• not for profitability
• not for the quality of the products
• not for value delivered to customers

Product Life Cycles without the Maturity Phase?
Even if we pretend for a moment that there was no quality problem with these many products released on a very tight schedule, the fact remains that the product life cycle was cut.
A normal product life cycle looks like this:

Here is a short explanation about the meaning and the function of the four product life cycle phases in terms of profitability:

1. Development and testing naturally are investment phases, where you spend money. The cash flow is typically negative.
2. After testing comes the launch. The goal is here fast and deep market penetration. This helps to establish the necessary scale to become highly profitable and to cement a competitive advantage over me-to products.
3. A mature product should provide a stable positive cash flow over a reasonable time. This should make the whole project profitable, covering the cost incurred in the development phase and in the launch phase, pay for the cost of capital etc.
4. The harvest phase is concerned with recovering as much as possible from the investment when the product becomes obsolete. This may be done by using assets as long as possible and not replacing them, by transferring resources to new projects and by transferring customer trust and brand recognition to a new project, if possible.

Now compare this to a graph I have drawn for a typical internet marketing product launch:

If you watch this graph you will see that the cash flow over the whole project is much smaller. In fact the cash flow is only positive in the final stage of the product launch and in the first part of the harvest phase. This means less profit, but it also means that you must strictly limit the expenses for product development and testing. The result is in diminished product quality.

Why Do Marketers Throw so Much Profit Away?

The shortcomings of this launch-and-run strategy are so obvious, that it begs an answer to the question: Why do people still use these aborted product life cycles?

I think there are several reasons for this. Some of them might be:

• The digital nature of information products sold through the internet means that these products can be copied without effort by anybody. And they will be copied, because there are more than enough people around who do not care about copy rights and intellectual property provided both belong to others.
• Affiliates will run after a launch. A successful launch means high market penetration. High market penetration means conversion rates will fall: Everybody will still buy only once, provided he likes the offer, whether 3 or 15 people tell him about the deal. And lower conversion rates mean less rewards for the same effort by an affiliate.
• Limited product support, caused by the anticipated early end of the product life cycle erodes the value for the customer further and damages the value of the producer’s brand. Sales are hurt even more and the product leaves the marketplace even faster.
• Limited resources for product development make for poor products. And poor products need pressure sales tactics, as they are accommodated in a product launch environment. Mature products do not accommodate pressure sales tactics, as products in the mature stage are readily available. Thus sales will break down after the launch.
• The aborted product life cycle strategy allows still for some profits.

Possible Solutions
I am not the first one to note this problem, or to think about solutions. In fact there have been many product launches promising by themself to provide such solutions. The main strategy in the internet marketing place has been up to now to extend the product life cycle via continuity programs. This means, as far as information products are concerned, to drop-feed the information through a membership website or via coaching programs to the customer. It is easier to detect and act against illicit sharing of passwords and usernames than against outright copying of ebooks, videos etc.
Others left – at least as far as own products are concerned – the information product market and moved to ongoing services like web hosting, audio streaming.
But I think there arises a new opportunity to solve that problem: Platforms such as app stores by Apple and Google, Amazon offers for Kindle devices; probably Microsoft will establish a similar system, and regional book dealers will also try to develop such platforms.
Why do these platforms help us to solve the problem? First of all, they control the content distribution, i.e. on which machine an app or ebook might be copied or not.
But there is more: You can update an app on a mobile device to keep the quality high and the information up to date. This adds an element of the drop-feeding to your product, as mentioned earlier. And it allows you to offer a high quality product to new customers, while keeping the existing ones happy.
A third aspect: The cost for the user of an information product has two components: The money spent on the product and the value of the time used to consume the product. A mobile product reduces the value of the time the customer needs to invest to use the product. He can read and listen while sitting in a train, plane, waiting at the doctor etc. He can spare his quality time for his family and his customers.

Please Share Your Thoughts
I invite you all to share your suggestions how to overcome this problems in information marketing. If you have an idea how to solve the matter, or if you want to add another aspect to the problem description, please leave a comment.

I had already a dedicated webserver a couple of years ago. I had abandoned it for three reasons: First of all the monthly payment is at least three times as much as a high end shared hosting account costs. But more importantly that old dedicated server used a Linux distribution which was less than stable, and I had to rebuild the server periodically. On top of that the support was less than perfect. If I had a question, the answer was mostly “We do only support the server in its standard configuration.” This meant a lot of work for me, and I spent way too much time administering my system.
I returned to a shared hosting plan. The deal was sweetened by many extras, like video hosting, a mailing list service and more. Considering it all, webhosting was almost for free. This was a great deal, at the first glance as it turned out.

I got what I had paid for.
But it did not too long until I realized that my websites were down for several hours, repeatedly. After complaining it turned out that the server was switched off because of system overload. But worse: I realized that spam links had been injected into all my Word Press blogs. Somebody had managed to access the blog database. I complained to the hosting company and repaired the blogs. Luckily I had backup copies available.
After a few days my sites were down, again. I called the hosting company immediately. It turned out that they are moving the whole shared server to a new machine, due to the prior problems. I was happy, for a while.
Soon after that I found that my traffic stats were gone. They had switched the statistics program from AW-Stats to Webalizer. And much worse, I then realized that my helpdesk installation was no longer accepting email, because some Perl modules had been removed from the server. All that happened without any communications about the changes from the side of the hosting company. I decided quickly to get my dedicated server back, but this time with a decent service package.

A Hosting plan implies more than renting space on a server
The lesson learned from both scenarios is clear: If you pay for hosting, you do pay first and foremost for the people who maintain the technical infrastructure. This applies to a shared hosting plan as well as for a dedicated server. It’s true that I pay for the machine running the website, for electricity and for bandwidth. But the main benefit is the people who are taking care of the infrastructure 7 days per week, 24 hours per day.

What makes a web hosting service excellent?
The term “service” implies that there is a human being either performing a task for me, or helping me to perform that task, and this is exactly what I need. This service people need to be available at the time I need them. Waiting for an answer from Friday evening until Monday morning might well mean that my website is down over the weekend. This is most important in a shared hosting environment, where my own options to correct a problem are very limited.
Of course the service people have to know their stuff. If I ask them whether I can edit a certain configuration file manually, or whether the automation system will overwrite my changes at the next opportunity, I do need an answer.
I award the crown of excellence to service people if they do communicate as appropriate. One example is the implementation of a major configuration change or software update. Such events might render web applications dysfunctional and lead to a loss of statistical data. I want to do a backup before such a change, and I need to do some testing of my applications after it is implemented. For this reasons I must hear from my Webhosting company in advance about planned software and configuration changes.

He mentions a few concepts providing me with quite a bit food for thought:

• The huge potential which becomes available whenever people connect cloud computing and mobile devices
• The concept of crowd sourcing. You can get almost instantly a picture of events thousands of kilometers away by receiving information from a magnitude of eye witnesses. Raw information is distributed before spin doctors had a chance to get their hands on it.
• How this changes the balance of power between buyers and sellers
• How this changes the balance of power between government and citizen.

We had the chance to witness The Power of Mobile, which develops whenever millions of people have the ability to access this huge pool of information and the ability to publish instantly what they see, hear and think. Propaganda generated by governments and organizations like Hezbollah can now be dissected. Then suddenly becomes visible that one and the same person was shown as a dying bombing victim on 3 pictures taken in different places on different days, and the same toys scattered in the ruins of buildings on a host of photos taken in different towns on different days. (Examples taken from Hezbollah propaganda during the last Lebanon war)
Even the mere access to mobile phones, without the extra power of instant multimedia publishing has proven remarkably powerful. If people see something in the TV they may call a friend in the area affected and ask. “Are you o.k.? And what is going on.” As a result protests against Israel’s military offensive against Hamas in 2008 were much stronger in Morocco compared to Jordan, Lebanon or Egypt. People could already differentiate between the truth and TV coverage, as long as they were not too far away from the scene.
Such thinking is not new, but still valid and also economically powerful. I remember an article published about 20 years ago in the Harvard Business Review explaining that in rural India at the time the lack of phones was not a mere symptom of poverty, but an important source of poverty. The reasoning: Small farmers had to sell their product for a very low price to wholesalers, because they did not have a chance to know what people were paying in town for food. With a phone they could have called shopkeepers in town and ask what the pay for rice, wheat, potatoes or corn, make an informed decision what to plant and almost immediately increase revenue substantially.

Why to Use It
Why would you want to allow your readers to access your content as feed outside of the carefully crafted blog environment? The simple answer is: It is always a good idea to make it easy for your customer to access your message. And if a part of your message needs other formats like audio or video, which are not available via RSS feeds, there is still the link to the original blog post. In this case the text acts as a teaser to visit the blog and watch the video or to listen to the audio content.
And why would a reader of your blog add your content as feed to his RSS reader? Feeds are a very effective method to stay on top of a topic without browsing the web for hours to check favorite websites for changes and fresh information. This saves him a lot of time, and at places where he pays for bandwidth it saves him also a lot of money.

How to Use It
RSS feeds with WordPress provide easy access to your content. And the beauty is: It is already incorporated in your standard blogging software. WordPress automatically produces feeds with your posts, and then also a feed from the comments on every single post. Modern browsers show an icon listing the feeds in the address bar or on top of the webpage display window. But to make it easy for your readers you should add a link to your feeds to the sidebar of your blog.

Add More Features
I suggest you go one step further and use Google’s Feedburner service. This allows you to offer one single feed working with all feed readers. Feedburner gives you also statistics which allow you to gauge how many people read your feeds, and a feature to offer feeds via email to your audience.

In short:
RSS feeds with WordPress are a foolproof way to make your content easily accessible to your audience on a wide variety of platforms. It is already part of the standard WordPress blogging software. To make it easy to use, you should take care that your blog theme contains a link to the feeds. If you want to get stats about the use of your feeds and additional features, Feedburner is a good choice. It is free, makes your feed even more accessible and provides a simple set of stats about the use of your feed.

When I became aware of this little secret, I removed several hundreds of drafts for posts and pages. They were many months old, and absolutely useless. It took me quite some time to do this cleaning process.
But by good luck there is a way to tell your WordPress blogging software not to pile up these mountain of ols drafts. If you want to know how this is done, fill in your firstname and email address into the form below
If you want to know how to avoid an unneccessary bloated WordPress database in the first place, fill in your firstname and email address into the form below:
 

How can marketing strategies with a WordPress blog foster the growth of desire in a prospect’s mind? There are several ways a blog can help you out to reach that goal:

1. Post regularly to highlight different benefits of your service without exhausting your readers.
2. Provide samples to help you prospects quickly and gain credibility
3. Ask for comments to learn what your prospects think and gain social proof
4. Control the environment to keep you audience focused.

Our marketing strategies with a WordPress blog use an indirect approach. We do not try to push our prospect to buy. We provide for our audience a context where everybody can try and feel how much safer, more enjoyable and richer his life could become by using our products or services. We provide free samples and explain how to use them. We give people the opportunity to comment on our samples and explanations. Readers can ask questions, suggest improvements and tell us how they use our content. Obviously we remove spam comments, and we will never allow people to hurt others with their comments.

Another important component of my marketing strategy is the blog feed. WordPress automatically creates feeds of posts, and also of comments. This helps to alert people about fresh content, highlighting new aspects of the offer. I use Google’s Feedburner service to get an idea how many people are really keen to see my content as soon as I post it.

Email is also a regular component of our marketing strategies with a WordPress blog. We offer email subscriptions throughout the blog and use the lists to offer extra samples and goodies. Subscribers receive also alerts when we post fresh content on the blog, and if we have any special offers.

We also mail related offers and alerts about valuable content from other publishers, provided they add extra value to our readers.

His newsletter is one of the rare email pieces I miss when I do not get it.

But just read this issue by yourself:

“The Portable Voyeur”
===================

In the last issue, I put out the idea of looking at your online networks and niches as “virtual neighborhoods.” Nothing especially new in that concept, except that almost no-one in the marketing field talks about them that way. That discussion is mostly left to forum operators and social networking geeks.

In this issue, I want to talk about something closer to home. Literally IN your home. People spying on you using your own electronics.

Let’s start with the least intrusive, and work up to stuff you may not believe is happening. The last few are downright creepy.

….

There’s a thing called “IP geolocation,” which uses a database of IPs (numbers locating your computer on the network) and physical areas to show where a computer is located. There are a bunch of these, and the accuracy can be anything from very close to wildly off the mark. The good ones can narrow it down to a few blocks, in most cases. Sometimes to a specific building.

You can see this most often when you notice an ad on a site that’s used by people all over the world, but mentions your city by name. “[YourCity] mom discovers…” or “Man in [Hometown] loses 47 pounds using…”  That’s IP geolocation in its mildest form.

Twitter has offered the option for a while to attach your IP address to a tweet, basically trying to tell people where you are. You have to opt into that, though. It’s turned off by default.

Facebook’s new “Places” settings options enable a more advanced function by default. The idea is to make it easy for your friends to know where you are. Unfortunately, it also makes it easy for people you might not want to share your location with to find you. Or know when you’re not home…

It’s easy to disable this option, if you know it’s there and what it’s called. John Williams sent me a link to the instructions. You can read those here:

http://lifehacker.com/5616395/how-to-disable-facebook-places

Why would this matter? Well, maybe you don’t want your friends to know where you are every minute that you’re online. Or maybe you don’t want
world+dog knowing when you’re not home. Or maybe you don’t want your employer knowing you’re logging onto Facebook from work. Or from the park when you called in sick.

Just how much info should be distributed about you automatically?

But wait… There’s more!

….

There are applications on some portable devices and phones that can transmit the data from a GPS system to other sites. This can be used to pinpoint your exact address, and your location to within a few feet.

That’s how the “Places” function on Facebook works. And, with the default settings, your Facebook “friends” can “check you in” if they’re with you. Handy, if you’re careful about who your “friends” are, and who you allow to share the info. Given the default settings, though, it’s an announcement to the world every time you log in from a mobile device.

That can get into the realm of the dangerous. With it set to “Friends of friends” able to view the info, you could be broadcasting your location to burglars, stalkers, ex-employees, your employer, or even just that annoying person
you’d rather not see right now.

Given recent comments from CEOs Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook – “Privacy is dead”) and Eric Schmidt (Google – “If you have something that you don´t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”), there is every reason to believe these services will be used as aggressively
as possible.

Both companies have said the comments were taken out of context. That could be easily believed of Zuckerberg’s remark. Schmidt’s is a bit less dismissable. None of that matters, though, when you look at the way their firms actually treat their users’ private data. Facebook set this option to “On” by default. Google initially opted every Gmail user into their social networking platform, Buzz, and created significant and foreseeable problems for some users.

I’m pretty sure I don’t want those sorts of decisions made for me without my knowledge or consent. How about you?

And it gets (potentially) much, much worse.

….

Apple has applied for a patent that has some deeply disturbing implications: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/24-0

The summary: They want a patent on software that, in mobile devices, would let them listen to your conversations and/or take pictures of you or your surroundings, without any way for you to know it’s happening. Just remotely activate those functions, at their own discretion.

It would also let them monitor biometric data and all of your online activities while using their devices. Ostensibly, this would be developed for purposes of preventing theft, or catching thieves. It’s even been suggested to me that Apple may want the patent to keep the idea from being used by others.

I don’t buy it. But that doesn’t really matter.

First, it’s nearly certain that, if this technology is deployed and not made illegal for use by private citizens, it will be abused. The theft-prevention rationale was offered, for example, by the Lower Merion school district, in their program giving laptops to every high-school student. “Only to enable recovery in event of theft,” they said. That didn’t stop people at the school from using it to spy on students in their homes.Yeah. Really.

One kid was disciplined for “improper behavior” that occurred at home, in his bedroom. The Vice-Principal used a photo taken using the webcam in the laptop as his evidence. According to a forensic analysis commissioned by the district, the school took 66,503 screenshots and photos using these systems. The school admits these include pictures of the kids in their bedrooms.

If teachers will do that, what would a corporation do?

….

So, if you have one of these portable devices, where do you use it? In what situations do you simply carry a cell phone, iPad or other portable computing device? Do you want people able to spy on you in all those places, at any time, without warning?

It’s been suggested to me that there is prior art that might cause the USPTO to reject such a patent application, or be used later to invalidate it if granted. That raises other challenges. Specifically, anyone at all could include it in
their systems.

Google has a cell phone OS. Just how much do you want them to add to their collection of data on you?

Then there’s the “social networking” phone, which is designed specifically for use with Facebook and Twitter. Do you want your kids to have one of those broadcasting their location to the world at every moment the phone is on?

This isn’t science fiction, folks. We’re not getting into foil fedora territory here. This stuff is real.

….

And then there are the outright criminals. There is already malware code in the wild that lets remote operators turn on the webcam on infected computers. That’s not a big deal if you use a desktop machine and don’t keep one connected, or disconnect it when you don’t intend to use it.

But what about the laptops and netbooks, and even some monitors, that are sold with a camera and microphone installed in the machine itself? The last two portables that I got have them. Where do you, or your kids or employees, use laptops?

This isn’t especially difficult stuff to do. And the market isn’t restricted to criminals. For instance, on the first related search I did, I found someone asking how to remotely activate the webcam on his wife’s laptop without her knowing.

Some of these devices come with GPS systems installed. Anyone who can access those will know exactly where you are, what you’re doing or discussing, and with whom.

Anyone want to market sound-proof phone carriers, with built-in Faraday cages? A month ago, I would have considered that a ridiculous idea. Now, I’m thinking it’s a niche.

….

Electronic security isn’t just about data protection any more, folks. It’s gotten very personal, and it’s about to get more so.

You can take steps to reduce your exposure to this kind of invasion of privacy. First, make sure you have proper security software on all your computers. That’s good policy anyway, so that’s not too extreme.

With the social networking sites, it’s a matter of watching your preferences. Also just common sense. And easy. Don’t leave external webcams attached when they’re not in use, if you have any objection to what you do in the same room with them being seen by someone else. Using a USB hub makes
disconnecting them easy, and it’s a reasonable precaution, with the amount of trojans running loose online.

With laptops and netbooks, just be aware that this stuff is possible, and take whatever precautions you may feel are appropriate. That might be nothing at all, for many of you. It could mean turning the thing off when it’s not in active use.
Or putting tape over the camera lens. Or, if you have the need or desire to be especially cautious, having a physical switch installed to prevent remote activation of the camera or microphone.

I can’t begin to guess what level of security will work for you. Some people won’t consider it an issue at all, and they may well be right. For them. For others, these are real concerns. It’s getting very easy to install this kind of
monitoring code, and there are too many people with incentives to do it. Employers, co-workers, competition, family members, and various less savory types. Brings new meaning to the word “spyware,” yes?

Make sure your kids are aware of the potential issues, too.

….

I’m told that law enforcement agencies have had the ability to turn on cell phones remotely as listening devices for a while now, with a proper warrant. I consider that a very different thing than random strangers being able to access these kinds of info at will.

As of this moment, I am not aware of this being a problem for cell phones and similar portable devices. Just keep this in mind, and pay attention for it.

Whether Apple gets that patent or not, it’s coming.

….

If it’s installed or used by any corporation, I have a suggestion that seems appropriate: The top officers and all members of the board(s) of directors should be required to carry one of the devices with them at all times, with the audio and video enabled 24/7, and streaming to the web for the whole
world to view.

Hey, if we don’t get to decide what we can keep private, why should they?

….

The idea here isn’t to scare you, or create some sort of conspiracy buzz. If that was the goal, I’d point you to an even more extreme, and equally current, example of invasive observation: http://talkbiz.com/r/iris.php

As you can see, this stuff is real. The technology exists right now, and most of it is already in use. It may not pose much of a threat to many of us, but it’s something to be aware of and to watch out for.

Knowing it’s possible is 90% of the battle.

Be careful out there.

Paul

—–===(*)===—–

Find this useful? Buy me a beer…
http://www.buy-paul-a-beer.com

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Copyright 2010 TalkBiz Digital, LLC

What Is an Online Event?
Online events take most often the form of teleseminars (conference calls or webcasts in a variety of formats) and webinars. A webinar contains visual and audio elements, while a teleseminar or webcast focuses on audio. A printed document may be added, and especially for the pure audio event it is very important to provide a clear structure to the listener in a printed format. The visual portion of an online event may be a power point presentation, or a transmission of the presenter’s computer screen.

What Is so Special with Online Events?
First of all a written text contains only a fraction of the information which gained by listening to the voice of a person. By Talking and listening it is much easier to create a bond of trust. If you want to learn more about this aspect of an online event, do a web search for “Arthur Joseph”. In this article I want to concentrate on more formal aspects of marketing with an online event.

Natural Reasons to Send Follow Up Messages
You get naturally a number of natural occasions to contact your audience through email, twitter etc: Announce the event, remind them to attend, when the replay is put online, when the replay is going offline. You can add a deadline to register, or to ask questions in advance. You can contact them this way. You can send five, six, seven messages in one campaign without being or sounding spammy.

Urgent Need for Action
You have at least two deadlines inherent in your online event which create automatic urgency: The events date and time, when it’s over, it’s over. And the second deadline is the time when you remove the replay. If you choose, you can add a third deadline by asking to register for the event or request a certain topic to be covered latest at a certain date.

Project Scarcity
Every direct mail copywriter will tell you to create a sense of scarcity. Your online event does that elegantly: You have only 200 phone lines available. Seats are awarded on a first come first serve basis. The more you have been able to become known as an expert in your field, the ability to ask you a question and interact directly and publicly with you will be seen as a scarce and valuable opportunity.

Sense of Belonging
To belong to a select group is a powerful motivator for humans. You can use this fact of course with your online event by making a special offer exclusively to the group attending the event. But you can even go a step further by doing events for your customers only, or for your twitter followers, Facebook friends and mailing list subscribers. If you do this properly, you can strengthen your relationship with your audience with each and every event you do.

Recommended Resources:

• Teleseminar Secrets by Alex Mandossian

1. Get more customers
2. Sell more often to each customer
3. Sell more in each transaction

Get More Customers
If you do not want your business to die, you need to acquire new customers all the time. In truth, you lose customers all the time. To grow your business and get more sales, you need to find more new customers than you lose current ones.
Finding new customers is expensive and can be difficult. Many businesses do not earn a profit and even make a loss on their first sale to a new customer, the so called front end sale. They need to go a long way to find a prospect, make him aware of the offer, get his interest, nurture his desire and finally induce him to act on the offer. You need lots of effort and high expenses to guide him through his decision making process.

Sell More Often to Each Customer
It is much easier to get more sales from an existing customer, because you have built already a trustful relationship with him. You can get his attention, and it is easier for him to act on his desire, because his risk to be disappointed or look like a fool is now much lower.
How often you can sell to each customer depends on your product or service, and on your effort. The best scenario you could dream up is a product which needs to be replaced or serviced every couple of months, and you can approach your customer at the right time to remind him about the need. One simple example would be your dentist. He will send you a letter to remind you that it is time for a new checkup and ask you to call for an appointment.
The same system lies behind the riches of Gillette, Procter & Gamble and Coca Cola. In these cases, the body reminds you that you need more razor blades, detergents or drinks. To get more sales the providers of these products need just to be present in your mind as well as in the store.
In internet marketing we use social networks and email to be present in the customers mind. It is a bit more difficult to come up with products which need to be replaced on a regular basis, because we sell typically immaterial products consisting of information. But still, information needs to be up to date, which opens the door for membership sites providing a steady stream of news about a certain topic.
It may also be a good idea to drop feed your information product to your customer. This approach may increase usability in a big way. And every time you deliver the next installment of the product, you have the chance to get more sales by offering him a related product or service. If you deliver too much information at once, the consumer may feel overwhelmed, and your product may end up collecting dust on your customer`s hard disk.

Sell More in Each Transaction
If you have made a sale you have got already your customers attention and interest. He is in the mood to act. The simplest way to get more sales from your existing customers is to offer them another related product, which may increase the usability of the product they just bought. One example would be the sales man for shoes, who will inevitably offer you a shoe polish as soon as you have bought your new boots. This is absolutely legitimate, and your customer has every right to be angry with you, if you do not offer this shoe polish, travel insurance, video tutorial etc. He wants the full value of the product you just sold him, and it is up to you to offer him complementary products and services.

Recommended book:

Basic Functions
We use our “Tell a Friend” script for motivating people to inform their friends about an offer. The script makes it easy for our customers to spread the word. They need to fill only their own name and email plus the names and email addresses of their friends into a form, then press a button and, wow, the news goes out to 3, 4, 5 friends. Our script allows us you to offer an incentive if somebody sends the message out. We can also configure a campaign to reward senders if their friends take action after receiving the email, and we have control over the message which is passed along.

Why it Works
The basic power behind our tell a friend script comes from the fact that people love to share new and useful stuff with others. If the information they share is indeed new, surprising and helpful, it is like sharing a secret. And you all know that a secret must be shared with the “best friend”. If we add a carefully crafted reward into the picture, the system becomes even more powerful.

The Motivation
People share useful information and secrets (not readily available information) with several goals in mind. They may hope to …

• provide value to a friend
• strengthen a relationship
• shine as an experts, who knows more than others about a certain field
• earn an additional incentive
   
• but, if not done correctly, a reward can devalue the information and act as an disincentive

The Message
Our tell a friend script allows us to control the message which is sent out. We limit the script always to send a message written by us, because otherwise people could use it as a platform for sending spam. This could spoil our name create trouble with our internet service provider and even with governments around the world. The message need also to conform to the FTC’s disclosure requirements related to product endorsements.

Message Attributes
How does a perfect message for word of mouth marketing look? Here are a few points:

• It must be short and easy to understand
• It must be interesting, even surprising
• It must provide value to the recipient, even if he does not follow up with an action
• It must induce a follow-up action
• It must not feel and taste like spam, and neither be a hidden product endorsement or sales pitch

Composing a message for tell a friend scripts is copywriting. Every internet marketer needs to hone his copywriting skills continously in a cycle of testing and improving.

Message Examples
The program comes with a readymade message. Take that message as a placeholder. It may sound like

Hi [friends name]
I just found an incredible website offering the cheapest air tickets you can find anywhere, online or offline.
Check it out, click now on this link:
[Website URL].
You will not regret it.

I wish you all the best

[Sender's name]

The Test
Would you like to send this message to your trusted friends? Could you hope to gain their respect as an expert, and to strengthen your friendship? And if you received such a message, would you act on it? As far as I am concerned: no and no. If you plan to use a tell a friend script with such a placeholder message, better save the purchase price and use the money to dine with your wife.

Another Example

Dear [friends name],
did you know that there are a few airlines out that allow you to reserve your seat for your family visit next Christmas already in January and then to wait with the ticket purchase until September.

I got this information from Johannes Stockburger.
You find the details at

[website URL]

I hope this information will allow you to reduce the fare of your next holiday flight.

All the best

[sender's name]

The Same Test
Would you feel good to pass this message to a friend who travels frequently to see his family during the holiday season?
And would you mind to receive such a message from a friend who knows about your recent holiday travel adventures?

Follow the Rules
Our tell a friend script adds an opt-out link under this message, and we leave it there. It is just a sign that we and the person sending the message through the script accept the right of everybody else to decide which information they want to receive.
If the letter contains an endorsement, and the script offers at the same time an incentive to send the letter, we must disclose it. But we avoid endorsements and sales pitches in this message.

Conclusion
We try to craft a message providing immediate value to the reader. We avoid open or hidden sales pitches and endorsements in tell a friend messages. Otherwise we would have to include information about any reward offered for sending the email.
We take care that the system cannot be used for spamming, add an opt-out link to the end of the message and we do not allow the sender to change the message. Finally we safeguard the form with a CAPTCHA to prevent abuse and protect our reputation.