Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find an e-mail newsletter from … Twitter! I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, but at first I was a bit surprised that the company that made "140 characters" a household name decided to get a message out to their members via e-mail.
It is a good reminder to all of us that e-mail is still a great way to get a message out, especially to your loyal fans (or followers).
Here is some text from the e-mail, sent by Biz Stone, Twitter Inc. co-founder:
"In the early days of Twitter, I used to send out short updates just to keep everyone in the loop since so much was happening. It’s been a while, but you signed up for short, monthly updates from Twitter so we thought it was time to start sharing more information. We’ve had quite a year. If you haven’t visited in a while, we’d like to invite you to come have a look at http://twitter.com — we’ve been busy.
"In the course of a year, registered Twitter accounts have grown more than 1,500 percent and our team has grown 500 percent. Recently, we hired our 140th employee! His name is Aaron and he’s an engineer focused on building internal tools to help promote productivity, communication, and support within our company. We celebrated with a little dance party.
"Some features of note that we released over the course of a year include the ability to create lists, quickly spread information with a retweet button, and an easier way to activate your mobile phone to work with Twitter over SMS. We also built a new mobile Web site that looks and works much better on smartphones.
"By working together during critical times when others needed help, sharing important information that otherwise might not make the news, and inventing new and interesting ways to use Twitter, you’ve shown us that Twitter is more than a triumph of technology — it is a triumph of humanity. Projects like Fledgling and Hope140 were inspired by you.
"While there may only be 140 full-time employees working at the Twitter offices, there are thousands of dedicated platform developers who have now created more than 70,000 registered Twitter applications, creating variety and utility for all of us. We’ll be gathering this spring at Chirp, our first ever official Twitter developer conference."
I would love your thoughts on e-mail newsletters. I am a big believer in them myself, especially to drive traffic to your Web site or blog. I also think they are a fantastic way to keep your raving fans updated on the latest and greatest that you are promoting.
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Katie Lance is the marketing manager for Inman News. Future of Real Estate Marketing is a part of Inman News.
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