Viral Marketing Wizard's Blog » viral email

Track and Analyze Results of Viral eMail

admin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:08:51 +0000

Making money is exciting …. Right?

Now, here is the part that bores many people to tears.

But, just like any other type of marketing campaign, tracking your viral results and optimizing performance over time is absolutely necessary. Fortunately, current technology allows sophisticated e-mail marketers to track insightful and actionable data that can be used to evaluate performance. Important metrics to analyze are pass-along, click-through and conversion rates.

Marketers should separate the click-through and conversion rates by original customers from referrals and evaluate their respective performances. These metrics will alert a marketer to which offers their customers like and respond to the best.

Another concern is; how do you handle the customer dissatisfaction that comes from late, mishandled, and ignored email? With the volumes of inbound email correspondence to service, marketing, and sales organizations increasing on a daily basis, the chance for a misconnection is growing at an exponential rate annually.

If you’re running a marketing program, with a solid combination of advertising media plus direct mail and e-mail, chances are you’ve got leads and responses coming in from just about everywhere.

So how can you tell which of your marketing tactics are stellar performers and which need to be replaced? Tracking your marketing responses is easier than you think, and it’s the smartest way to save marketing dollars by cutting the fat and eliminating any non-performing media and tactics.

There are many programs out there that can help you track your viral e-mail marketing campaigns and do so at a pretty reasonable cost. GetResponse might be the service you’re looking for. Try it as it’s not that pricey and does the job very well.

There are others, of course. Search the Internet and find one that will suit your needs and provide you with the information in a form that is most helpful to you.

How to Make Viral eMail Legal

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:26:38 +0000

Concerns over sending unsolicited email is at the heart of the legality issue of using viral advertising. By using viral marketing tactics carefully, however, marketers can avoid the negative reactions and gain an excellent return on investment (ROI) t as they increase the reach of their marketing message to a targeted group far beyond their original audience.

Here are a few insights on how to execute a viral marketing campaign most effectively.

1. Offer an incentive. Viral marketing works best when a valuable and tangible incentive is offered that will encourage people to forward an e-mail message to their friends. Marketers should, however, cap the incentive to a specific quantity to avoid spam-like distribution of the message.

2. Do not consider the referral an opt-in. When a customer refers a friend, the referral shouldn’t be considered an opt-in. A name and e-mail address given by a person’s friend does not constitute an opt-in by the individual, so the data should be deleted immediately after the referral email is sent. The referral email should provide the recipient with the option to opt out if he or she does not want to receive future mailings.

3. Personalize the referral e-mail. Response rates increase dramatically when users can see that a message is coming from a friend, so it is always best to personalize the e-mail message to show that it is coming from a recognizable source. The subject line is the key component in a viral marketing e-mail because it can immediately identify the e-mail as friendly. A good subject line might read, “FYI: Jane Doe thought you’d like 20% off at ABC.com.”

4. Continually promote friendly referrals. Marketers who would like to have their messages forwarded frequently should place a viral marketing offer in every relevant outgoing e-mail message.

Get Your Viral eMail Forwarded

admin — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:21:38 +0000

Getting recipients of your viral advertising e-mail to forward it to their friends and coworkers isn’t as hard as it sounds. The whole trick is to make them WANT to share it and thereby share your advertisement. Neat! Cool! Free! Because entertainment has value, interactive content like a quiz or test can inspire forwarding, especially if it’s fun. Personality tests, fitness quizzes, or compatibility questionnaires are all things that I have received and sent at one time or another.

A really cool, multimedia experience is always going to achieve some pass-along action. Rich media email is getting a lot of press of late. Someone is always touting the benefits. It does take more time and a little money but the messages have great appeal. Rich media has the advantage of being new and therefore has the novelty and tech factor. That alone is often enough for the message to be seen as valuable and worth forwarding.

There are vendors like RidicalMail and AdTools that have “Forward to a Friend” capabilities built right into their technology. Right now this works but eventually marketers will still rely on the value of the proposition in their message to be enough to distinguish it from the rest.

So should you try to capitalize on viral marketing? Absolutely!

At the very least, it would be unwise to leave out factors in your e-mail advertising campaign that would inspire forwarding. After all, don’t you want maximum penetration into your target audience? You need to stretch those advertising dollars so hard you make George cry. You do, however, need to understand that viral marketing is a tactic that works toward achieving your campaign objective.

Oh…one more thing. No matter how brilliant you craft the offer and no matter how great the message, if the customer visits your site and has an experience less than what was promised, it will come back to bite you.

The Viral Marketing Value of eMail

admin — Fri, 08 May 2009 20:22:53 +0000

Viral Marketing using e-mail is not an objective. It is part of a campaign strategy that is used to achieve objectives. In order to achieve greater branding success exposure, you craft your e-mail message or offer in a way that it encourages pass-along.

Viral marketing is all about producing a message with a quality offer or incentive for pass-along. Just suggesting that email recipients forward your message to their friends is not viral marketing. Just a message at the bottom of your email that says, “Feel free to forward this message to a friend” is certainly not viral marketing at its best. You must offer something worthy of being shared… a valuable discount, vital and timely information, a bit of humor, or a quiz or personality test. Offer an incentive for sharing like additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added discount. Viral Marketing happens naturally. It is very often quite successful.

Let’s say that you receive two e-commerce offers in your in-box. Both of them are for an electronic product that you are interested in buying yourself or know that a friend is shopping around for. One offers a discount…a good one of maybe 25%, and the other offers free shipping. Shipping costs are high today but free shipping is pretty much expected. A 25% discount is certainly attractive. Of the two offers, which offer are you more likely to forward to a friend?

Relevant information, research, or studies are all examples of content that may be viewed at possible Pass-along material. Interactive content like a quiz or test com inspire a recipient to forward an e-mail… especially if it is fun. I have forwarded personality tests, fitness quizzes and compatibility questionnaires myself…haven’t you? Entertainment has value.

The bottom line is that the message must be perceived as having value in order to get recipients to forward your message.