Twitter Inc (TWTR) Extends Its e-Commerce Unit, Unveils ‘Twitter Offers’

‘Twitter Offers’ is a new commerce product announced by the social networking giant recently, which is being tested by it at present. The first commerce product from the company was the ‘Buy’ button using which the buyers could make their purchase directly from the tweets and it was announced in September this year.

‘Twitter Offers’ in testing phase

Businesses that choose to advertise on Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) are the target of this new feature. The new product makes it possible for the companies to use their tweets for offering the cash-back rewards. The debit and credit cards of the consumers will have the rewards tied to them. Some significant advantages will be offered by the card-based approach. The offers will be there in the Timeline for the customers to see, for example it is possible that the person buys a coffee for $5 and gets a cash-back reward of $2.

The customers will not need to leave the platform for adding the cash-back rewards to their cards. This simplifies the process of making payment in a store while purchasing a product as no change in behavior is needed. The user need not present any coupon, rather he/she can avail the cash back by paying with the card itself, which will reflect later in the statements.

Testing is initially taking place in the United States on desktop and mobile. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) will be testing these offers in holiday-related promotions and will work with few brands as mentioned in the post.

Security already taken care of

From the security point, Twitter said that the card information is encrypted, and card can be removed later. CardSpring acquired by Twitter in July had already built the card integration, a Twitter spokesperson informs. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) had earlier partnered with Datalogix for providing the businesses with an easy and reliable way of tracking, when their Twitter ads actually drive the customers for making a purchase in the store.

Tarun Jain, the Group Product Manager, said in a blog post, “we make it easy for merchants to get up and running because they can use their existing payment network, there’s no change to the consumer purchase process, no employee training and no new hardware or software to install.” He added that Twitter has robust targeting capabilities that includes geo-targeting and the advertisers can leverage those to reach the right target audience by tailoring their promotions and campaigns accordingly.