Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Forward To A Friend For Lead Generation

Posted by kmccarty on 8/31/2010 at 5:37 PM ET 250 Points
Wondering about best practices for use of Forward to A Friend. What type of disclaimer is needed/recommended when using Forward to A Friend for lead generation?

Scenario: Person A forwards an article from a company's site to person B by filling out a form with person B's email address. The company captures person B's email address and wants to send marketing communication to that newly gotten email address.

What are the rules around that? Is a disclaimer needed somewhere on the Forward to A Friend page? In the email that gets forwarded to Person B?

Any thoughts?
To continue reading this question and the solution, sign up ... it's free!
SUBSCRIBE
Or, SIGN IN

RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 9/1/2010 at 12:03 PM Member
    The rules would be based on rules related to spam for your country. You are effectively sending an un-asked for email, so want to follow the rules and expected etiquette for doing this so as to not be illegal nor make people unhappy with your company. If in the U.S., CAN-PAM and privacy policy statement requirements would be what to follow.

    But, rules or not, many companies go beyond the rules and announce that emails entered for sending the article to friends will only be used to send the article to the friend. Of course, this prevents you from sending messages to these addresses, but it would probably make it more likely that someone would use the Forward to a Friend process.
  • Posted by Mario R on 9/1/2010 at 1:09 PM Accepted
    It is bad practice to use the recipient's address of a Fwd to Friend form (person B, in your example above) for anything other than forwarding the content chosen by person A. This form is a 'word of mouth' tool. It is not a tool to capture person B's information to then use it without their consent. That is essentially email harvesting and spamming and will get you in trouble with both persons A and B.

    Your disclaimer should state that you are only going to use person B's info to forward the content as a one time event. This will encourage person A to inititiate the forwarding. The only way you should use this process to market to person B is in the email they receive, where in addition to the forwarded content, you can include a separate link to subscribe to your email list or some other call to action. Anything beyond that and you'll risk damaging your brand very quickly.

    Hope this helps.
BACK TO TOP

Post a Comment

Related Discussions

Community Info

Top 25 Experts
(E-Marketing)