundreds of other people. This means tweeting a deal a few times seems like a good idea, just to make sure everyone has a chance to see it. In fact, we often encourage that – over a period of hours or even days. But posting a deal a bunch of times in a row is overwhelming and unnecessary. Especially if you have to tweet multiple times to clarify what the deal is or how to redeem it (see previous point). This definitely tripped up @earlybird.

Offer something people want

Finally – and most important of all – a deal simply must be relevant to its audience. If it’s not relevant, it’s spam. Figure out what your customers are looking for and give it to them. Sure, there’s no way to tweet something that absolutely everyone will like, but you can definitely avoid tweeting a deal no one wants. For example, we know that if we tweet about a deal from Starbucks, it’ll get retweeted dozens of times – lots of people like Starbucks.

When choosing what other deals to tweet about for our followers, we think about ourselves, our parents and our kids (well, our friends’ kids, but you get the point). If any of those groups would like a deal, then we’ll tweet it. If none of them would like it, then we won’t tweet it. You can’t really blame Twitter for this one, since Disney’s usually a pretty good bet, but the Sorcerer’s Apprentice hasn’t exactly gotten rave reviews.

Really, what we’ve learned is that, like other interactions on Twitter, posting deals is more than just tossing out 140 characters of text. We’re happy that Twitter is posting deals through @earlybird and we can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s deal will be. Social media channels like Twitter are a great place to post and find deals. And even with today’s hiccups, today’s @earlybird deal worked and saved people money.

If you post deals to Twitter, you want our search engine to pick up your deals and post them on CheapTweet.com, make sure you’re following our deal tweet guidelines. Or just ask us! We’ve seen it all and can help you figure out the best way to make sure your deals are clicked on and retweeted. Find us on Twitter at @cheaptweet.