Although viral email marketing may sound like a “bad” thing, it is not spam. You are not paying for a list of random e-mail addresses, accumulated by some other company. You are actually encouraging your current customers to tell their friends about your products or services.
It is the same as word of mouth advertising, is comparable to multi-level marketing and it is extremely effective. The right campaign for your business depends on what your company sells or the services that you offer. But there are six basic elements that make up an effective strategy. First, you have to give something away.
Yes, you are in business to sell your product, but people always love free items. What you can give away depends on your business. It may simply be information, like a free newsletter, delivered via e-mail. You might offer an item, like a bumper sticker, but in order to get the “special” bumper sticker, the customer might have to pay for it.
Candidates during the recent presidential campaign used this method to get donations.When a person signed up to receive their free bumper sticker, they were directed to tell some of their friends.They gave the e-mail addresses of many of their friends and a viral email marketing strategy was born.
Another element is the ability to pass along the information easily from one person to the next.E-mails are the best for this.With a little software or a dynamic marketing company, the entire system can be automated to the point that you never need to do much of anything.
The next element is to be able to handle any increase in business.What if the virus spreads too rapidly and you become saturated with new orders that you are unable to fill. That’s one of the things to think about before you partake in a viral email marketing campaign.
Two more elements are to take advantage of highly common motivations and existing communication networks.The most common human motivations are greed, the need to be loved, understood and popular.
The existing communication networks are the e-mail addresses that most people have.Sociologists say that most individuals have a network of at least 8-12 people with whom they are close to and communicate with frequently.The goal is to encourage each of your clients to give you some e-mail addresses or, at least, send your message along to them.
That’s how viral email marketing works and is the last element of the campaign; taking advantage of the resources of others.
