Beware of Free Tell A Friend Scripts

“Tell a Friend” scripts are among the most cost effective methods used to increase the flow of traffic to a website. Over the past decade a great number of strategies have been developed to boost traffic, most of them cannot compete with the immense power of referral or traditional “word of mouth” advertising which is exactly what tell a friend emulates.

Viral Marketing 101
One of the methods that have spawned many success stories in driving traffic into websites is viral marketing. Viral marketing makes use of the tendency of a person to share something they find informative or entertaining.

Many companies bank on this behavior to spread their products and increase the popularity of their company, product or service through their website. Viral marketing makes use of many mediums in enticing this behavior. It might be in the form of an interesting story, an addicting flash game, an amusing video and many others that may catch a person’s attention.

This ingenious form of marketing is typically low cost and is a wonderful tool for any company to utilize. The benefit greatly overshadows the cost or efforts to initialize this marketing scheme. Any website would greatly benefit that viral marketing.

Tell A Friend
One of the easiest methods used in viral marketing is using a tell a friend script. These user friendly scripts are typically added to the programming of a website. Generally, tell a friends scripts are installed in pages where plausible viral media is placed so that anyone can easily forward this media to any of their friends, colleagues or family members.

The basic concept of a tell a friend script involves text fields where someone types their name, e-mail address, the recipient’s e-mail address. Then a button which when clicked, sends a link of the current media or web page to the intended recipient much like a standard e-mail. When the recipient receives the e-mail he or she wouldn’t think of the mail as spam since it originated from someone he or she knows and trust.

Tell a friend scripts also eliminate the chances of being blocked by spam software or applications because they typically use the information inputted by the sender, which is often white listed by the recipients. Statistics show tell a friend scripts “open and click rates” convert 42% better than unsolicited emails.

Along with the link to the media piece or web page, tell a friedn scripts can be programmed to include a brief description of the company or site that sponsors the media sent. This allows for the introduction of either the site, company name or its products. This viral strategy drives traffic to websites resulting to great number of potential customers.

If tell a friend scripts are such effective viral marketing tools, why then should we beware of free tell a friend scripts?
Atop referral traffic to websites, another powerful aspect of tell a friend scripts is lead collection. When implemented this feature collects names and email addresses to be used in email marketing endeavors. This permission based internet marketing strategy helps maximize viral driven ROI. Email addresses and names collected are not only typically valid, they can be sorted according to industry or topic of interest. For example if someone shares a “baby snoring” video from a baby snoring treatment website, it would be safe to assume this person and their tell a friend script recipients have children who snore… A great market for the company website that initiated and served the video. The issue with free tell a friend scripts is they often collect personal information such as names and email addresses then sell this information to third party organizations which in turn use these lists in their email marketing endeavors.

Do It Yourself or Not?
Tell a friend scripts are not as simple as it sounds often requiring complex programming. These scripts are seldom as simple as  copy paste. While finding a tell a friend script is easy, setting it up is another story. This is why dealing with a professional web production team is essential when dealing with tell a friend scripts. I invite you to visit www.GloriousMediaGroup.com for assistance with the setup and implementation of your tell a friend script.

Tell a friend scripts are powerful viral marketing strategies that cost effectively drive traffic to any site which in turn spell profits. These scripts are simple to use and offer great benefits for a low cost paired with great creativity and foresight.