I'd like to find software or a web service which can help investigate
viral marketing.  Specifically, I'd like to offer web surfers a
promotion and the opportunity to notify friends of the promotion.  By
changing the promotion, I'd like to see how the notification rates
change.  Is there software or a service that does this?

---

Request for Question Clarification by weisstho-ga on 18 Jul 2002 15:57 PDT

Do you mean, by chance, "virtual marketing"?
weisstho-ga

---

Request for Question Clarification by weisstho-ga on 18 Jul 2002 18:27 PDT

My colleagues have rushed in to inform me that there is indeed a
concept called viral marketing!!  Obviously, I am not the person to
comment on this interesting and leading edge concept!!  Best of
luck!!!  weisstho-ga

---

Request for Question Clarification by zerocattle-ga on 18 Jul 2002 20:24 PDT

Hi, Cashel,

There are many viral marketing software packages that allow you to
track information, but none that I found that track the results of
campaigns in a tidy package. It's hard searching for this, as well you
might expect, as there are a disproportionate amount of sites with
over-inflated promises.

Were you looking for software that will run simultaneous campaigns for
a comparison, or to run consecutive compaigns and compare the results?

I will check with some Internet Marketers of my acquaintance tomorrow
for specific tested software recommendations.

:) zerocattle-ga

Greetings! As a former viral marketer for a company I will call
YYYYYY, I was one of a team of viral marketers responsible for
bringing in members to their web site and have written you a
mini-course below.  Unfortunately, YYYYYY's venture capital
disappeared and they have gone the way of the dinosaurs, but the way
to viral marketing was very simplistic and I was extremely successful
in my approach.

The first thing I did was to develop an email that was general about
the site but specific to the person I was targeting.  For instance,
the YYYYYY site wanted "enthusiastic hobbyists" to write for them to
build up a huge online information database via "articles and stories"
about just about anything non-fiction.  A sample of my email went like
this (subject line would have read something like "loved your home
repair tips!" - very specific):


Dear John:

While doing a search for home repairs, I happened upon your site and I
just wanted to write and tell you how much I enjoyed your style!  Your
stories about home repair helped me understand things about
replastering and plumbing that had always confused me!  Thank you so
much for posting them on the Internet.

I'm curious: have you ever heard of the YYYYYY site?  It is a web site
for people who are enthusiastic about many different areas and I think
your material would be perfect for the site!  The cool thing is that
YYYYYY actually pays the contributors everytime their work is viewed. 
It's only a couple of cents per view, but I have made great pocket
money there (and you are charged nothing - they just want to have the
biggest database on the net, so they pay you for your time and
information).  I have one article about wreath-making and it has
already had 4,000 views. That tranlates to a nice chunk of change for
me for something I know well!  LOL

Anyway, your home repair explanations would be so great there and I'll
bet you would make better pocket change than me as more people are
repairing homes than making wreaths! LOL  I hope you'll check them
out.  Their URL is http://www.YYYYYY.com and sign-up takes about a
minute.  And share it with your friends!  It's a great learning tool
for me and my friends.  If you need instructions on how to navigate
the site after you've signed up, just email me and I'll walk you
through it step by step.  It's simple.

Well, I've taken enough of your time but I wanted you to know how much
I enjoyed your home repair lessons!  Thanks for the great info and I
hope to see you on YYYYYY.

Sincerely,
[my name]


When sending the same query to auto repair enthusiasts, I simply
substituted the phrasing for that specific topic.  This requires a bit
of extra tailoring but the pay-off is that the receiver of the email
would actually read it and NOT delete is as spam.  It wasn't spam; it
was my genuine feelings about what they had to offer PLUS the
advertising info I was hired to promote.  And most all shared the
information with others they knew who were enthusiasts as I witnessed
from many return emails.

Success in viral marketing depends exclusively on the personal
approach.  Just as you would treat a customer in a retail store, that
is how you would treat the email receiver.  A good retail salesman
doesn't just walk up to a customer, put a box in their hand and walk
off: they cultivate the sale.  Viral marketing is cultivating a sale
through text.

First of all, I opened each email with a personal greeting and praise
for their work.  Also, I only wrote to those people whose work I found
acceptable for the YYYYYY site.  The YYYYYY site paid me $2.00 per
email I sent but I knew they wouldn't keep me on indefinitely unless I
produced results.  Happily, I was told that I was the best viral
marketer they had - they told me my return was the highest of all the
employees and I worked for them until the site closed.

In doing the viral marketing, I kept track of every email I sent and
reported those to the YYYYYY team.  They checked those emails and
names against who had signed up on the site, and that's how they
tracked my results.

The way I found my "customers" was to search personal websites with
various keywords.  I visited places like GeoCities that offer personal
web pages free of charge, and I never lacked for people to contact. 
In addition, I developed a mini-course on the site navigation and sent
it out to numerous people.  Also, most of my contacts would send me
back a personal email and I would answer every one.  Most were to say
"so glad you joined!  I'll look for your article!" or they would have
already sent me their article and I would visit it and then email them
back how pleased I was they had joined.

The Personal Touch: that is what successful viral marketing is all
about.  Find your target audience and then be personal with each
potential customer.  You have to think "What would get me to visit
this site [or buy this product]?"  "What would appeal to me?"  In
viral marketing, the focus should always be "what can I do for you?"
and not "what can you do for me?"  I know I respond to the former and
not the latter: most people are the same.


As far as site searches for this:

"viral marketing corporation" search phrase on Google
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=viral+marketing+corporation

Tips for Optimizing Viral Marketing Campaigns
http://www.clickz.com/em_mkt/opt/article.php/837511

Viral Affinity Marketing Overview (they also offer products and
services as well as free information)
http://www.emailco.co.za/_services/_e-marketing/_vam/vam.html


I hope my little mini-course is of assistance to your needs.  Should
you need further clarification, please ask.

---

Request for Answer Clarification by cashel-ga on 22 Jul 2002 13:34 PDT

Hi Journalist:

Thanks for the primer on viral marketing.  I appreciate your effort
here.  Unfortunately I asked something different in my question:
software packages or services that track viral marketing campaigns so
I can study the dynamics of "word of mouth" notification.  I need a
service in which I can alter the message and efficiently track
variance in results.  Are you aware of such a service?

---

Clarification of Answer by journalist-ga on 22 Jul 2002 17:06 PDT

Greetings again.  I had included the link to the Email Corporation in
my original answer (above) as they offer many services for email
marketing.  I returned there and visited their products and services
pages, and I also sent then a query for you.  Their response was the
following email:


Thank you for enquiring about The E-mail Corporation's services.

ABOUT THE E-MAIL CORPORATION
The E-mail Corporation is South Africa's specialist in Secure
Electronic Document Delivery (SEDD) and direct e-mail communication.
Regardless of the need - whether it is the rapid transmission of
secure information, electronic communication, the personalisation of
bulk messages, or the immediate and accurate response to customer
queries - The E-mail Corporation has a deployment option to meet those
requirements.

WHAT WE DO
For your convenience, we have listed our services below, along with
the relevant contact person at The E-mail Corporation:

1) EZINES
Should you wish to receive a full list of The E-mail Corporation's
ezines, please contact Angie on angiel@emailco.net. Your subject line
should read "List of Ezines".

2) DIRECT E-MAIL MARKETING/ ADVERTISING
For more information on our Direct E-mail Marketing campaigns, please
contact Natalie on nataliet@emailco.net. Your subject line should read
"Info on DEM".

3) SECURE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT DELIVERY
For more information on our Secure Electronic Document Delivery
solution, please contact Monique on moniquev@emailco.net. Your subject
line should read "Info on SEDD".

4) E-MAIL DISTRIBUTION
For details on eList, our sophisticated bulk mailing engine, please
contact Katherine on katherinel@emailco.net. Your subject line should
read "Info on eList"

5) FURTHER QUERIES/ INFORMATION
For any further information, please contact Shelli on
shellib@emailco.net, detailing the nature of your query.

Kind regards,
The Emailco Team.

Tel: (011) 530 9600
Fax: (011) 447-9122
URL: www.emailco.net

The Email Corporation may be able to fill your needs, and the contacts
above should be able to answer specific questions about their
services.  Their programs offered included ClickMail.  The description
included "ClickMail is a click-through tracking system developed by
The E-mail Corporation. It uses a re-direction process to track the
number of click-throughs to a website. It can track the number of
people who clicked through, their addresses, and when they clicked."

Searching "email marketing variance tracking" I discovered the resume
for a man who created "personalized websites for direct marketing
email campaigns using Perl 5.004, CGI, dynamic HTML, Java Servlets,
Java Server Pages, and Oracle 8 running on Solaris 5.7 and NT. Web
servers include Iplanet 6.0, and Apache Tomcat 4.0." as well as
creating "personalized websites for direct marketing email campaigns
using Perl 5.004, CGI, dynamic HTML, and Oracle 8 on Solaris 5.7.
Develop multi-threaded email blaster using Java 1.2.2."  He could no
doubt design the exact program you need.


Thank you for requesting clarification and I hope my additional
research produces the software or service for which you are looking.


SEARCH TERMS AND LINKS:

[Email Corporation from original answer)
Viral Affinity Marketing Overview (they also offer products and
services as well as free information)
http://www.emailco.co.za/_services/_e-marketing/_vam/vam.html 

(I visited these for you and so that I could query the corporation)
Email Corporation Services
http://www.emailco.co.za/_services/services.html

Email Corporation Products
http://www.emailco.co.za/_products/products.html


"email marketing variance tracking" 
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=email+marketing+variance+tracking

Resume of software programmer mentioned above
http://uweb.superlink.net/rogerz/rzresume.html

---

Clarification of Answer by journalist-ga on 22 Jul 2002 20:10 PDT

Dear Cashel:

Thank you for your generous rating of my research.  I appreciate your
fairness in the rating and I wish the Internet could have returned the
exact product for which you were looking.  Since all my answers are
present on my account, I will keep your quest in mind and search from
time to time regarding your needs.  If I run across a product that
might be of help to you, I'll post it here in the clarification with
the appropriate links and search terms.

Excellent effort, useful information, but for the most part not
answering my specific need.

"The award for Internet marketing buzzword of the year goes to 'viral
marketing." - Iconocast, December 16, 1998

<p> See "<a href=http://www.dfj.com/files/viralmarketing.html>Viral
Marketing</a>", By Steve Jurvetson and Tim Draper Steve Jurvetson and
Tim Draper.

<p>URL: <a href=http://www.dfj.com/files/viralmarketing.html>http://www.dfj.com/files/viralmarketing.html</a>

Hi Cashel,

ZeroCattle is right about overinflated promises. Here's one thing you
can do for free. Check with your hosting company to see if any cgi
scripts or other "goodies" are included in your hosting package. This
is important because nearly anything you can do to make your site
interactive can be turned into a viral marketing tool with a little
imagination.

I use a postcard cgi script from my host as a viral marketing tool on
one of my sites. It has been very successful and costs me nothing. I
create the postcards myself (usually seasonal) to represent different
promotions or to encourage visits to a certain page of my site. At the
bottom of the postcard is a link back to my site. Users then send
these free postcards to their friends. By checking my site statistics
I can see which postcards were sent and how often. I can also look for
corresponding increases in traffic on certain pages I've been
promoting with the postcards. I've noticed that if I can work humor
into my campaign the notification rate is higher. I use Paint Shop Pro
to compose my postcard images.

JASC Download Center (free trial of Paint Shop Pro)
http://www.jasc.com/download_4.asp?prod=001

I also use free email (Everyone.net) on that site because it has a
catchy domain name. This has been a very effective viral tool for
increasing traffic. I often get feedback that people initially visited
my site just because of the name and "I had to see for myself." But
the downside of Everyone.net is the ads in the email because it's a
free service.

Good luck finding the service or product you're looking for. The
following link may be helpful for you.

Viral Marketing Techniques the Typical Business Website Can Deploy Now
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-deploy.htm

fsw

Thanks for the comments.  We hope to run a campaign with simultaneous
messages and then track which messages were most effective in
promoting viral marketing.

This is really the key to success on the internet. Knowing what is
working and doing more of it! Much of the what works on the internet
is being discovered real time and is not perfectly defined in books.
Tracking your campaigns will help you understand the Return On
Investment, Click through rates, conversion to sales and other
metrics. Getting involved in Pay per click or even affiliate programs
will be hard to do without that. I work as a fulltime internet
marketer and have worked on contract for some of the big e-commerce
sites. They track religiously. There are many ways to do this but the
key is not to have information overload or not enough info. Finding a
balance is key. A page with a lot of links is:

http://dmoz.org/Business/Marketing/Internet_Marketing/Traffic_Measurement/

One of the better ones there is:

http://www.roibot.com/

or 

http://www.adtagger.com/

You can also use affiliate program software if you are planning on
having an affiliate program. Then you can give each new ad campaign an
affiliate id and make the payout percentage for that “affiliate” zero
percent. This way you will have data for all separately and can
compare them. And no checks would be generated for those campaigns.
Affilate software can get quite complicated and will give you tons of
info. What percentage click in, how many buy first visit, second visit
etc. Then of course you could have actual people as affiliates and it
would all be under the same software.

Good Luck!

> I also use free email (Everyone.net) on that site because it has a
> catchy domain name. This has been a very effective viral tool for
> increasing traffic. I often get feedback that people initially
visited
> my site just because of the name and "I had to see for myself." But
> the downside of Everyone.net is the ads in the email because it's a
> free service.

You can pay Everyone.net to remove the ads. This speeds up
Everyone.net’s web mail because there are no ads to download; thus,
keeping users happy. It also allows you to use the entire ad inventory
(468x60 banners and promotional taglines) to promote your own product
or service.

Providing email has several viral marketing benefits:

1.  The email address (e.g. user@gostanford.com) promotes a domain
name (e.g. gostanford.com) that is or can be pointed to your main
website. Everyone that receives an email from one of your users sees
this address and may even save it in their address book. The viral
nature continues if the email is forwarded since the original sender’s
address is typically included with the forwarded message. Check out
Google Groups and you’ll see that email addresses also show up
elsewhere on the Internet.

2.  Everyone.net lets you to seamlessly append promotional taglines
(a.k.a. email signatures) to the end of your users’ outgoing messages.
Your short promotional message and URL will be seen after your users’
signature. Like the email address, taglines are also typically
included in forwarded messages.

3.  Email stationery can be created that subtly promote your brand.
For example, Everyone.net enables you to create several appealing
designs that have your logo and URL unobtrusively in a corner.

4.  Everyone.net has a Tell A Friend feature that makes it easy for
your users to tell their friends about your fully branded email
service.

Check out Everyone.net’s website <http://www.everyone.net/> for more
ideas. Specifically, Everyone.net Group Mail appears to be the service
originally referred to by fsw-ga.

Sorry to come in late with this but, there was a company that did
exactly the type of measuring and reporting of viral campaigns that
you describe.  The company was called Qbiquity and they were acquired
by Collabrys:

http://www.collabrys.com/products/AdvocacySystem.html