T-Shirt Retailer Gets a 4 Percent Conversion Rate on Twitter Traffic
By Anna Johnson on December 21st, 2009Yes, it’s possible to monetize Twitter traffic. In fact, online t-shirt retailer Threadless.com was able to convert 4 percent of the traffic it got from Twitter into sales during a one-day, $9 t-shirt sale in September.
According to a recent MarketingSherpa case study Threadless used Twitter to talk up and ignite a viral effect in the week before the company’s one-day sale on September 9, 2009.
With more than 1 million Twitter followers, Threadless had already built a loyal following, certainly helped by being on Twitter’s now-obsolete ‘suggested followers’ list and collaborating with Twitter on the ‘Twitter Tees’ site. The t-shirt retailer had also groomed its following by posting regular tweets, only 50 percent of which tended to be promotional.
A week before the sale day, Threadless began posting ‘teaser tweets’ such as ‘top 9′ lists, including employees’ 9 favorite shirts and songs. Using teaser tweets to build anticipation and buzz had previously worked well for the company in terms of priming its audience for a sales event.
When it came to the day of the sale, Threadless used Twitter to announce the $9 t-shirt offer and also a contest to encourage re-tweets. Threadless offered to give $99 gift certificates to 9 randomly selected followers who re-tweeted the sale and made winner announcements during the day to reignite interest in the event.
The first tweet Threadless made in relation to the sale was at 12.25 a.m. Central Standard Time. The company wanted to use central time in order to appeal to customers in Australia, Europe and Asia, in addition to those in the United States.
The message announcing the sale was as follows:
“Happy 9/9/09! ALL THREADLESS TEES ARE $9! No joke! (Pls RT for the chance to win a $99 gift code)http://thrdl.es”
Then, throughout the day, Threadless sent further tweets about the $9 shirt offer, gift certificate winners, and also jokes about their servers running slow.
The sale was a resounding success and, in particular, a success in terms of harnessing Twitter. Threadless estimates it got about 17,000 web visitors directly from Twitter during the sale, of which 4 percent made a purchase. At a minimum, Threadless’ Twitter traffic was worth $6,120 on September 9, 2009 (4 percent of 17,000 multiplied by $9)
In total – and undoubtedly due to the ‘multiplier effect’ of the tweets – the company got 73,000 visits to the site on September 9, which translated into its best sales day to date (since surpassed by Threadless’ sales on Black Friday).
