Make Your List BIG, Part 4 - October '09
In this issue:
Word-of-mouth is a very powerful marketing tool, and all you need to do to influence it, is to ask both your existing and previous clients to refer their friends.
In the last three newsletters we have been showing you ways to get new subscribers adding themselves to your list. Now, we will focus on using your current subscriber base to grow it even further
TouchBasePro has a [SENDTOFRIEND] feature designed to assist you to do this successfully. This month’s article explains how to use the feature in order to benefit your business and grow your client list.
Part 4: Increase referrals using your subscriber form
Word-of-mouth is powerful
Word-of-mouth marketing is exceptionally effective. Positive comments have a tremendous influence as consumers are more influenced by the opinions of their friends towards your business, as opposed to what you say about yourself.
According to recent research, because of the personal nature of the communications between individuals, it is believed that product information conveyed in this way has a far superior credibility rate. Evidence suggests that individuals are more inclined to believe word-of-mouth than more formal methods of promotion; the receivers of word-of-mouth referrals usually believe that the communicator is speaking honestly and is unlikely to have an ulterior motive. In reality people trust personal referrals.
The more satisfied your customers, the more inclined they will be to encourage their friends to experience that same satisfaction. In fact, it only takes your asking politely and possibly offering an incentive such as a prize or a discount for referrals.
Your existing client list and database of recipients is an excellent place to begin generating referral business. These people, having dealt with you before, were hopefully satisfied with your service or product. All it requires on your behalf is to devise a polite way to request they send a referral to their friends or colleagues and watch the results.
Motivate your clients to refer their friends & colleagues
Here are five tips on how to effectively motivate referrals and create a successful viral marketing campaign:
- Offer an incentive. Viral marketing works best when a valuable and/or tangible incentive is offered, encouraging recipients to forward the email to their friends. Make sure the incentives are not too open ended but rather such as: "Send this email to 5 friends and receive an entry into our draw to win XYZ" or "Send this email to 10 friends and receive 10 percent off your next purchase". Open ended incentives like "get a R5.00 voucher for every friend you send this email to" can result in SPAM like forwarding of your mail or other kinds of abuse that can impact your business.
- Your incentive must be relevant. It is important that the incentive offered is relevant to your business so as to ensure the people who opt-in and enter the competition are interested potential clients. For example if you sell baby clothing, the incentive you offer may be 5 percent off your next baby clothing purchase if they forward the message to 10 friends. Or you could offer a baby stroller as a prize in a draw they enter simply by sending the email to their friends – you wouldn’t offer an iPod as a prize – this would get the wrong people opting in to your list.
- Do not consider the referral a successful opt-in to your mailing list. When a customer refers a friend, the referral should not be considered an opt-in yet. A name and email address volunteered by a person's friend does not constitute an opt-in by the individual, and legally it does not give you the right to begin mailing them. For this reason TouchBasePro does not add the recipients of [SENDTOFRIEND] referral mails to your lists. To encourage potential customers you should include wording "sign up to this newsletter and win XYZ", and be sure you use the [SUBSCRIBE] link so that opting in is really easy.
- Personalize the referral email. Response rates increase dramatically when users can see that a message is coming from a friend. TouchBasePro allows the referring friend to type in or edit their own personal message to the friends they are sending the email to. Ensure you set up the content of the mail and subject line correctly. An effective subject line may read: "Hey [NAME], I thought you'd like 20 percent off XYZ" thus identifying that it is an advertisement, there's a special offer, and the message was sent from a friend.
- Track and analyze the results by looking at your report in TouchBasePro. As with any marketing campaign, tracking the results and optimizing performance over time is extremely important. Key metrics to take note of are: number of send-to-friends, click-throughs, and any increase in sales or signups. You should adjust the wording in your campaigns periodically and compare results. By doing this you will refine your technique over time.
Continually promote friend referrals by including the [SENDTOFRIEND] link on all of your newsletters. Viral marketing makes for a great one-time campaign to strengthen your database, but it may also be a very effective tool for continuing to broaden the reach of your marketing messages over an extended period.
Setting up a referral mailer
You can set up a specific viral marketing, or "send to friend" email campaign of your own. Encouraging recipients of your emails to forward the message to their friends using the feature built into TouchBasePro accomplishes this. Attached you will find a Word Document Template that you can edit and upload to TouchBasePro and send to your clients starting your own send-to-friend campaign.
In Conclusion
Busy-work for this month:
- Decide on an incentive you can offer for people to send your emails to their friends
- Edit the attached SENDTOFRIEND-TEMPLATE to suit your business and particular offer
- Start your first viral email campaign
Coming in Next Months Issue:
Increasing Traffic to your subscriber form.