Although viral email marketing may sound like a “bad” thing, it is not spam.You are not shelling out cash for a list of random e-mail addresses, accumulated by another company.  You are actually encouraging your current customers to tell their friends about your products or services.

It is essentially no different from word of mouth advertising, has parallels to multi-level marketing and it is very effective.  The right campaign for your business depends on what your company sells or the services that you offer.  But there are six basic elements that make up an effective strategy.  First, you have to give something away.

Correct, you are in business to sell items, but people love free give away items.What item you can give away depends on your company.It may be a short piece of information, like a newsletter, delivered via e-mail.You might offer a unique item, like a doormat, but in order to get the “special” doormat, the customer might have to buy it.

Candidates during the recent presidential campaign used this method to get donations.When a person signed up to receive their free bumper sticker, they were directed to tell some of their friends.They entered the e-mail addresses of some of their friends and a viral email marketing strategy was started.

The second element is the ability to transfer the information effortless from one person to the next.E-mails are exactly right for this.With a little software or a dynamic marketing company, the entire system can be automated to the point that you never need to do much of anything.

The third element is to have the ability to handle the increase in business.  What if the virus spreads and you become inundated with new orders that you are unable to fill.  That’s one of the things to think about before you partake in a viral email marketing campaign.

The fourth and fifth points are to take advantage of usual motivations and existing communication networks. Common human motivations would include greed, the need to be loved, as well as popular and understood.

The existing communication networks are those e-mail addresses that nearly everyone has.Sociologists say individuals have a network of at least 8-12 people with whom they communicate with often.Your main goal is to enable each of your customers to provide you with those e-mail addresses or, send your message along to others.

That’s how viral email marketing works and is the last element of the campaign; taking advantage of the resources of others.