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 no different from word of mouth advertising, very similar to multi-level marketing and it is highly effective. The right campaign for your business depends on what your company sells or the services that you offer.But there are a total of six basic elements that make up any successful strategy.First and foremost, you must 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 paper weight, but in order to get the “special” paper weight, the customer might have to pay for it.
Candidates during the most recent presidential campaign utilized 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.
The second key element is the ability to transfer the information with ease from one person to the another.E-mails are exactly right for this.With a little software or a great marketing company, the whole system can be automated to the point that you will need to do very little.
The third element is to have the structure to handle the huge 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.
The fourth and fifth points are to take advantage of usual motivations and existing communication networks.Common human motivations would include greed, the need to be loved, as well as popular and understood.
The existing communication networks are those e-mail addresses that nearly everyone has.Sociologists say individuals have a network of at least 8-12 people with whom they communicate with often. Your goal is to encourage each of your customers to give you those 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.
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