Dell Starts Offering Exclusive Discounts Through Twitter

Dell’s Twitter experiment seems to be working. After making $1 million during the holidays by alerting Twitter followers to sale items, Dell is now offering discounts exclusively to the 11,844 people who follow @DellOutlet. For instance, here is a Tweet with a link to a 30-percent-off deal on an XPS laptop. When you click on the link, it takes you to this product page on Dell.com.

The new marketing program was, of course, announced on Twitter, as well as on this Direct2Dell blog post:

Beginning today, Dell will offer deals from the Dell Outlet exclusive to Twitter in the U.S. With over 11,000 followers, our team wanted to show their thanks to the Twitter world through these new deals which will continue each week.

Signing up for what is essentially a marketing email on Twitter perhaps gives some consumers the feeling of being part of an exclusive club. (It’s so exclusive, anyone can join). Or maybe they simply don’t want this junk filling up their inbox, and can choose to pay attention only when they are in the market for Dell products.

Twitter as a marketing channel. Hmm, . . . there must be a way to charge for that.