Viral marketing is when your readers promote your product/services for you.
Good content gets forwarded — to friends, to colleagues, to clients, and to anyone else a reader thinks might benefit.

When that happens, not only do the people on the receiving end see the promotional sections of your newsletter, many of them decide to sign-up for future issues.

That's good, that's exciting, that's what viral marketing is all about — your own readers doing your marketing for you.

With e-newsletters viral marketing works in three main ways.

• First those on your list forward a copy of the email they received from your business to their friends and colleagues. When you have tracking in place you can see this reflected in the statistics. For example our tracking showed this newsletter was forwarded from the reception desk of an organisation and as a result it was viewed hundreds of times. One of of clients received 1500 openings to their newsletter through the same method.
  
  
• The second way viral marketing can work is that you have a 'forward to a colleague' link in your template - like we do in this newsletter. This means your readers can refer a friend to your newsletter - they can see what it is like and if they like what they are reading they can choose to be added to your mailing list.
  
  
• The final way viral marketing works is when people refer their friends and colleagues to your website address. It is vital that you have sign up links to your newsletter clearly displayed on your home page and other pages on your website.

Permission is the important first step in building a relationship with subscribers. But it’s no longer enough. You need to be relevant. Because if you're not relevant, you'll probably be deleted - maybe never to be opened in the future either. Your challenge is to have your email stand out amongst the other emails your subscribers are receiving.

Here are some ideas:

• Encourage only your target audience to subscribe. Rather then hedging your bets by saying ‘Receive our regular newsletter’, hoping you’ll get a quantity of subscribers, think quality versus quantity. Tell people very clearly who, what, where, when and why you'll be contacting them, and then let them make an informed decision to sign up.
  
  
• 'How relevant is it?' answers the frequency question. How frequently should you send your emails? It depends. There is a growing trend away from rigid monthly mailing schedules, and instead publishing when your company has something relevant to say. If it’s timely then you need to send it, if it doesn’t relate to everyone on your list, then you need to consider sending it only to the appropriate subscribers.
  
  
• Relevance makes it personalised. A 'Dear Bob' appended to the top of a general mailing is not effective personalisation. Personal elements such as addressing the subscriber by name should be used when it really matters in the context of the mailing. It is more important to tailor the content to each reader, because this makes it both personal and relevant.
  
  
• Segment and tailor emails. Use information you have in your database, such as purchase history, geographic location, etc, to split out your lists.
  
  
• Send. Track. Analyse. Change. Repeat. This should be your mantra – if your company does the ‘load and send’ style campaigns, you will see a downward spiral of activity and results. An important part of the email marketing cycle is to review the information gathered from a campaign, and make changes based on the information for the next mailing.

Don't forget you can listen to a recent interview I had with Winston Marsh in Melbourne. I think you will find it interesting and helpful. In this interview Winston asks questions like:

• How do you set up a newsletter?
  
• How does our system work?
  
• What is the tracking all about?
  
• What market intelligence is gathered?
  
• What about cost?
  
• Testimonials from our clients
  
• What results have they seen?