Word Of “Mouse” Advertising & Viral Email Marketing

“How Humor can turn a simple email into a viral marketing tool.”

A study by Sharpe Partners, an interactive marketing agency, revealed that 89% of adult Internet users in America share content with others via e-mail. This is useful information for those of us using “word-of-mouse” e-mail techniques to sell our products.

Alright.. so I’m about to reveal my age with this next question but here goes… Do you remember the old cartoon “Mighty Mouse” ? Well, I sure do! I used to love that cartoon! Wanna know what mighty mouse has to do with email marketing? – Nothing. You see, he’s just a cute and funny little character that helped me play on the “Word Of Mouth” phrase and later transitioned to “Word Of MOUSE” (as in your computer mouse) .. These are just “attention getters” to grab my visitors between the eyeballs and get them to read on. The cute cartoon and funny video below adds some flair to my article and keeps the reader interested. This same principle holds true when you are sending a promo email to your subscribers and will also help your campaign go viral.

The Sharpe Partners study generated some interesting results regarding the type of content that is most often forwarded, as well.  The most popular content is humorous material. The second most popular category is news, followed by health care and medical information, religious and spiritual material, games, business and personal finance information and sports/hobbies… in that order. So it is easy to see that humor is the best content for your viral e-mail campaign. Cartoons, jokes and funny video clips are among the things that can be added to an e-mail to insure that it will go viral. People will want to pass along something that makes them laugh.

“Here I Come To Save The Day!”

They are a lot more likely to hit the forward button and send your email to their friends and relatives if it is an “advertainment” rather than an advertisement. Not along ago, about 35 million people got an e-mail containing a picture taken in Disneyland. It took a minute to see it but there was Donald Duck lying prone in front of the famous Cinderella Castle.  The title of the picture was “Bird Flu has hit Disneyland”. It was a viral e-mail advertising Disneyland and used the edgy strategy of making light of what’s serious… and it works.

I’d guess that most people who own a computer have seen that picture… and thus the advertisement for Disneyland.  The bird flu epidemic is newsworthy and has the potential to attract an enormous amount of attention to any brand that might, for whatever reason, associate itself with it.

Remember that people are much more likely to share a joke or a funny picture than anything else so you would be well advised to include humor in your e-mail campaign.

To You Online Sales Success,

Omar Martin, President & CEO