Viral Email Marketing: A Free Guide

Adding a viral component to an email marketing campaign
The word viral has many bad connotations. It conjures up thoughts of corrupted hard drives and viral infections. In fact, if ‘a viral' was some sort of person or clan, there'd be trouble to pay. The very word sounds vile and disturbingly suspicious, such as the mention of Cockroaches for example. Yet, just like these pesky fellows viral components have benefits. Even though cockroaches are considered disgusting and ‘vile' they are a delicacy in many cultures, and have proven to have great nutritional value, like beef, chicken or shrimp. As for adding a viral component to an email marketing campaign? Even though the term viral marketing seems somewhat dodgy, it can boost response rates.
Viral marketing is simply defined as getting recipients to do your marketing for you, by forwarding your message to their friends and associates. This can allow for exponential growth in the number of people who are exposed to your email marketing campaign. Although Viral component can also create some major problems, there are ways to run a smart, headache-free campaign, in order for you to avoid pessimistic reactions and gain an excellent return on investment, as your subscribers help you reach a targeted group far past your intended audience.

In which ways can viral components benefit your email marketing campaign?
Creating a viral email marketing campaign is technically tricky. It also requires some sound understanding of marketing and advertising principles in order for it to be successful. A classic example of highly effective viral marketing is, Hotmail. Hotmail has been able to use their own service (free email) to convince other people to signup for the service by getting people to use the service itself. They've achieved this by appending a simple but effective advertisement ("Get your own free Hotmail email address") to the bottom of every message they send. By making the very act of using the service spread the word, Hotmail has become one of the most successful examples of viral marketing to date.


Grow your opt-in list

Convince users to forward your email, with a sign-up offer. This will encourage new signups and possible even match those signups to the readers who did the original forwarding.