Infected

In times when marketing budgets are being sliced, such as the present, achieving a viral effect through online marketing can be a marketing department’s saving grace.Though armed with a small budget, Iconocast launched a successful marketing campaign last year for a conference it produces. The company sent promotional e-mails to a list of almost 50,000 prospects, selling 1,000 tickets with the help of prizes for those who forwarded the message the most (the company also ran billboards, brochures and print campaigns). To promote this year’s conferences, Iconocast will stream audio clips of company president Michael Tchong speaking at last year’s convention.

"I have a limited budget and I have to make use of the good will and good services of the people who know us," says Greg Ogarrio, Iconocast’s marketing director. "It’s like marketing-budget helper."

Non-profits have realized the low-budget benefits of viral marketing, as well. Before last year’s presidential election, for example, Planned Parenthood tried to galvanize the 70,000 members of its e-mail list to vote pro-choice by sending them streaming-video testimonials by Sarah Jessica Parker and Whoopi Goldberg. Eight percent of those who got the messages forwarded them, and the organization saw a rise in visits to its Web site, said Connie Watts, a Planned Parenthood field director. However, the streams had a slightly worse pass-along rate than the e-mail postcards the organization usually sends — possibly because people had problems viewing the stream.

One recent viral attempt aimed to bolster the very medium that makes viral marketing possible. In March, as the technology sector continued its free fall, Iconocast hoped to jump-start fledgling e-commerce prospects with its "Take Back the Net" campaign. It encouraged people to show their support for the Internet by performing at least one financial transaction online. The Internet needed aid, Iconocast’s Web site said, because of the public’s "viral lack of confidence."

Viral Experiments

As viral marketing grows up, some Internet marketing firms are trying to set themselves apart by offering new ways to grab attention and milk the virus even more.

Dynamics Direct has high hopes for its technology, which enables incoming e-mails to speak the recipient’s name when opened. Others, such as Gizmoz, take viral one step farther by making campaigns permanent. A "Gizmo" can be passed to a friend, pasted on a computer desktop or copied to a Web site. For example, the company has developed campaigns for bands, such as The Deftones, where a Gizmo sits on a desktop and streams audio/video interviews, shows upcoming tour dates and provides links to buy CDs. The Gizmo is archived on Gizmoz’ servers, where it can be updated at the client’s discretion.

While viral marketing is spreading, no one is quite sure just yet what it’s accomplishing. But like some other business practices — pricing items to the nearest 99 cents instead of a round dollar, or putting up holiday decorations — it doesn’t cost much, and the feeling is that it works.

"It will make the Web experience more engaging, a more involving medium, because you’re going to see these things that are designed to capture your attention," says Patti Williams, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Will these catchy, e-mail delivered marketing messages still rivet us in 2005, when, Jupiter Communications estimates, every e-mail user will receive 40 times more messages than they did last year?

"Once everyone’s doing it, it’s not going to be cool anymore. At some point it’s going to be overused," Williams says. "But who knows when that’s going to be?"