NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Viral Marketing at its Best
ONLINE-ADS>> Viral Marketing at its Best
Ken Schafer (ken_at_domesticscience.com)
Tue, 29 Sep 1998 09:26:44 -0500 (CDT)
Hi all,
I just finished customizing the new personalization tool at
CDnow and it strikes me that it contains one of the nicest
pieces of "viral marketing" to come along in a while.
I'm not sure who is taking credit for coining the phrase
viral marketing this week, but in essence, it means
developing marketing approaches that "spread" from one
person to another, like a virus. For a quick overview of
the concept check out Fast Company's article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/virus.html .
The best known example is the little sig file added by free
email services (Excite's includes a link and the tag "Free
web-based email, Forever, From anywhere!"). Another
variation is the ubiquitous link on news pages asking people
to "mail this article to a friend" (Like on the bottom of
the Fast Company article cited above).
In both cases the marketer gets to drop a little message
into a "friends" in-box, and best of all it comes with a
free third party endorsement ("Hey Betty, if Bob uses
Excite, it must be good - let's check it out!").
CDnow offers to build a "Wish List" of CDs I'd like to buy
but don't have the cash for. It then conveniently lets me
publish this wish list to my friends as a "Gift Registry".
If they follow my custom link, they can purchase the
products from CDnow and they will ship it directly to me,
thoughtfully removing the purchased gift from my list to
avoid embarrassing duplications. Brilliant. I spent an
hour going through the site, putting together my wish list,
checking it twice and hoping that some web savvy Santa would
fill my stocking (preferably for Halloween instead of Xmas!)
To summarize:
1. I win - people might give me CDs (see my sig file!).
2. Friends win - people say I'm hopeless to buy for.
3. CDnow wins - They get a loyal customer (me), new
customers (my gift buying friends), and get brand awareness
everywhere (check that sig file again!).
The only things I would have done to improve the service is
to make the links in the Gift Registry live, and to give
examples of how to include your link in a sig file (for
newbies). My guess is that you will see Gift Registry links
popping up in everyone's sig files this fall. I mean, what
the heck - someone might actually buy you something!
I'd be interested in hearing other examples of outstanding
viral marketing. (And did I mention to check out my sig
file?)
Cheers,
Ken
mailto:ken_at_domesticscience.com
======================================
Domestic Science - "The way YOU cook"
http://www.domesticscience.com
======================================
Random Acts of Kindness?
http://www.cdnow.com/gift/kschafer_at_schafer.com
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