WHC Internet Marketing Guide
Viral List Builders
Viral list building services are services where you are able to send messages to anyone who signs up under you as well as everyone who signs up under them, and so on down through some specified number of levels (sometimes to as many as 20 levels).
Some services also give you the option of emailing people who aren't in your downline either by paying for an upgraded membership, or by allowing you to email a random group of people equal in number to your downline.
Viral list building services typically do not include "auto responder" type functionality.
The advantage of viral list building services over auto responders is that you can potentially build your list more quickly and with less effort by getting the people in your downline to build their downlines. But since these types of mailing lists are typically much less responsive than auto responder lists (I'll explain why below), it can be difficult to motivate people to both promote and join them.
The disadvantage of viral list builders compared to auto responders is that for a number of reasons, their subscribers are much less responsive:
- Since members receive mail from a number of different senders, it's much more difficult to establish a relationship with your subscribers.
- Most subscribers subscribed for the purpose of sending email, not receiving it.
- Even if they are interested in receiving email, you never know whether they have any interest in the kinds of things you're sending. Auto responder subscribers by contrast subscribed to your mailing list, so proving that they have at least some interest in what you're talking about.
- Mail volume is higher, so your messages get drowned out by others.
- The messages sent through these systems are almost exclusively sales pitches rather than useful free information, which reduces the subscriber's incentive to read.
I find that viral list building services are useful primarily to drive people to free offers which I use to get them onto my personal auto responder mailing lists.
The major viral list building services include:
A free script named List Mailer GT will enable you to easily send to all of the above services at the same time. A commercial version is also available.
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