Could Twitter Replace Opt-In Email for Consumer Brands?

One of our most popular articles asked, "Is Twitter F’ed?" in regards to their massive growth with no apparent business model to take care of revenue growth meeting user growth. Todd Defren wonders if Twitter could be used by brands to reach their loyal customers with quick, short messages about new products and promotions.

In my past, I built customer databases with millions of records and send huge masses of opt-in emails that cost large amounts to produce, mail, and maintain. In the end, most of the emails were based around promotions, new products or seasonal items. Could Twitter replace it all and make the communication more often, better received by the consumer and less expensive for the company?

Dell Outlet has a Twitter stream which has, on average, one new posting a week with 556 people subscribed currently. What if Twitter charged Dell $x per subscriber? Could that be the business model that allows Twitter to keep personal use free? Jeremiah often speaks about how companies should (and could) get involved in the conversation. This could be a great way for that to happen as it’s completely opt-in and can be targeted to the degree needed to please the consumer.  

Some examples:

• Local car dealership posting specials daily – consumer could signup only for Toyota used-car deals
• PizzaHut pushing out their latest pizza deals
• Apple offering a unique discount code for those on the Twitter list (naturally I am kidding, Apple will never offer a deal!)
• NY Realtor showing latest apartments when they hit the market — quicker than a rss feed or Craigslist scan
• What examples can you come up with?

Do you know of any other companies using Twitter now for marketing? Twitter could offer a company directory to let users signup for offers.

If companies have to shrink 10-minute product intros into 30 second TV commercials, could we see the shrinking of opt-in emails into 140 character, get them anywhere product messaging?