Viral marketing is an integral part of a campaign strategy. It evens the playing field for small business owners with little or no marketing budget. At no extra cost, email forwarding can lead to all sorts of added business benefits, but one thing is extremely important - the viral component of the email campaign must support a grand objective.

 

Here are some campaigns objectives that can be hold up by viral email marketing:

 

1. Driving website traffic: E-mail can generate huge streams of traffic to your website. When people receive emails and find it interesting to glance through or even click on links to get more information, you increase visitor traffic right away.

2. Build your opt-in list: As they say, the money is in the list. Encourage your readers to forward your email and stimulate them with a sign-up offer and you should also match those signups to the readers as well who had carried out the original forwarding.

3. Generate revenue: Visitor traffic is directly correlated to reveneue as they can be monetized through sign-ups, subscribers, affiliates, cross-selling, upselling, etc. When you include a “buy now” button in your email and if it gets forwarded to a large number, you have a higher chance of making money,

 

4. Revenue from ad-clicks: If your viral email entices many people to come to your site, you get more ad views and ad clicks in the process which is also a form of revenue. .

5. Enhance your Brand: Besides getting attention and traffic, you also want to build up a brand if you are in it for the long term, This will be a tedious process but if your email marketing is successful, you will leave a lasting and good impression on your visitors.

 

6. Gesture Programs: Viral email tracking systems can help you acknowledge that person who forward your emails in a good number which further turn into a new subscribers or sales. You should fetch them with a “Thank” word and show the sign of gratitude as courtesy counts.

Once you get your objectives down, the next step is application. You may want to create brand awareness or make quality offer but you get nowhere without including an incentive for pass along. You can't force people to spread your sales message. They do it subconsciously as a secondary effect of gaining benefit from a utility or service that you offer.

 

Just suggesting that e-mail recipients forward your message to their friends and relatives is not viral marketing. You will only get lukewarm response with a simple message at the bottom of your e-mail that reads "Feel free to forward this message to a friend."

 

On the other hand, if something worthy of sharing, such as a valuable discount, vital information, additional entries into a sweepstakes, an added discount or premium service, a joke/cartoon, or a hilarious video, is included in the e-mail, viral marketing happens naturally and quite successfully.

 

Interactive content like a quiz or text can inspire forwarding, especially if it is fun. Personality tests, fitness quizzes, or compatibility questionnaires are all things that have been passed on by many people many times. Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment has value.

A multimedia experience is always going to achieve some pass-along. Someone is always touting the benefits. It is a bit more of a time and money investment but the messages have a great appeal and rich media has the advantage of being new. The tech factor alone is often enough for the message to be perceived as valuable.

 

The bottom line is that your message must be perceived as having value. Relevant or timely information, research, or studies are all good examples of content that might be viewed as potential pass-along material.