Tips for Optimizing Viral Marketing Campaigns

Viral marketing, or "refer-a-friend," email campaigns have received a lot of attention in the media just recently. These campaigns, which stimulate recipients of promotional emails to forward the messages to their companions, have accumulated both positive and negative reviews from customers, privacy advocates, and industry pundits.

At the core of the issue are concerns over sending unsolicited email, but by utilizing viral marketing tactics carefully, marketers may avoid bad responses and gain an excellent return on investment (ROI) as they increase the reach of a marketing message to a targeted group far beyond their initial audience.

Placed below are five insights on how to execute a viral marketing campaign most effectively.

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


2. Don't think about 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 an individuals friend does not constitute an opt-in by the person, so the data should be deleted right away following the referral email is delivered. Verbiage should be included in the referral email asking if the person desire to receive future mailings, allowing her to opt in if she wishes.


3. Personalize the referral email. Response rates rise dramatically when users can see that a message is coming from a friend, so it's better to customize the email message to demonstrate that it's coming from a recognizable source. The subject line is the main component in a viral marketing email, since it can right away identify the email as friendly. A good subject line may read: "ADV: John Doe Thought You'd Like 20% Off at XYZ.com," thereby identifying that it is an advertisement, there's a special discount, and the message was sent from a friend.


4. Track and examine the outcomes. Like with any marketing tactics, tracking the results and optimizing performance over time is definitely significant. Thankfully, sophisticated email marketers can track insightful and actionable information that can be used to evaluate performance. Important metrics to analyze are pass-along, click-through, and conversion rates. Marketers must separate the click-through and conversion rates by initial customers from referrals and analyze their respective performances. These metrics will alert a marketer to which offers and individuals drive the highest ROI.


5. Continually promote friendly referrals. Marketers who want to have their messages constantly forwarded should put a viral marketing offer in each relevant outgoing email message. Viral marketing makes for a great one-time campaign, but it can also be a very effective utility for continuing to lengthen the reach of your marketing messages over time.

While no sure-fire approach exists to avoid unpleasent consumer responses, by following these five concepts marketers may find their viral marketing campaigns to be most effective.