Email and viral marketing
In ‘Viral marketing’, you encourage people to pass on your marketing message without having to do anything directly yourself. This means you can spread your marketing message without significant effort. For example, the spread of Hotmail’s popularity was good viral marketing. It was achieved largely from a link at the bottom of subscribers’ emails, saying ‘Get your private, free email at www.hotmail.com’. Subscribers emailed non-subscribers who then subscribed and emailed other non-subscribers, and so on.
Email signature
On a smaller scale, you can mimic Hotmail.com’s strategy by using an email signature. This is a powerful viral marketing technique that takes you no time at all to produce after you have set it up. It is a mini-ad that is automatically attached to the bottom of your emails. It could be as simple as your name, contact details and web site address. It could include a strap line, and you could also think about incentives to persuade people to pass on your message.
Newsgroups and discussion forums
Spend time online to discover authoritative newsgroups and discussion forums for your target audience and other industry contacts. Identify well used and well respected resources, and listen to what people have to say there. Never use them to sell your products or services overtly. The aim is to find out about market needs and preferences, to keep an eye on new ideas and competitors, and to become a trusted adviser to your audience.
Bulk e-mailings
Use bulk email programmes with caution. They can either be very successful or completely disastrous. A great deal of planning and research is needed to make them succeed. The product, offer or incentive, copywriting and content, presentation and timing of the email must all be well targeted. Your own opinion of the product or service is irrelevant. It is the opinion of the person on the receiving end that will decide its success or failure.
Follow best practice on data protection considerations. When you collect people’s email address and other contact information, make sure you tell them that you are going to send them marketing material. Your web site must include a data protection notice wherever a visitor is asked to submit personal data.
It is a good idea to undertake small e-mailings that are tightly targeted towards segmented portions of your mailing list, rather than (or as well as) larger e-mailings to your full mailing list. You need to have the flexibility to segment your mailing list as you want, so that you can target past customers or past enquirers by preference, location and other features.
The best approach is to test whatever works with your own market sector. You may find that other tools such as ‘send this web page to a friend or colleague’ will benefit your marketing campaign. Keep your ear to the ground and learn from your online competitors.
