Viral Marketing Tips: Greeting Cards

When we speak about viral marketing, we are not talking about the newest disease. We are not talking about a Mad Cow Disease variant or something that you need to be vaccinated for. In fact, we are not referring to a disease at all.

What we are talking about is literally the most powerful traffic generation technique available on the internet. Viral marketing is so powerful that it makes the search engines look small and insignificant in comparison. Even link exchanges, as powerful as they can be, wilt into oblivion in comparison.

What you do with viral marketing is create something, anything, that visitors will want to give to other people. This thing, whatever it is, contains a link and perhaps a short advertisement for your website, ezine or ebook. So far so good, this is just good marketing. The viral part comes in because the people who receive these items want to give them to other people, who in turn want to give them away also.

So you see? What you get is an explosion of marketing for a very small price. It's actually kind of like an avalanche, in that you throw a snowball down a slope and it just grows and grows until the whole mountain of ice and snow is tumbling down.

One very cool viral marketing technique that any web site can take advantage of is greeting cards. I'm sure you've run across these all over the web. You select a graphic (a drawing, photo or other image), perhaps a sound file and add some text. This is sent to one or more people via email. These people open the email and click on a link to view their card. They, of course, have the option from here to visit your web site and perhaps send additional cards to other people (or back to the sender).

If your cards are good enough, you can find this technique alone will generate an incredible amount of traffic. Of course, you have the same problem with greeting cards that you have with your web site - you have to get people to it to begin with. Once you do that, however, you will find that it becomes more or less self maintaining. The more traffic you get the more you generate. Just make sure that all of your greeting card pages are listed in the search engines, well displayed on your page (and perhaps all of your pages) and advertised elsewhere as much as practical.

In fact, it's a good idea to spend as much or more time marketing the greeting cards as the rest of your site, since these tend to create visitors exponentially, while your site is linear.

How do you put greeting cards on your site? First, pick a theme or two. If your site is about model railroads, for example, you might get some photos of trains and train sets; you could include vacation photos, cute animal pictures, scanned drawings or anything else that you feel would make a good card. Just remember to honor copyrights - make sure you have the right to make copies of the materials before you use them.

Once you have a theme or two, you need to find a greeting card service. I've experimented with a few options. I've tried hosting it entirely on my own site, and what I've found is it is difficult to maintain. I've also tried it completely hosted on another site and found it is too restrictive.

The service that I settled upon is called CyberGreeting Network - http://cybergreet.net/. This company, in my opinion, provides the best of both worlds (local and remotely hosted).

The pages, images and sound files are stored on your own web site. You can tailor these all that you want so they blend with your pages perfectly. This is the perfect freedom, and as long as you set up the form properly all will work fine.

How do you do this? You download a template file (as explained in their instructions) and modify it to suite your needs. This may require a little effort on your part (as well as some skill with HTML) but the end result will be worth it.

The remote part of the product (which is free, by the way) is the piece that actually formats and sends the card. You see, on your page you get the visitor to supply the answers to a series of questions in a form. The form data is submitted to a CGI routine which puts everything together into a greeting card. Your visitor simply answers the questions and presses submit. You pass all of this to the routine, which then sends the card to the destination.

I was able to get half a dozen pages of greeting cards working perfectly in an afternoon. These remain on my site, and serve me well by creating a steady, growing stream of traffic. I think you would do well to take a look and determine if this will work for your site as well.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm

Claudia Arevalo-Lowe is the webmistress of Internet Tips And Secrets and Surviving Asthma. Visit her site at http://survivingasthma.com

---

To Personalize Or Not To...That is the Question

If you are really interested in conducting a successful, effective... Read More

How To Build Your Greatest Opt-In List

I get e-mails all the time from people on my... Read More

How To Get People To Constantly Open Your e-Mail Promotions Or Your Newsletter

In this article I'm going to talk strictly from a... Read More

4 Effective Ways To Use Autoresponders To Increase Your Sales

An autoresponder is a very powerful tool for any online... Read More

People Accusing You of Sending sp*am? Five Email Marketer Must Know Tips

People tend to forget their subscriptions. Sometimes they don't even... Read More

Build Your Opt-In List Today

There are many services available to help your with building... Read More

What Good Is An AutoResponder?

A term that confuses just about everyone is "autoresponder". When... Read More

Success Guaranteed With Your Opt In List

Some time ago I was thinking about the best and... Read More

The Moneys In The List - But How Much?

The internet seems to be full of hyped up business... Read More

The Power of a Referral Script

The key to the success of e-commerce is in the... Read More

Choose The Right Business For You In Less Than 15 Minutes

3 Characteristics Of "The Right Business" ModelThe business must service... Read More

Build or Buy--Should You Build Your Own Opt-in Email List?

The easiest way to acquire an email list for your... Read More

Follow Up Letter for Past Customers - Why and How to Write It

Following up with your past customers is a proven way... Read More

Lesson #1: Autoresponders 101

What the heck is an autoresponder?An autoresponder is much like... Read More

Using Mirror Pages Effectively

Thought I would share with you a very effective technique... Read More

Email List Management

How do you get the most out of your list?We... Read More

10 Terrific Ways To Enlarge Your Subscriber Base

1. Create a unique selling proposition (USP).Developing a USP for... Read More

Your Money Is Still In Your List - Build It!

You are a home business entrepreneur. You have just built... Read More

10 Ways To Quadruple Your Sales with 232%

1. When you make your first sale, you need to... Read More

Creating Demand With Email Newsletters

You've launched your web site. You've implemented a public relations... Read More

Guidelines For A New Sending Paradigm - Part 1 of 5 - Treat Email as a True Risk and Cost Center

Sustainable email sending programs in an inherently hostile environment now... Read More

Email Etiquette III

Further to my previous issues this subject continues - part... Read More

Newsletters that Work

Offer a newsletter in a time frame that will be... Read More

Using Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) For Email Privacy

Need for PrivacyPeople have become hypersensitive about their privacy during... Read More

The Power Of Email Marketing

Have You Considered The Power Of Email MarketingOld vs. NewIf... Read More

Click for Success!

Being online for the last five or so years has... Read More

Dear Ms. Subscriber - Please Dont Unsubscribe

Don't be insulted. Don't take it as a personal rejection.... Read More

Signature Files: The Easy Way To Create More Business

If you do business as an affiliate, then you're constantly... Read More

Signature File Dos and Donts

Signature files have been around since, well, before most current... Read More

How Can You Be Sure That Your Marketing Efforts Will Generate Profits?

There are several ways to ensure that your adverts are... Read More

Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated -- Email Marketing

Recently, there has been a lot written about email and... Read More

Effective Email Marketing

I've been sending out email camapigns for clients for over... Read More

Three Phases to Email Sensitivity

The neurophysiological dynamics of understanding each email message are very... Read More