Effectiveness of Email this page to a friend

do those email to a friend links work to promote traffic

[chadmg]

What do you suppose the effectiveness of those "email this page to a friend" links are? Does anyone track how many emails are sent out or how many people have visited your site through the email? It's a word of mouth promotion that could be successful, but I've never clicked on one of those links. I guess it couldn't hurt your site to have it, except that it could be potentially interpreted as spam, or an evil person could abuse it and spam customers/members. What do you guys think?

[pageoneresults]

I've utilized the email a friend option on quite a few sites and yes, it is effective. It doesn't take long to implement the option and it is a nice usability feature to add to a site.

I will typically set them up so they bcc: the sender. One of the biggest complaints I've seen relating to email a friend scripts is that they don't send a copy to the sender. Most people want to document their email communications. Adding the bcc: feature allows them to document their sending of the link along with remaining anonymous (just in case).

You should clearly state your Privacy Policy on that email a friend page. If you wish for it to be successful, I might suggest that you make it a practice to not collect that data for your own and/or third party promotions. It should be clearly for sending information to a friend, and not for including the sender on your email list.

[chadmg]

Great points pageone. I always like to keep a record of my emails. That would make a great option. I also like the idea of clearly stating your privacy policy that you won't use the data for emails. Although, it may be a good idea to keep a record of these emails just in case of abuse. And of course I'd clearly state that in the privacy policy.

What kind of emails are more effective, html or plain text?