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The explosion of social networking proves that people love to share. The trick is to provide something worth sharing and then make it easy to share.

Thanks to the "Forward" button, email is well suited to sharing, making it a great viral marketing tool if you are prepared to use it.

So with the technical dilemma of how to make it easy to share solved, your focus can be firmly fixed on making your emails (newsletters, marketing offers, invitations etc) desirable to share.

How to Make Your Emails Share Worthy

Here are four things that will make it easier for your subscribers to click on the "Forward" button after reading your email.

1. Trust

When a person shares your email with others they need to feel 100% confident that you are trust worthy. By forwarding your email they are stamping their approval not just on the message but also on the business behind the email.

Things to think about

• Use your privacy policy to talk about how you treat email addresses that may be collected during the forwarding process.
• Give you email subscribers a choice in the types and how often messages are sent to them. It will impact on whether they feel it is safe to trust you won't bombard their friends.

2. Targeted Messages

When a person receives an email that is highly targeted to their interests it is easier for them to share the message with specific friends who they know will be interested and read the message. Forwarding in theses circumstances increases the kudos of the person forwarding, so they want to be seen as well connected and informed through the quality of your message.

Things to think about

• Segmenting your email list helps you create compelling messages that read like they have been individually written for just one person, targeting the emotions and needs of different segments.
• Depending upon your message intentions you may consider rewarding people who forward your messages, to encourage them to do it again as well as to thank them for valuable pre-qualified leads.

3. Upfront Offer

When your subscribers receive your email it's vital that they can understand your offer straight away, without complicated explanations. In choosing to forward your email, people need to be sure that their friends aren't going to come back to them and critise what they've forwarded because there's a condition in the deal they hadn't seen that makes it seem less appealing.

Things to think about

• Consider writing and rewriting your offers until you've got the deal down in the simplest words you can or have a professional assist you to get it right.
• Consider using images, video or audio for promoting your offer to make it even more desirable to share.

4. Time Sensitive

Time and topic sensitive messages can create a sense of urgency that encourages your subscribers to forward them quickly, as long as they have received the email with enough time for them to consider their own options first.

Things to think about

• Consider what your subscribers need to do to take advantage of time sensitive offers, such as transferring funds between bank accounts or getting time off work.

Some Specific Things You Can Do

To get you moving in the right direction straight away here are some quick changes you can make right now.

• Putting the words Please Forward at the end of your email subject line, provides a suggestive instruction that the receiver will consider whilst reading your message.
• Include multiple forward to a friend links and share with your network buttons in your email to prompt your subscribers as they are reading through your message to share your email with others.

As a newsletter publisher and email marketer your primary goal is to keep your customer relationships vibrant. With the pointers provided and a little attention, you can improve your existing relationships and nurture new networks through our human desire to share.

Related Reading

	Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies ISBN: 978-1422125007
	Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, Revised Edition ISBN: 978-1427798619
	How to Say It: Marketing with New Media: A Guide to Promoting Your Small Business Using Websites, E-zines, Blogs, and Podcasts (How to Say It...) ISBN: 978-0735204324

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