Email Marketing by the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level

Could Your Email Go Viral?

By Ron McDanielSpeaker and Author, BuzzoodleBlog: http://blog.buzzoodle.com

Viral marketing is not always something you plan. Viral marketing is when a message starts spreading from person to person rapidly and uncontrollably. This could be a message you craft to be funny or extremely informative. Or it could be something that just happens by accident and spreads quickly.

One important note about emails and viral marketing is that the viral and interesting part of the message does not have to be in the email itself. Your email could simply be a way to point people to something of interest, and they will forward it to a friend. Or the opposite could happen. Your email may not go viral, but it might trigger other forms of viral messages that take off.

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The latter happened to us a few weeks after we launched a new company named Buzzoodle. I am a fan of Seth Godin’s work, and just before going home from lunch, I decided to send him an email letting him know about our company. I’d never communicated with him before, and I really did not expect a reply. But I figured there was no down side.

The email was two to three sentences long with a link to the Buzzoodle website. When I came back from lunch, the tech group said the server was either down or there was a DNS attack on the server. After further investigation, it turned out Seth had added a comment on his blog about the email message and thousands of people were hitting ...