Tell A Friend Software

Over the years, tell a friend software has become quite popular as a viral marketing tool for business. Consisting of only a few lines of computer code, tell a friend programs have enabled businesses to motivate people into inviting prospective customers to try out their products and services. And since it is very easy to install and cheap to use, these programs have become prevalent on the Internet and appearing on almost every commercial website. However, the tell a friend program also has a dangerous potential, as shown in the fact that it can be an effective tool in an "Astroturfing" campaign (a type of misleading political advertising or public relations campaign).

Named after the artificial grass Astroturf, Astroturfing designates is an advertising or public relations campaign that seeks to generate the false impression of being a spontaneous "grassroots" phenomenon or movement that that it is spurred by the community. Through this technique, a company can disguise its marketing agenda as an independent public reaction by using viral communication methods like tell a friend software. One example of this was the infamous "All I Want For Christmas is a PSP" marketing campaign by Zipatoni and Sony, which used a marketing page disguised as a user-made fan blog to spark interest in the gaming community.

One of the common mistakes businesses make is to use tell a friend software in Astroturfing, or in a lesser extent, spamming. If you are a web entrepreneur, you should always avoid using these and similar marketing strategies with tell a friend software. Despite its wide marketing potential, Astroturfing and similar aggressive marketing methods break marketing etiquette and are often easily uncovered, leading to the loss of trust of the customer. In addition, it is also important to remember the basic premise of tell a friend scripts and other viral marketing tools: that it is to motivate a customer to pass on the marketing message to another for both the business and the customer's benefit.

What do Facebook, Multiply and Myspace have in common? They are all powerful social networking centers. If you have joined one of these sites, then you are connected and support these social networks. And this has its advantages too, as social networks for fast spread of communication from person to person. In fact, it may have already experienced getting breaking news stories from social networks online. This speedy transfer of information through social networks has also benefited web-based businesses as well, as shown by innovative gadgets like the tell-a-friend software.

A powerful yet simple web marketing tool that is being used to advertise products and services on social networks is the tell a friend software. Also known as the tell a friend program, the tell a friend software is a special computer software that is embedded on business websites and helps visitors of that site to send referrals to his or her contacts via email. The software is visually composed of a few buttons and an online form. To send a referral, all a person had to do was to fill up the form with his or her email contacts as well as his own and hit the Send button. Upon sending, the software will send an email message to the sender's contacts with attached media about the business.

The benefits of using the tell a friend software to market web-based business is that it generates buzz for only minimal resources. The software enables visitors of the site to send referrals to their contacts, and if their contacts visit the website and have enjoyed the products and services the business provides they will pass a good word to others. This creates a self-sustaining spread of awareness about the business and excites people into patronizing it. Furthermore, because of people often send referrals to people who will benefit from it, the traffic caused by the software are composed of people who have actual interest for the products and services the business provides.

The reality of viral spread of ideas or information has been around since humans have learned to communicate and organize as communities. It simply refers to the way information spread from one person to the next by mere using social networks. In ancient times, the reliability of information was hard to check and the source of information was hard to trace. However, the online version of viral spread is a bit more accurate and precise, especially when utilized as a means of marketing products. The viral tell-a-friend online marketing strategy may utilize modern technology but its principles are based on fundamental human communication.

Although language is not uniquely a trait of the human species, it is the ability of humans to propagate information at faster rate and at larger range that made human civilization possible. Any information or ideas that are useful, interesting, or at least entertaining are generally propagated. Long before the invention of printing, telephone, radio, and television, the fastest way to spread information across a population was through the word-of-mouth. Ironically, with the invention of computer and the internet, this same model has found its resurgence in the form of viral tell-a-friend marketing scheme. This modern reincarnation of the word-of mouth method is very effective in capturing the attention of specific segments of a population.

The basic principles of viral tell a friend marketing can also be found in the traditional word-of-mouth spread of information and ideas. The rate, range, and sustainability of a viral spread (either by word-of-mouth or online campaign) are dependent on the characteristics of the social networks. A successful viral spread can only succeed in a social network that has closely-knit members. However, the same social network must also have great potential to be connected to other social networks. Otherwise, the viral spread will easily be stopped because of the isolation. If the members of a social network are closely-knit by common interests, it would be easier to find incentives to spread a marketing campaign. On the other hand, the non-isolation or connectedness of a social network to other social networks gives it higher potential to spread a viral campaign to a wider audience.

Setting up an online business is simple and affordable enough that even ordinary, unskilled people can do it. The simplest type of online business is selling second-hand items in auction sites. No technical knowledge is necessary and no big capital is needed to begin selling in auction sites. However, sustaining a business is difficult. It is more difficult to make a business grow from humble beginnings. Typically, only big corporations have enough resources and technical know-how to dominate a particular market. This does not necessarily mean that small businesses, particularly online businesses, do not have chance to be successful in their own fields. Affordable marketing tools such as the tell-a-friend software are now available for the convenient use of small, start-up online businesses.

Marketing tools give extra competitive edge for a new online business not only to survive but also to thrive and grow. Sophisticated online marketing tools such as tell-a-friend software were formerly affordable only to those companies that have big resources. However, with the development of collaborative open source projects, many expensive software applications became more affordable and some are even available for free. This is not only true for office application software but also true for marketing software.

Ordinary would-be online entrepreneurs have better chance of success with the help of marketing tools such as the tell-a-friend software. Basically, this software is part of a referral system that gathers referral email addresses and sends invitation letters. This software is also capable of generating interactive online forms that can be filled-in without actually visiting the website from where they originated. This type of software is not only convenient but efficient in targeting a significant portion of a market. It is fully automated and does not require constant supervision or updating. It is self-updating, requiring minimal amount of maintenance work.

In a typical online viral marketing campaign, one website visitor or customer is capable of generating at least one new other visitor or customer by means of referral system. If a website has high value in terms of usefulness, entertainment, and information, it is more likely to be endorsed by users to their other contacts even without the aid of automated marketing tool such as tell-a-friend software. People simply have the tendency to share useful information to their social contacts. This is the essence of viral marketing. The success of social networking sites, video-sharing sites, and joke sites is an evidence of the efficacy of viral marketing.

Startup online businesses have higher chance of success if they can capture specific niches. Online business competition is very extreme that a "specialist" enterprise has greater chance of becoming successful compared to a "generalist" enterprise. This is especially true for startup, small enterprises. It is very easy to be overwhelmed and swallowed-up by bigger players if a business is merely on the startup stage. Finding a unique niche and becoming highly specialized minimize the competition. The business will have better focus and can capture specific market. Integrating tell-a-friend software in the marketing campaign will greatly increase the precession of attracting targeted visitors.

Viral Inviter is unique tell-a-friend software. It does not merely automate the referral system. It also provides easy means of integrating other marketing aspects such as the affiliate links. It does not merely provide convenient means of generating new visitors through the referral system. It is also capable of monitoring and analyzing the progress of referral genealogies. It can present feedback reports on the number of referrals who became customers or subscribers. This can be done by integrating it with the payment system of a website. Hence, Viral Inviter is not only an automated referral software application but also an automated analytic software application.

Business marketing has always benefited from recommendation. If a customer likes the services and products a business provides, he or she is likely to spread it via word of mouth to friends and family. In fact, you might have already heard a friend or relative exclaim how one product he or she tried was so good that you should try it yourself. If done properly, the result of this marketing technique is people talking about it positively, which in turn lead to more people patronizing the brand. Because of its effectiveness, more and more advertising and marketing tools were created to trigger this kind of word of mouth propagation. One of which is the tell a friend software.

A fine example of a cheap yet effective tool that web entrepreneurs can use to market their business is the tell a friend software. This type of advertising program is designed to help people visiting the website to refer it to others. Visually, it consists of a simple button or form which users can click and create a personalized message to his or her e-mail contacts. Once sent, the recipients will receive the message on their email inbox, containing the sender's message as well as attached information and media concerning the website.

The main advantage of using the tell a friend software is that it uses existing social networks on the web to market and advertise the business. By the simple act of a person referring the site to another through the script, awareness of the business is spread. And if the person who gets the referral likes the site, he or she will most likely refer it again to another contact. Theoretically, this leads to brand awareness of the website doubling in size with every referral. And because it is from a known contact, the recipient of the referral would not mistake it for spam and delete it.

If you own an online business, using a tell a friend software to boost your sales is a highly viable option. It is cheap, effective, and requires only minimal effort to install. The software can easily downloaded on the web for free or for a minimal fee, with the paid versions usually having more features and add-on marketing tools.