• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 29, 2013

Twitter made its Lead Generation Card business available Thursday to all advertisers. The company had announced in May limited availability for the tool aimed at helping advertisers find and connect with users off the social platform who are interested in their message.

Changes to the platform were made based on brand feedback. Rock/Creek generated a 4.6% engagement rate and more than 1,700 new email contacts in less than one week after using the tool in a Promoted Tweet campaign. It helped the apparel company capture the email addresses of people entering a drawing to win a free pair of Chaco sandals.

Mark McKnight, marketing and creative director at Rock Creek, explains in a post how the tool has targeted interests and user names. The key is knowing the consumers were interested in the products.

Advertisers can download leads straight from Twitter Ads into a spreadsheet and instantly update incoming leads into a CRM system, and can access metrics within the reports for each of the Promoted Tweet campaigns. They are more easily found and viewed to help optimize card designs, such as cost per lead by card.

Twitter also made the tool available in all languages that the company supports for ad campaigns. It will continue to experiment with card layouts to ensure that advertisers can use the tool for various pitches, from coupons to newsletter subscriptions.

On Wednesday, the company launched conversations -- the ability to read the entire conversation timeline with a tap. Conversational tweets are shown in chronological order, making it easier for readers to follow along, according to Twitter, Product Manager Jinen Kamdar tells us in a blog post. Readers will see up to three tweets in sequence. Tapping a tweet will allow readers to see all replies, including those from people that are not followed.