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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.
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