Email campaign

1 Comments until now.

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  joef94115 (#)
  July 6th, 2009
  

  I manage client services for PopularMedia, a viral marketing company. Here are a couple simple things that I think could really help your current program.

  First, you want to encourage participant in the program no matter how many (or few) people that a potential participant can invite.

  You have set the bar for participation very high. In order for someone to benefit from your referral program and qualify for the free single user license and coupon, they must know seven friends/associates that they are willing to invite into the program.

  My guess is that a very small number of people actually know seven qualified individuals for your product. Even if they do, they may not be able to recall all seven of those email addresses off of the top of their head. So, you are probably seeing a very low response on these referrals because the recipients are either poorly qualified just plan old bogus email addresses that the user is entering to qualify for the referral bonus software license and discount.

  Any number of referrals from users, no matter how few, are good for your business. Successful viral programs typically have a token motivator just for minimal participation and then a stretch goal if the user reaches some increased rate of participation. For example, you could extend a users trial period by a day/week/month (token motivator) for each email address that they provide and give them the full license if they submit all seven required addresses.

  This will increase the total number of participants in your program that share with their colleagues which will, in turn, lead to a much bigger pool of leads for you.

  Once you have established some consumer benefit for all referrals you want to encourage EVERYONE that comes through your process to refer their friends. I would consolidate the download page to one option that includes the email submit fields without being required. This will increase the number of people interacting with the email submit fields as well as increasing the amount of real estate on the page to sell the referral program value proposition.

  Referrers should have the ability to craft their own custom message to their friends. This will increase the conversion rates on your referral emails as consumers will almost always be better at crafting a compelling message for members of their social network than even the best marketers can. Remember, the referee has no point of reference for your product beyond what their friends is giving them in that message. If it comes across as standard marketing message then the recipient will be less likely to respond. To give you a baseline, a good referral email should have a 5-10x better click rate than a standard marketing email does.

  Finally, try following up with all users that download your software via email towards the end of their free trial to see if they know of anybody they would like to referafter using your product. Many people don’t want to open up their social network and refer a product until they have some experience with it. Assuming they have had a positive experience they should be a great source of referals.

  I hope this info is helpful!

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