Twitter’s New Lead Generation Cards Make Lead Generation Easy (Obviously)

Marketing through Twitter has always been a challenge for businesses. With 400 million Tweets per day, it’s hard to cut through the clutter and collect valuable information from one’s followers.

Until now.

Twitter has announced a massive expansion of its Cards feature to give marketers new tools to obtain direct leads from the social media network. The new Lead Generation Card allows brands to collect leads directly from Tweets.

Quick recap: According to Twitter, there are seven types of cards that can be attached to Tweets and used in conjunction with the new lead-generation feature:

• Summary Card: Default card, including a title, description, thumbnail, and Twitter account attribution
• Large Image Summary Card: Similar to a Summary Card, but it offers the ability to prominently feature an image
• Photo Card: A Tweet-sized photo card
• Gallery Card: A Tweet card geared toward highlighting a collection of photos
• App Card: A Tweet card for providing a profile of an application
• Player Card: A Tweet-sized video/audio/media player card
• Product Card: A Tweet card to better represent product content

Here’s how the revamped cards work: When someone expands your Tweet, they’ll immediately see a description of your offer and a call-to-action—plus, the username, name, and email address will already be completed.

This is a big step on Twitter’s end, and it’s a great option for brands looking to capitalize on Twitter’s utility as a referral marketing tool. More followers and a higher click-through rate are great, but they don’t necessarily translate into short-term sales.

Businesses investing in social media marketing should look for ways to prompt tangible actions from their customers that will impact their bottom line. This is especially so for a referral marketing program. And as you know, referral marketing results rely heavily on a brand forming a strong, trust-based relationship with its customers—a relationship that can most effectively be developed through providing value.

Value is a pretty broad term, and it means different things to different customers. By understanding your most engaged users, you’ll be able to find the perfect reward for new referrals. And this type of information can be collected only through effective lead-generation strategies.

Keep in mind that the cards don’t collect too much information—just usernames, names, and emails. This means that using the Lead Generation Card feature will be only as effective as the referral marketing infrastructure you have in place to back it up—something that will nurture new leads into powerful, loyal brand ambassadors.

Here’s the main takeaway: Leveraging this new Twitter feature will help get the ball rolling on finding priceless information about your followers, which will lead to a more personalized referral program and ultimately pave the way for an entirely organic inbound marketing infrastructure.

What do Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards mean for your brand? Share your thoughts in the comments!