Twitter powers-up Direct Messages with smart new action buttons

Twitter just souped up Direct Messages, in the process making them more useful for brands when it comes to customer service and growing engagement.

Now, businesses have the option to add buttons to direct messages. These let customers easily do something — like follow an account, visit an external web page, or tweet something.

There’s also a button that can start a direct message conversation with another account. This is useful for those times when someone tweets at the marketing account for a brand, when they actually need the customer service account.

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Up to three buttons can be attached to any message, and the text on each button is fully-customizable, and as you might expect, fully supports emojis. While links can point anywhere, and also access features within the Twitter application.

So, how might we expect this to be used? Focus Features, for example, is using it to get people buying cinema tickets for its upcoming films. While STX Entertainment is using it as a gameplay mechanism, in order to promote the new Luc Besson film.

Twitter’s Direct Messages is a vital tool for brands, and follows the launch of Direct Message Cards last month.

This new feature makes it easier for companies to make (no pun intended) their DMs more engaging, and to automate the boring stuff. I’d be surprised if there isn’t a huge takeup for this. Sadly, it won’t make its way to the general public.

You can expect this feature to start rolling out today. It will be visible across the Twitter iOS and Android apps, as well as through the desktop web client.