Is Tell-A-Friend Marketing Still Viable?

[Chris]

Word-of-mouth popularity, properly referred to as viral marketing, is one of the more effective ways of promoting a business, thought, or product. For websites, one of the most successful methods of viral marketing is the use of Tell-A-Friend emails. These allow visitors to email a page and its contents to friends and family, or someone else who maybe interested.

However, with inception of the CAN-SPAM act, sending what some may consider unsolicited emails can potentially lead to trouble for the site the mailing came from. If someone misinterprets the mailing, they can report you as a spammer. This can lead to being banned by your IP provider or, in the worst-case scenario, having to answer to the FTC. There are certain steps that can be taken to ensure that Tell-A-Friend mailings do not appear as spam.

If you are having trouble deciding whether or not to use a Tell-A-Friend link on your pages, keep in mind that this is a very effective way to market your site virally. Fluffykins, a long-time poster at the SitePoint forums, who said: “Lots of the big players seem to use this system. And word of mouth is a tried and tested promotional medium.”

Other posters confirmed Fluffykins’ thoughts by saying the addition of the Tell-A-Friend link was one of the best things they’ve included on their site. One poster went even further by stating that over 60% of his site’s traffic came from T-A-F links.

For those considering using T-A-F links, SitePoint forum administrator mmj offers this advice:

“Here’s some steps you can take to reduce the spam factor:

- Make sure that everyone who uses your tell-a-friend form provides a valid email address.

- Place that email address into the "From: " line of the email so that it's clear to the recipient who sent it.

- Include a note at the bottom of the email saying that it was forwarded using a "tell-a-friend" feature. You may also want to say something like "in case of abuse, contact abuse at example.com".

I also include, in the header of the email, a custom field called X-Form-User: where I give the IP address of the person using the form. That way if there is any abuse, then I can ask them to forward me the full headers of the email and I can just IP ban the abuser.”

Mike_FWT, offers similar suggestions. “Our site offers the use of a ‘Tell a Friend’ form for all website users. The method we've employed takes note of the number of messages sent by IP through our mailserver and will automatically block transfers that exceed a certain threshold.

I think the main advantage here is that site visitors should never have to send more than one or two messages via this form, so it's very simple to flag any unusual activity originating from this particular mechanism.”

These are two seemingly effective methods that people have employed to safeguard themselves when featuring T-A-F links. The consensus centers on ensuring that the sender’s name appears in the “From section” as well as the body section of the mailing so the recipient will understand that the email is not spam.

Also, be sure to inform those receiving the mail that their email address will not be captured. This is accomplished by simply including that particular text within the email’s body. A poster named Mike from the Website Publisher forums recommends informing your hosting company that you are including T-A-F links. This helps ensure they don’t mistake these mailings for spam.

If you want to attempt a viral marketing campaign for your web site, but you don’t have any confidence in Tell-A-Friend links, poster tabula_rasa offers an alternative method:

“On my sites, I just have a mailto: link with no email address filled in, but with the subject and body filled in... This way, they can click it, type their message, and send it to everyone in their address book. I also avoid all the trouble that comes along with having a tell-a-friend script.... In the end:

- It is more convenient for users.

- It saves me email bandwidth

- I avoid being blacklisted

- No one can use my site to spam other sites

The downside is: You cannot control the message being sent and what you can include in the [body] is very limited.

There are no statistics... For all I know, no one has ever sent an email using the link.”

[leesw]

Are there any simple, java script or html scripts that make "tell a friend" options easy?

I'd like to add that option to the end of articles on my web site, but don't exactly know how to go about it.

thanks,

Lee

[Chris]

i found some at hotscripts and the CGI resource.

the scripts at cgi resource are written in perl. you may want to refine your search if that's not what you are looking for.

[npawebs]

I love the idea of the link with no From address in it. So simple and elegant!! I think that the reason that we use the tell a friend script is two-fold. We want to control the content going out and we want to make it easy for our visitors to quickly pass the information along. On the other hand, doing it your way might be bringing a much more targeted audience to your site.

As far as keeping track of how many times that it would be used, you could simply use a CGI, PHP or Javascript file to update a text file counter everytime someone clicked on the link. It would be fairly transparent and you would not be violating any privacy ethics because you would not be collecting any information other than how many times it was clicked.

Great article. Thanks.

[GreatFamilyRentals]

The only problem I see with this mailto: strategy is that the user has to have a configured mail client. In other words, they have to be using their own PC. Not a big deal at home or work, but what if your visitor is on the road, using a friend's computer, etc.? They won't be able to tell a friend if your site employs the mailto: strategy.

Our thought was to provide the ability to TAF in all cases. My 2 cents.

Dave

[Blackicicle]

Another way would be to add a tracking string to the url located in the email for example: http://www.abovethespeedlimit.com?trkstr=taf


This way you can check your logs for that string or run a simple script that recored the amount of hits with that url, and even do it per IP for accuracy.

[apply75]

There are a bunch of tell a frined scripts
You need one that will capture some of the info for you such as how many people sent a referral and things like that. I like this one it has worked for me
http://www.applytools.com/applyRefer.html

[satcure]

We use a "tell a friend" referral system which puts the sender's email address in the "from" field, the web page URL (not content) in the message body, and adds a brief marketing message from me at the end, typed as if the sender had added it!

You can get a free copy here:

http://www.satcure.net/getscript2/

Interestingly, most visitors use it to send the URL to themselves. It seems to work better than "add us to your favourites".

Another thing that works better is to give away a free eBook and/or catalogue which contains plenty of clickable links back to your web site. This is real viral marketing. We record an average of 50 downloads per day. These are new, unique, potential customers. It's also a better measure than a "hit counter".

[RiverRat]

We added the ability to email to a friend and got an immediate respose. We also noticed many folks sending themselves reminder emails (we let them send copy to themselves via a check box which gets hit 50% of the time).

Thanks to all for the good ideas on how not to get spammed...

[uioreanu]

Imho taf is a complete waist of time. I introduced it on a 1000 visitors/day website since about two weeks now; the integration is not brilliant but draws a little attention. However I had a few clicks on that link but no message sent

I personally think this is a complete waist of time. I waisted half a day programming this, and I think every experienced webmaster waisted his time on this at some point or another. Then he finds out on his own how ineffective this form of marketing really is, and learns not to use it in the future. However, on forums like this one, where people are seeking ways to bring two more clicks to their websites, there is the right atmosphere for this kind of useless ideas. I suspect some experienced webmasters launch this idea from time to time to waist developing time of the others.

Even if it would be nice integrated and clicked a lot, it wouldn't pass the spam filters anyway. How would you write it?
Hi i recommend you this website www dot example dot com slash query...?

[RiverRat]

It must depend on the site - We sell fun and people seem to love sharing ideas on products that are fun. For us, the ETF was certainly not a waste of time - in fact I've had a few emails thanking us for the service.

[neilw_uk]

Well I just made a TAF using PHP today to see how many people use it.

Very easy to monitor, the friend gets an email, and I get an email with the name and email address, so I know exactly how many people used the feature.

Cheers for now

[LizB]

Mike Chen has just launched a new way of advertising your site for free called Instant Buzz. It looks like a great idea and I have downloaded it. You get a little tool on your toolbar which has one link on it that changes each time you go to a new web page. The link is your or someone else's advert. You gain more showings of your link by getting credits by surfing and also by inviting friends to join. You can only join this Instant Buzz by invitation

I am finding this hard because I don't want to be accused of spamming. What do you think? Would it be Spam? Has anyone else here used Instant Buzz?

If anyone wants an invite let me know.That would solve my problem!

Liz

[webinv]

Do any of you actually use the Tell-A-Friend scripts that you find on other sites? I have never once used them. I always just copy and paste the URL into the body of my emails. I like to know for sure what I am sending, plus add my own notes about the site.

Also, have you actually received positive response FROM using tell-a-friend scripts on your site?

Thanks.

[CaronWorldWide]

I once had a tell-a friend area on my site. Then I asked for a reveiw for my site (fom different forums, not just this one) and was told that they arent a good tool & I should get rid of it. So I did . (I liked the idea of them , in case someone did want to refer someone to my site.) But I took the word of those with more experience then myself. ( I have zero experience in web site set ups)
So I think I will watch this thread and decide on my own from those who answer whether or not to put it back on.
Thank you for starting this thread
Sheila & Ernest

[jawn_tech]

Hi CaronWW,

I guess the question that comes to me is, did it work for you while it was on your site?

[CaronWorldWide]

My page hits went up a tad but that could of been a glitch or something it wasnt there long.

[mtheory]

Tell a friend is a great wat to market. This is essentially "word of mouth" marketing.

Some things to consider to protect against being accused of spamming:

1. Require the email of the person sending yor site recommendation to their friend and include that email to reply to.

2. Include a disclaimer stating what purpose of the the email is and include an email to report abuse to.

3. Include an opt-out reply and create a db of addresses that will not work with the send to a friend function.