“Send to Friend” in emails can be very useful in not only spreading your message but also in expanding your list with customers who are open to the messages you are sending out.

There was a recent debate on the email marketers club from someone who wanted to send out emails to all the contacts he had (500,000 or so) but only 200,000 had actually asked for any further communication from them.  He wanted to send them a free voucher to spend at his company’s store.  The thing is, however tempted you are to send to those others, they opted out for a reason.

That’s not really the point of this post.  There was hefty debate over this mans’ proposal, and though the majority disagreed with him sending to those “opt-out” recipients, some decent alternatives were brought up.

The best idea was an open “send to friend” on this voucher he was going to send his customers.  So not only is he not treading on anyone’s feet, but any forwards that his recipients are sending are increasing his own marketing spread.  Not only that, but his recipients are actually doing some marketing work for him; sending the message to friends who they think might be interested in the product.

It’s not all that easy though.  You can’t just stick a send to a friend in the newsletter and think that people will instantly be inclined to forward it.  Like the above example, send an incentive to both forwarders and the recipients.  Something like “refer a friend to our list and receive 15% off of your next purchase with us”.  As ever I’ll leave you to work out what incentive would best suit your company, but just think of the potential that a well-constructed “send to a friend” could do for your company.

Tags

email content | email marketing campaign | email marketing strategy | send to friend

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