Tips for Optimizing Viral Marketing Campaigns

Viral marketing, or "refer-a-friend," email campaigns were given a good deal of recognition in the media recently. These campaigns, which encourage recipients of promotional emails to forward the messages to their companions, have accumulated both positive and negative feedback from consumers, privacy advocates, and industry pundits.

 

In the heart of the issue are concerns over sending spam, but by using viral marketing tactics thoroughly, marketers could avoid bad responses and gain a great return on investment (ROI) as they develop the reach of a marketing message to a targeted group far beyond their initial audience.

 

Listed below are 5 insights on how to execute a viral marketing campaign most effectively.

 

1. Provide an allurement. Viral marketing runs best when a valuable and tangible incentive is offered, encouraging people to share an email message to their colleagues. However, marketers should cap the incentive to a certain amount to avoid spam-like distribution of the message -- for instance, providing an incentive of 20 % off referrers' next purchase if they share the message to 5 friends. Open-ended incentives, such as offering a $5 credit for every five friends referred, can end up affecting a marketer customer service, financial, and privacy-related issues.

 

2. Don't consider the referral an opt-in. When a consumer refers a friend, the referral should not be considered an opt-in. A name and email address volunteered by a person's friend does not establish an opt-in by the person, so the data should be deleted immediately after the referral email is sent. Verbiage should be included in the referral email requesting if the individual would like to receive future mailings, allowing her to opt in if she would like.

 

3. Customize the referral email. Response rates increase dramatically when users see that a message is coming from a friend, so it is better to customize the email message to demonstrate that it's coming from a recognizable source. The subject line is the main factor in a viral marketing email, because it can immediately recognize the email as friendly. A good subject line may read: "ADV: John Doe Thought You'd Like 20% Off at XYZ.com," thereby acknowledging that it's an advertisement, there's a special discount, and the message was delivered from a friend.

 

4. Track and examine the results. As with any marketing tactics, tracking the outcomes and optimizing performance over time is certainly necessary. Thankfully, sophisticated email marketers can track insightful and actionable information that could be used to evaluate performance. Important metrics to examine are pass-along, click-through, and conversion rates. Marketers must 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 and consumers drive the highest ROI.

 

5. Always promote friendly referrals. Marketers who want to have their messages constantly forwarded should place a viral marketing offer in each relevant outgoing email message. Viral marketing makes for an excellent one-time campaign, but it could furthermore be a really compelling utility for continuing to extend the connection of your marketing messages over time.

 

While no sure-fire method exists to prevent negative consumer reactions, by following these five suggestions marketers may find their viral marketing campaigns to be most effective.