Email Viral Marketing
For the past little while we have been engaged in email viral marketing. What is email viral marketing? Some kind of nasty computer virus? The bubonic plague transmitted via email? Holy Toledo Batman! What will these marketers unleash next?
Relax. It's actually a very cost effective and legitimate way of getting the word out. It works pretty simply actually.
Step 1: You send out an email to your email list inviting them to participate in a contest. I'm going to assume that your email list is entirely opt-in based. (That means you received express permission from each recipient to send them email. If not, do not proceed to Step 2.)
Step 2: Your contest encourages recipients to send emails to friends, family and colleagues to sign-up for the contest. The more people that they email and who sign-up, the more entries they receive into the contest. This is an important point. Do not reward people for simply emailing others as that could incite spamming. Contestants should only be rewarded for getting others to register to the contest.
So if I email dozens of friends and then 16 register for the contest, I would receive 16 entries into the contest. The more people I refer and who register, the more entries I receive.
Step 3: Step back and watch the contest grow. Just like a virus, your friends are incited to email others and so on and so forth. Now all of sudden you have just created something viral.
Now being in an era of overflowing inboxes and an abundance of everyone's favorite lunchmeat, how can this work? A few reasons:
Firstly, if I know as a participant, I'm only going to get entries only when people I refer register, I'm only going to send it to people who I believe will feel the contest is interesting and the company and or brand is attractive.
Secondly, I know this because if I sent non-relevant email to friends and family I would feel their wrath in no short order. "Sulemaan, why in the name of Saint Peter are you sending this crap to me?" Yes, I'm speaking from experience where if I forward an email to twelve friends, I will receive a cheque from Microsoft for $6,779.24 in 4 days. (Stop laughing it was years ago.)
Thirdly, a new customer is less likely to respond to a cold call/email from you than from a friend introducing a contest or brand to them. If my friend Kate was sending me an email about a contest, I'd look at it. If an email came out of the blue from Petro Canada...well what's that key on the keyboard next to 'Insert'?
We have conducted email viral campaigns for the past few years and they have been very successful for us. We've increased our sales and email opt-in email list size significantly. The viral effect of the campaigns is staggering. Indeed, why not get your customers to promote your brand and reward them for it?
Not that easy you say? No question there are people out there that are part of the BPU but do not let them stop you. Do not let them claim that email viral campaigns violate privacy or any other horse pucky. Nothing is further from the truth.
No, I'm not an attorney (although my beloved wife suggests I should be) as we recently reviewed this viral concept with our legal department and they were fine. I also spoke to some privacy experts at the CMA and elsewhere who said if certain guidelines are followed viral email campaigns are indeed kosher.
Having said all of this there are still some pitfalls to avoid:
(1) Always use a CAPTCHA when running a viral email marketing campaign. Otherwise your contest will get hit with scripts and bots by some very crafty people (aka hackers) out there in cyberspace.
(2) Be prepared to deal with the consequences if your viral campaign becomes too successful. What am I speaking about? Not long ago Starbucks launched a viral campaign and had to stop it as the actual redemption exceeded projected costs. They not only got some bad publicity but a competitor took advantage of the situation.
(3) The same principles of proper usability apply with viral email campaigns as the do with websites.
(4) If viral email campaigns become a pillar of your marketing calendar, make sure you spread them out so you don't lose that luster. Think about it along the lines of not killing the goose that laid the golden egg. If you are going to run a viral email campaign that last 4-6 weeks. Think about running them at most once per quarter or every 4 months.
(5) Always get different quotes from various agencies if you decide to outsource the work. One firm quoted us $100k for just 1 viral email campaign that last 6 weeks. Now I don't blame them as other clients were very willing to pay that amount. However, another agency quoted us 4 viral email campaigns for a fraction of the cost the first agency quoted.
(6) Know the potential strengths and weaknesses of various vendors. Don't just look at it from a pricing perspective. Some firms are great with creative but lousy with project planning and/or technology. For others it's the reverse. Some firms can react quickly to problems late on a Friday aftenoon. Others will tell you to wait until Monday. Figure out what you want to do and what is important. As a professor once told me: Price, Quality and Time. Pick Two.
(7) Just because you want something to become viral doesn't mean it will be. Strategic execution, strong creative, proper usability, a clear call to action and a reward for the participants are all many factors to consider when constructing an viral email campaign.
(8) After you have completed the aforementioned, let it ride and learn so you can optimize things from one campaign to the next. That is what we did. To simply spend more money on advertising from one campaign to the next is foolish. Look at improving your website conversion on a continuous basis. Most importantly, listen to your customers feeback. They will tell you what you are doing right and (if you are lucky) what you are doing wrong.
Email viral marketing can be quite succesful but the trick is harnessing it successfully. To quote Seth Godin: You can do it. I bet you can do just that.
