Why and How E-mail Viral Marketing Works
What does a virus have to do with marketing?
Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages
individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating
the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure
and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of
rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands and
then to millions.
Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away
from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch
your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy
to transmit. Viral e-mail marketing works great on the Internet
because instant communication has become so easy and
inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a
marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message
so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short
is better. Remember the K.I.S.S. standard….Keep it Simple
Stupid. The shorter and easier to remember is always better than
long and complicated.
Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human
motivations. The desire to be cool and greed drives people. So
does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The
resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and
billions of e-mail messages.
Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer
science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell
us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their
close network of friends, family, and associates. People on the
Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect
e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs
exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to
place your message into existing communications between people,
and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.
If you can design a marketing strategy that builds on common
motivations and behaviors for its transmission, you have a
winner.