Marketers remain skeptical about the return of social media campaigns on Twitter, according to speakers at New Media Age’s London event. Dell Computers has been able to drive $3 million in sales across its Twitter channel since 2007, which sounds impressive until you realize that this figure accounts for about 2.4% of Dell’s latest Q2 revenue. Kerry Bridge, a member of Dell’s Digital Media Communications team, acknowledged as much at the conference: ”Although $3 million in sales for a brand like Dell isn’t huge, it’s still worthwhile.”
Meanwhile, the sky’s the limit on Twitter ROI if you’re willing to break a few rules. Just ask Moonfruit, which aroused the ire of Twitter users when it launched its marketing campaign earlier this year. Users who appended their tweets with the hashtag #moonfruit would stand a chance of winning a MacBook Pro each day over a 10-day period.
The controversial (read: spammy) nature of the campaign even prompted Twitter to manually remove Moonfruit from its top trending results, where it quickly appeared as a result of the MacBook-inspired tweeting frenzy.
For now, marketers seem resigned to the idea that they will soon need to incorporate Twitter into their digital mix, even if the quest for a tangible ROI remains out of reach.

