The Power of Viral Marketing at Your Fingertips. |
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"what is it that drives users to become evangelists for your service or product, and how can we encourage and facilitate the process? The right viral program, providing great service, helping users help you, and maybe even a few incentives are all great ways to get users to spread the gospel." Darian SR Heyman, The Basics Of Viral Marketing |
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Definition
Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.
Information
Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.
At the height of B2C it seemed as if every startup had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similiar to Hotmail, widely cited as the first example of viral marketing.
Synonyms
word-of-mouth marketing
Related Terms
email marketing, pass-along rate, permission marketing
Sites
Draper Fisher Jurvetson : Files : Viral Marketing
Articles
ClickZ (February 22, 2001)
