By Jessica N. Bowles-Martinez
It took me a while to figure out what viral marketing was, but apparently
its marketing that is sent along through the people that the marketing
is trying to target. I'd almost argue that this sites marketing tool
does not have pure viral marketing. The site provides a way for customers
to advertise their web site by allowing other people who visit the
site to send a postcard advertisement to their relatives.
From other sites that defined viral marketing it seemed that what
made it effective was that one advertisement is easily and inadvertently
forwarded along many times. Yet by sending a postcard it is only able
to travel along once. I see it as a trade off though, because the
postcard contains a personal message and that makes me unlikely to
through the postcard out quickly. The postcard will then stick in
my head longer than just an advertisement at the bottom of an email.
The site says claims that 65 percent of those referred to a URL by
a friend go to it I don't think this statistic represents the power
of postcards, though. A lot of its weakness lies in the fact that
it is not particularly easy to go to the site. The statistic on the
site does not take into consideration the degree of effort it takes
to go to a site (most people I know, myself included, tend to be extremely
lazy and impatient when browsing sites). I would probably not make
the effort to actually look at the site itself unless the personalized
part of the note suggested it for a particular reason. If I am emailed
a link, and am told that it is interesting I will look usually look
at it, though, because it takes no effort to just click on the URL.
The other problem I see with postcard is that I don't see these post
cards as actually being a strong referral for the advertised site.
Occasionally I will go to a site that I don't immediately have the
link to, but the suggestion usually has to come from many sources
and it usually needs to be highly praised. If many people say, "this
is the funniest site ever" I will probably go to it, (but even
that's not a given) but if one person is like, "yeah, this sites
ok… free postcards at least" I wont even remember the URL
the next time I'm at my computer.
Being able to send personalized postcards to friends and family for
free is an appealing idea to me, but I doubt that anyone I send the
card to would go to the site on the postcard.