Viral Email Marketing: How does a Marketing Manager target me?

I, like a large number of people these days, lead an extremely busy life. I no longer have the time (or the inclination) to sit through hours of TV and consequently I don’t see many adverts. I watch TV on demand – I record my favourite programs and watch them when I want to – and to save time I skip through the adverts.

I also read the news online so I rarely see a newspaper and I hardly ever buy magazines. I commute to work everyday by car and on my route I don’t see any posters.

So I was thinking, I must be a marketing managers nightmare. How the hell does a marketing manager promote their brand, product or service to me?
 
Surely I’m a target consumer? I’m a married professional male in his early thirties with two children, a house, a car and all the other stuff that goes with that.

I’m a key target for household products, insurance, food (and alcohol), holidays, toys, cars, mobile phones, gadgets (and more alcohol), you name it and I probably buy it. So, back to the question, how does a marketing manager target me?

The answer is simple – email. Viral email to be precise.

Some of the funniest and most engaging things I’ve seen recently have been sent to me via email. Mostly they’re video’s and some aren’t just funny, they’re also extremely clever and creative.

I regularly receive emails from friends, family and colleagues, all of which I read as they’re from people I know and trust (I also regularly receive emails from Prince Haratni Abdullah Fayed of Nigeria but I no longer read those). Quite often those emails contain links to view viral marketing campaigns whether it be a video or a game and generally I’m instantly captivated.

If you think about it, it’s quite clever really. Prompting someone I know and trust to send me an email with a link to view something that’s been designed to engage and has the ultimate aim of selling more products. Those Marketing Managers really know what they’re doing.

So, how does it work? Again that’s quite clever too. Viral email marketing is based on the simple principle of creating something that people enjoy and want to share. So the first step is to create an engaging video or an addictive game. This part sounds simple but is in fact the tricky bit. Three key factors form an important part of the process and require deep thought.

Firstly, the creative execution needs to be strong enough to engage viewers and to encourage them to share and pass on the email. Secondly you need to consider the impact and association with your brand. Creating something that’s funny and clever is fine but if this has a negative impact on your brand the damage can potentially be huge. Thirdly you need to have a strategy to get your email seen by as many people as possible. Simply creating an email and expecting it to distribute itself won’t work and this area requires careful consideration, planning and expert guidance.

So it starts with the creative. At DVA this process begins with creating concepts. Once a concept is chosen it moves on to storyboarding – the same process is used for videos and games. Next you move onto production. If it’s a video obviously filming is the first step, if it’s a game it’s Flash programming or 3D animation and rendering.

Once production is complete, the next step is seeding. No we don’t expect you to don your gardening gloves and plant it in your back garden, seeding is the process of strategically placing your viral email on the internet so that distribution and dissemination occur. Now this really is the tricky bit as where you place the email directly impacts the amount of people who see the email and that in turn affects the success of distribution. So you need an expert, someone who knows through experience the most effective places, be that in forums, blogs, chat rooms or community sites etc. You want your viral to spread like wildfire and through a combination of strong creative and effective seeding this will happen.

One of DVA’s most recent viral campaign was a Flash game for TNS Global (www.tnsglobal.com). Launched just before Christmas 2008, an email was sent to a list of TNS customers inviting them to play ‘Snowball Rumble’ and offering the opportunity to submit their score (and email address which was captured in a database) for the chance to win a prize.

The game was a huge success and received over 5,000 hits in 10 days.

With DVA’s ability to script, shoot and edit video in-house, plus the fact that we have an in-house creative department, a team of Flash developers and 3D animators, we’re ideally positioned to produce highly creative and cost effective viral email campaigns, so if you’d like to find out more please get in touch.