Since they started to use Twitter in 2007, Dell has earned more than $2 million in revenues according to a statement by DELL-Stefanie N on Twitter. If you join Dell on Twitter you get exclusive Twitter discounts, like this one which I found on the social media optimization blog, which has already been expired.

They have over 600.000 followers right now and in the last three month they increased their number of followers by 421%, which was due to the launch of more exclusive offers. The following chart shows the immense growth of followers according to the Twitter counter from March to June 2009. These figures show the growing influence of digital marketing channels to promote products exclusively. Dell uses Twitter as an online marketing strategy with success. I went on reading about Twitter as a marketing channel and found an interesting post on topspinmedia about Twitter as a direct marketing channel. Jimmy Eat World made us of Twitter to post news during their tour and had about 200,000 followers within 30 days. Over 20% of their revenues were due to Twitter. These figures show that Twitter can be a viable marketing channel to promote your products. The word is spread faster online because people can be reached more easily on a gobal scale within a short time. The word is spread like a virus at virtually no cost through Twitter. The quote of the Twitter user Lee Martin is a good way to explain this phenomenon:

“It’s as if you were in a record store looking at the new Jimmy Eat World release and 1000 people standing next to you told you how good it was.”

Let´s see what´s going to happen in the future.