RE: UKNM: Viral marketing

[jason]

On 10 Oct 00, at 14:26, Jonathan Phillips wrote:


> Hi Tia,

>

> at Refresh (http://www.refreshmagazine.com), a site that we manage, we ran

a

> viral add-on to our recent competition for videos of The Sixth Sense.

> Entrants to the competition were given 1 extra entry per friend they told

> about the competition. Each friend was then sent a brief email (with the

> referrer's name in the 'from:' field) with an invitation to visit the

> competition. A dead simple system.


But how many of the "friends" were just people using one of their

many other email addresses to boost their chances of winning? I've

seen on Loquax the same person enter a competition using at

least 30 different addresses.


I also know someone entered a Pyramid Prize competition using

everyname they could make up @theirdomainname.co.uk just to

build up their entries.


That kind of thing makes a mockery of the "viral" system - and

personally I still think it's a case of encouraging people to spam

their "friends" - just because there's a prize involved doesn't change

it from being unsolicited, and because there's the chance of

winning it often appeals to people's baser instincts and makes

them email anyone and everyone regardless.


Jason

--

Loquax - http://www.loquax.co.uk - The UK's Competition Portal

Tel. 0191 270 0255 Mobile. 0777 376 8548

http://www.winontheweb.co.uk - want traffic? sponsor a competition!



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