American Express Tweet & Save Campaign Increases Follower Growth By 400%

@American Express, leaders in social media amongst the top financial companies, has recently launched what we believe is an inspired campaign that blends discounts, social media and positive brand engagement. The way Amex has made Twitter such an integral part of the campaign is completely unique and to top it off for good measure they’ve even brought in a way to measure the ROI of the campaign down to the last penny.

The campaign has been so successful that in the previous 30 days Amex added an average of 1100 followers but since the launch of Tweet & Save, that number has quadrupled to an average of 5,600 new followers – a whopping 400% increase!

By synchronizing a Twitter account with an Amex account, cardholders can retweet certain hashtags to earn discounts and rebates at the largest retail stores in America. There are loads of places to get discounts such as @McDonalds, @Zappos, @WholeFoods and @Best Buy, to name but a few, and to score a discount all the cardholder needs to do is a quick retweet.

@WholeFoods, Tweet #AmexWholeFoods, get $20 back 1x on next $75+ store pur w/synced Amex Card! QtyLtd, Exp 4/30. Terms http://t.co/R28qEtth

— American Express (@AmericanExpress) March 7, 2012

This certainly creates a win-win situation for Amex and participating brands as it not only gets people shopping at the different places but also raises the social media profile of these brands.

We learned about this innovative new campaign when we received an alert (Note: all Unmetric customers receive customized alerts) that there was “Different from normal” activity on the Amex Twitter account. The phrase “Different from normal” doesn’t really do justice the effect the campaign has had on the increase in number of followers as the graph below shows:

It’s not just Amex that have benefited from this massive rise in visibility; brand partners have also seen an increase in growth rates as the WholeFoods graph shows below.

Tweet #AmexWholefoods get 1-$20 credit w/single purchase in store of $75+ on synced AmexCard thru 4/30 QtyLtd See terms http://t.co/4TPwx2XG

— Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods) March 7, 2012

Using hashtags for marketing purposes is nothing new, but with the new data mining tool Amex has developed and by syncing with people’s Twitter accounts, suddenly ROI tracking from Twitter has become an exact science. There is also a rather spiffy Youtube video that explains the concept further.

We’re excitedly looking forward to seeing how other brands are going to use this concept to create campaigns in their own sectors – and Unmetric will be there to watch over the impact it has had.

Graphs and data taken from the Unmetric platform, click here to request a 10 day free trial.