Build Your List With Permission-Based Referrals

Inbox Ideas | Email Marketing Tips by AWeber

Posted by Justin Premick

“There’s a great, wide open Internet out there, continuously accessed by millions of people, and in all likelihood, at least some of them are interested in what I’m offering. Surely there must be a way to reach them, but how?”

If you’ve said or thought that, you’re hardly alone. One of the biggest email marketing challenges for many businesses, particularly those that are new at it, is building a list of opt-in subscribers.

The good news is, it can be done. However, building a large list of quality subscribers takes time, and some people that we speak to don’t feel they have time. They want — need — a big list, and now.

Big List Building Mistake: Buying Email Addresses

This urgency can push them to buy lists of allegedly “opt-in” email addresses, website “traffic” that they believe will result in opt-in subscribers, and any of the myriad products aimed at frustrated would-be list builders.

Aside from the fact that purchased email addresses cause spam complaints and (at AWeber) get accounts terminated, they’re simply a waste of money. You’ll benefit more from other list-building techniques that are:

Free (with the exception of some time and effort)
Opt-in (people are asking you directly for information)

A Better Way: Get Referrals From Your Current Readers

One of the best examples of this is growing your list by referrals from existing subscribers.

Word-of-mouth is one of the oldest and most powerful means of advertising, and nowhere is it more easily or quickly done than via email. Your subscribers are getting value out of your messages and probably know someone else who would as well. Sometimes a little reminder is all it takes to get them excited about helping you help others, so give them a chance to do that!

Encourage Subscribers To Forward Your Emails To Others.

Here is an example of text you can use in your messages to do so:

Thanks for reading! If you know someone who could benefit from this, feel free to forward it to them!

Not a subscriber yet? Like what you’ve read? Sign up to get future issues delivered straight to you:

http://www.example.com

Until next time!

This Is Not The Same Thing as a “Tell a Friend” Form!

Note the difference between this and using a “tell-a-friend” form to get subscribers to sign up others to your list:

You should only subscribe/email people who are asking to be subscribed. Someone whose email address is entered into a “tell-a-friend” form by one of your subscribers hasn’t asked to be subscribed. Any email you would send to them would be spam.

Tell-a-friend forms also introduce two barriers to recommending your list to others:

Mis-typed addresses
They force the subscriber to type out the recipient’s email address, which takes more time and effort than forwarding, especially if your subscriber wants to recommend you to multiple people

Encourage current subscribers to forward your message, and avoid those barriers.

Tags: list building

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23 Responses

Gerard Courtois
October 3rd, 2006 at 3:34 pm

Thank You for the good advices. I have a lot to learn yet and I am going to continue reading your teachings.
Max Hartman
October 3rd, 2006 at 5:58 pm

Excellent time-tested follow-up advice from those with experience in what works and what doesn’t. Thanks so much!
Albert Hallado
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:35 pm

Man! Excellent Article, tutorial or whatever you wanna call it!

Liked it.
Dave Franzwa
October 4th, 2006 at 1:30 am

Great advice, as usual, Justin.

I’ve always thought that tell-a-friend scripts were pretty darned cool, but I’ve also been leary of them for the reasons you mentioned.

It’s nice to have confirmation that my leariness wasn’t simply paranoia. There are definitely folks "out there" who are so thin-skinned that they just have to be wagging their finger at somebody or they’re not happy.

And they also don’t take jokes very well;-/

I, for one, try to find the humour in every situation I run up against.

Fortunately for others, most of the "issues" that I happen upon fall under the catagory of "operator error."

Thanks for the tips
Bob Clarke
October 4th, 2006 at 4:52 pm

Thanks for the great article. It saves me time, makes me money and I get great advice for free. You can’t beat that.
Nick Pang
October 4th, 2006 at 9:01 pm

great advice justin!

obvious but forgotten source of viral traffic…
AnnaLaura Brown
October 8th, 2006 at 10:52 am

great advice. I’m going to try using the pass this along to someone message with my next newsletter.
David G
October 9th, 2006 at 3:30 am

Great post Justin & thanks for the tip - sometimes we miss the little things even with a large list. Actually, especially with a large list this could make a huge difference!

Keep up the good work
adib
October 9th, 2006 at 4:11 pm

Thanks for sharing this tip Justin. This method is much better than tell-a-friend form on the website
Rob
October 11th, 2006 at 7:52 am

Thanks for the tip I will be using it. I am also look at http://www.tafpro.com which has a unique twist to tell-a-friend with lovely features like the ability to feedback to the referrer when a friend has clicked on their link and to run competitions.
Tom Kulzer
October 11th, 2006 at 11:37 am

Rob,

Any type of tell-a-friend script such as tafpro that you mentioned are
fraught with potential problems as Justin outlined in his post. When someone visits your site and enters one of their friend’s email addresses into a form where you then send an email to the "friend" you are technically spamming that person. A friend can not give you permission to email a third party and by doing so you have become a spammer.

Now, if a friend requests your information and has it delivered to their address and you recommend they forward that to their friend directly that’s a different story. Since it’s the friend actually doing the sending directly from their own computer of material they thought was helpful to themselves and their friend you shouldn’t run into problems.

My recommendation would be to stay far, far away from tell-a-friend scripts you put on your site.
Bob Winstead
October 17th, 2006 at 5:15 pm

I love it. Thanks for all the advise and tips. I use the aweber service with both websites.
Paul Myers
October 18th, 2006 at 5:16 am

There’s a simple way to get the right message delivered without using a TAF script.

Write the copy you want sent. Keep it simple and conversational. No hype, no "commands." Just a friendly referral designed to get the click. Then put it in a text field on a page on your site and let your visitors copy it from that field and paste it into an email to send to their friends. Explain that you do it that way so they can tell their friends without having to give out their friends’ email addresses.

It takes some testing, and doesn’t work with every audience, but where it does work it makes a real difference.
George Kedourie
October 18th, 2006 at 5:03 pm

These past days I have been thinking all about the tell a friend forms but had various unresolved doubts and had more or less come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to just tell subscribers that they were free to forward my mails to their friends if they wished to do so. I figure that If they are happy with the value received they will do that naturally, ( I always did), so that mentioning that they are free to do so gives them a slight jog without being pushy. After that the viral nature and quality of my first free offer will take over.

I am happy that I just checked out your blog.

I am just beginning with you guys and am very impressed. Thank you.
Shane
October 26th, 2006 at 1:17 pm

This single article helped boost my opt in by 20%.
Thanks
Gobala Krishnan
October 31st, 2006 at 3:25 am

Hi Tom,

Aren’t social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster doing the same thing, i.e when you register they ask you to use their form to recommend or invite a friend.

Are they also spamming?
James
November 3rd, 2006 at 8:47 pm

Justin,

Great advice, we were looking for a way to drive more people to our blog via our newsletter in order to raise awarness for the charities, we are sponsoring.

Will get this steps into our next newsletter.
Martin Russell
November 8th, 2006 at 7:47 am

Great feedback there from Paul Myers about a safe text way to avoid TAF forms, but does anyone know of some examples out there to show how it can be done well?

Thanks
» List Building: Blogs and More - AWeber Blog
December 12th, 2006 at 10:36 am

[…] Getting your subscribers to pass your messages on to others is one way to grow your list, but it’s certainly not the only one. […]
» What Is A Subscriber Worth? - AWeber Blog
February 1st, 2007 at 9:42 am

[…] The precise impact of referrals is difficult to accurately measure, but nobody argues that they have an effect on your business. One example of this is when subscribers forward your messages to others. Another is people just talking about you, your messages and your business. […]
Francois du Toit
April 1st, 2007 at 5:34 am

Very good and helpful article!

I think we often get so caught up trying to get new ezine members that we do not even consider the powerful impact of word-of-mouth advertising from existing members.

Thanks for the warning on "tell a friend" scrips. It makes a lot of sense.
Lewis Clayton
April 4th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

Very interesting as Gobala just said… are Myspace etc spamming… this would be good to get verified!
Shannon Stacy
April 21st, 2008 at 10:43 pm

Hey great tip! Thanks Justin!