RE: UKNM: Viral marketing

[Jonathan Phillips]

  > 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.


We did remove any email addresses that bounced from the entrants' total. At

the end of the day there's little you can do, just as with a regular

competition you can't stop people entering with each of their email

addresses (Hotmail, ISP, work email, etc.). We did check each entry as it

came in (the system emailed us with the submitted email address in the

subject, so a glance down the inbox could identify most cheaters). We did

have one guy submit a multitude of hotmail addresses (

garyhotmail [dot] com

,

john, dave, danny, etc.) - we spotted these, and were about to contact the

entrant, but they all bounced anyway.


(all-time record for us was 231 entries using the same address on our

Resident Evil 2 game competition!)



  > 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.


In the strict sense of the word, there's a lot that could be considered

unsolicited. 'Recommend this site to a friend' links generate spam, as do

Amazon's 'refer a friend' system and Letsbuyit.com's recent 'tip a friend'

option on their hugely successful Dominos Pizza promotion. Spam is mostly

about perception, and recipients of these competition recommendations don't

perceive the emails to be junk because they can see they were initiated by a

friend, is addressed to them personally, and the content of the email is

most likely of interest to them (we would only consider running the

competition on products that have wide appeal).


Plus, we haven't had a single complaint or even query from thousands of

referrals.


Jonathan

@ REFRESH

_______________________________________

   J o n a t h a n   P h i l l i p s

Twelve Fifty One Communications Limited

phone: 01242 702011   fax: 01242 705310

email:

jp1251pr [dot] com

_______________________________________



  > -----Original Message-----

  > From:

ownerchinwag [dot] com

 [

ownerchinwag [dot] com]On">mailto:ownerchinwag [dot] com]On

 Behalf Of

  >

jasonloquax [dot] com

  > Sent: 11 October 2000 14:53

  > To:

uk-netmarketingchinwag [dot] com

  > Subject: RE: UKNM: Viral marketing

  >

  >

  > 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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