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Effective Viral Marketing
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - January 18, 2001

To many it's the online marketing holy grail. An effective marketing campaign that once an initial (carefully planned, naturally) seed has been sewn, spreads like wildfire. They're notoriously difficult to achieve and sometimes happen by accident, but the effects can be enormous. Just ask Claire Swire.

Paul O'Donoghue asked for some advice, posting, "A part time lurker coming in from the cold... seeking the experts. I am trying to convince a clients' legal dept. to ok a viral campaign! (oh lord, help me please!) I need some examples (not the Felix one please) that the list think are or have been good or effective virals..."

John Sullivan responded, "How about doing things the hard way? Do some research in your sector: find out whether it'll be a cost-effective method of marketing for your client. Check into how much it'll cost to develop such a campaign, whether their target would accept it and whether it would ultimately (and measurably) solve you client's business need. A whole lot more convincing than saying 'it worked for these guys', don't you think?"

Emily Dubberly suggested an example, emailing, "The dotmusic music quiz was great - you took part in a music quiz, scoring up to 10 points, then got an additional point for every friend you referred who signed up for it. I saw a case study on it and think they had 300,000 enter it the first time and 700,000 the second time (when they refined it to allow you to choose between music genres, enter every day to win a prize and had weekly winners as well as overall winners) The prize wasn't anything particularly huge - stereo equipment and CDs if I remember rightly - but the game was highly addictive."

Terry Cawkwell queried the Data Protection implications of viral marketing, asking, "I notice Nationwide are doing something similar with their 'Win a holiday'. The more friends you recommend the more entries you get and then your friend is emailed and can recommend etc, etc. Surely they are:

collecting names (data) without consent
processing such data by sending out an email to the friend.

Surely this type of marketing goes against the DPA and such companies could ultimately be fined for this activity, should a complaint be made."

Emily Dubberly replied, "I seem to remember this promo was run before the new data protection stuff came in. Personally, I don't mind receiving the occasional e-mail telling me a friend's referred me for a competition. Professionally, I think it's a grey area. Might be able to get round it by allocating a code to all the entrants and asking them to email their friends asking them to quote that code if they enter the competition - that way, you won't be capturing or processing the data.

Course, how feasible that would be to run is another thing (and breaking the KISS [keep it simple, stupid] rule is always dangerous). I have run a promo in the dim and distant past for a site who couldn't afford to do complex coding and we just asked people to name the person who referred them and added it manually - but it wasn't exactly ideal."

There's a wealth of interest in viral marketing, which looks like it's going to be the one of the 'next big things' for 2001. How well it works, well, we'll just have to wait and see. After 'information overload' and we going to see 'email fatigue'?

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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