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

In The News:


pen paper and inkwell


cat break through


Dear Ms. Subscriber - Please Dont Unsubscribe

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

5 Ways to Get Better Email Marketing Data Quality at Point of Collection

Adestra provide email marketing services to a host of UK... Read More

Heres Why You Dont NEED a Blog

The word "blog" seems to be everywhere, and what an... Read More

Kick-Starting E-mail Profits Growth From One Single Shot!

Perhaps the most critical step in guaranteeing the success of... Read More

Add Email To Your Marketing Mix

If you are serious about adding email to your marketing... Read More

Why Does Nobody Visit My Web Site?

After endless hours of writing, designing and programming your brand... Read More

You DO Have an Email List Dont You?

No matter what type of business you operate, you need... Read More

Is Your E-Address Unprofessional?

How much time did you spend on deciding on the... Read More

Having an Opt In List As an Affiliate Marketer Is Crucial

What is an Opt-in List and what is its significance... Read More

Do You Ponder the Automatic Responder?

* The Automatic Responder is generally referred to as an... Read More

3 Essential Tools for Email Marketers

Marketing your business with email is an art.It's very easy... Read More

Email Etiquette: How To Send Emails People Will Read

You may remember a time before there was email?a time... Read More

Email Marketing - Building A Mail List

Millions of people use their computer everyday as a form... Read More

Email Marketing - Whats the Situation in April 2005?

Email is still the King in Internet marketing. Many people... Read More

Internet Marketing Strategies: 20 Secrets To Using Free Autoresponder Courses To Magnify Your Sales

Among internet marketing strategies that most marketers are not using... Read More

What A Newsletter Can Do For Your Business

Newsletters are often thought of as easy, do-it-yourself communications projects.... Read More

How To Create Gold With Email Promotions - Part 1

First make sure that the people you are sending your... Read More

How to Start A Money Making Newsletter

Writing and publishing a successful newsletter is perhaps the most... Read More

A Little Secret That Produces BIG Results

What if I told you that with each passing day,... Read More

Spam! Whats the Real Problem

Most people now know the official definition of spam- Unsolicited... Read More

8 Quick, Hot Reasons You Should Offer an E-mail Course Today

1. E-mail courses are generally quick and easy to create.... Read More

How to Build Your Mailing List

1. USE POP-UPS Pop-ups are one of the most common... Read More

Does Punctuation Really Matter in Email?

So much depends on choosing the correct mark of punctuation... Read More

How NOT To Appear Like A Spammer

Unless you use the Internet only for surfing and never... Read More

Building Relationships Takes Time: Overcoming the Overnight Surge Urge

Whenever we talk to a new or a "we hope... Read More

Build Your Opt-In List Today

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

Creating A Newsletter And Making Your Website Magnetic

Creating a newsletter is an ideal way to drive repeat... Read More

What is Email Marketing?

There are many avenues available for marketing online products. Radios,... Read More

Is the IronPort Whitelist Actually An Extortion Tactic?

It appears that Mr. Gates' prophetic prediction that charging marketers... Read More

Internet Advertising: 20 Magical Ways To Convert Website Visitors to Subscribers

Do you publish an e-zine or newsletter? If you answer... Read More

Email Laws That Could Bring You to Jail Even if Youre Not Spamming

First things first, I'm not a legal expert and so... Read More

EMail Newsletter Marketing Essentials

If Gutenberg were alive today he would be in publishing... Read More

4 Tips On Taming Your Email

I remember when I was first introduced to email. I... Read More