Twitter’s marketing appeal rises after latest changes

Digital Marketing, Industry News By Rhys Little, 15th January 2014

Online marketers could be set to focus their efforts firmly on Twitter in 2014, after the company agreed to provide agencies and businesses with even more information on its users.

According to thenextweb.com, the firm’s decision will see marketers given the ability to link email addresses they already have to corresponding Twitter profiles, so that strategies can be more thoroughly tailored. The changes will also see usernames made available for the same targeting purposes.

It is thought that the decision will further improve Twitter’s reputation as an invaluable tool for advertisers.

Using a hypothetical clothing firm as an example, Twitter’s product manager Kelton Lynn explained how the new feature would work. In a blog post on twitter.com, he said: “To get [a] special offer to cardholders who are on Twitter, the retailer may share with us unreadable scrambles (called hashes) of the email addresses of its card members.

“We can then match that information to Twitter accounts in order to show the matched users a Promoted Tweet with the sale information.”

While Twitter’s decision is likely to cause some privacy concerns among consumers, the company did confirm that users would have the choice to opt out by simply changing their profile settings.