What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands and then to millions.

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don’t touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they’re easy to transmit. Viral e-mail marketing works great on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. Remember the K.I.S.S. standard….Keep it Simple Stupid. The shorter and easier to remember is always better than long and complicated.

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. The desire to be cool and greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages.

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion. If you can design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, you have a winner.

Viral marketing is an integral part of a campaign strategy that is used to achieve objectives. It is not the objective itself. If the main objective of an e-mail campaign is branding, in order to achieve greater branding success exposure you craft your message or offer in a way that it encourages pass-along.

Producing a message with a quality offer or an incentive for pass-along is what viral marketing is all about.

Just suggesting that e-mail recipients forward your message to their friends and relatives is not viral marketing. A message at the bottom of your e-mail that reads “Feel free to forward this message to a friend” is nowhere close to viral marketing at its best.

On the other hand, if something worthy of sharing, such as a valuable discount, vital information, additional entries into a sweepstakes, an added discount or premium service, a joke/cartoon, or a hilarious video, is included in the e-mail, viral marketing happens naturally and quite successfully.

The bottom line is that your message must be perceived as having value. Relevant or timely information, research, or studies are all good examples of content that might be viewed as potential pass-along material. Interactive content like a quiz or text can inspire forwarding, especially if it is fun. Personality tests, fitness quizzes, or compatibility questionnaires are all things that have been passed on by many people many times. Why? Because they are entertaining and entertainment has value. A multimedia experience is always going to achieve some pass-along. Someone is always touting the benefits. It is a bit more of a time and money investment but the messages have a great appeal and rich media has the advantage of being new. The tech factor alone is often enough for the message to be perceived as valuable.

A study by Sharpe Partners, an interactive marketing agency, revealed that 89% of adult Internet users in America share content with others via e-mail. This is excellent news for those companies who use self-propelling word-of-mouse” e-mail techniques to sell their products.

The study generated some interesting results regarding the type of content that is most often forwarded, as well. The most popular content is humorous material.

The second most popular category is news, followed by healthcare and medical information, religious and spiritual material, games, business and personal finance information and sports/hobbies… in that order. So it is easy to see that humor is the best content for your viral e-mail campaign. Cartoons, jokes and funny video clips are among the things that can be added to an e-mail to insure that it will go viral. People will want to pass along something that makes them laugh. They are a lot more likely to hit the forward button and send your email to their friends and relatives if it is an “advertainment” rather than an advertisement. Not along ago, about 35 million people got an e-mail containing a picture taken in Disneyland. It took a minute to see it but there was Donald Duck lying prone in front of the famous Cinderella Castle. The title of the picture was “Bird Flu has hit Disneyland”. It was a viral e-mail advertising Disneyland and used the edgy strategy of making light of what’s serious… and it works. I’d guess that most people who own a computer have seen that picture… and thus the advertisement for Disneyland. The bird flu epidemic is newsworthy and has the potential to attract an enormous amount of attention to any brand that might, for whatever reason, associate itself with it. Remember that people are much more likely to share a joke or a funny picture than anything else so you would be well advised to include humor in your e-mail campaign.

Viral marketing has an array of possibilities and ways to achieve your overall goals. However, just like everything else, preplanning and the right setup to create success are the things you will need to make it work for you and your e-business.

The first thing you want to be sure you don’t do is get over-zealous. The one thing you need to avoid at all costs is spamming. Spamming is still used widely, but with the government establishing more restrictions and fines you don’t want this to be a problem for you. The professional image of your site will also suffer if you send mail blatantly.

Spamming requires a database that contains a huge list of e-mail addresses set up so that the message can be delivered with one click. The problem with it (aside from the governmental restrictions and associated fines) is that it irritates the recipients and kills the validity of your campaign, which in turn kills the factors that would motivate someone to refer your site.

You need to personalize by creating your website with personal appeal. You must see to it that your website makes your customers feel safe, secure and cared for. E-mail is important, because it is going to be one of the most affordable ways to keep in touch with your customers.

The proper way to handle email permission is to first let your customer know that you will not transmit their e-mail addresses to third party companies. The next thing to do is to attach the need for their e-mail addresses to benefits they can receive.

For example: Coupons or discounts that are only available to members who receive e-mail notifications. With each e-mail you send the viral marketing effect takes place.