What is Viral Email Marketing and How Does It Work?

Quick question: What happens when viral marketing and email marketing collide?

Viral email marketing is the answer.

Viral email marketing is similar to email marketing in many ways, except that viral emails are delivered with the intention of being forwarded to friends and other contacts. While viral email marketing is not the most traditional form of marketing, it can be a profitable method of increasing brand awareness if you develop a strategy that is tailored to your customers' interests.

If you're thinking about using this type of marketing, our blog will show you how. Let's get started!

What is viral email marketing?

Viral email marketing is simply an email marketing strategy that aims to get emails shared quickly and widely. It relies on forwarding, sharing, and referrals to spread content to as many people as possible as quickly and exponentially as possible.

Although creating a viral email marketing campaign may be considered "fun," it is critical that you follow best practices to ensure that it complies with anti-spam laws and reaches your target audience's inbox. The goal of your viral email campaign is the same as it is for a traditional campaign: to raise brand awareness, inform your subscribers, make an offer, share important (or humorous) news, and ultimately develop long-term relationships with your customers.

examples of successful viral email marketing

Understanding your target audience is essential for a successful viral email marketing campaign. You can create an email marketing strategy that engages your viewers by understanding what resonates with them. More importantly, it may inspire them to spread your message to others.

Here are four examples of successful viral email marketing campaigns to get you started.

1. Mejuri

Most of us enjoy a good deal, and the only thing we enjoy more than a good deal is the feeling of belonging to an exclusive club!

The above email from jewelry designer Mejuri goes viral because:

• It offers practical value. Getting a preview of the sale goods can give you a chance to get what you desire at a reduced cost before anyone else.

• It has social currency. “Social currency” makes you want to be the one that gives the benefit to others. Early access to the sale goods is valuable to you, so it’ll surely be valuable to some of your friends.

• There’s a trigger. The above email provides a reason to act now before everyone can see the special pricing.

By offering an exclusive benefit, Mejuri encourages its email subscribers to push its message out to their own wider networks. This helps spread the word about itself and its offering.

viral email marketing tips

1. Send to your select target audience

You don't want to come across as a spammer.

As a result, your emails should be sent to a specific target audience. This is also why you will advise your recipients not to simply forward your message to anyone.

If they are going to forward it, they must use the special "forward to a friend" or "share" button in the body of your email. This allows you to easily track it and get the statistics you require, as opposed to if they simply forwarded your email on a regular basis, in which case you can't track it from that point on.

Offering forwarding incentives may increase the amount of forwarding. However, it may increase the likelihood that recipients will spam their entire mailing list, which could harm your brand.

As a result, it's critical that you make it clear to your recipients that they, too, should be cautious about who they share your email with.

Thank you for reading