Refer a Friend-Mailto or Web Form or Not at All?

Thinking of trying refer a friend type link

[peter andreas]

I know viral marketing has been discussed in depth at this site and I have searched the archives for an answer but can't really find one and also issues like this change as spam is a huge problem for everyone so we don't want to add to it.

I am keen to try a refer a friend as from our logs we do get lots of reffarals from emails ( people are obvioulsy sending our url on their own accord.) I only discovered this was known as viral marketing from my searching this sites archives. This made me flinch so is this sort of technique frowned upon? ( I see webmasterworld even uses it so it can't be that bad)

IF its ok should we use the mailto tag or a webform ala the one used here-we have either already to go but I don't want to inadvertently open a can of worms leading to us getting banned or something.

Thanks

[goodroi]

Viral marketing which is simply having one of your current users tell someone else how good your site is, is a good thing and should be done. For example imagine a news website or a game website, these are websites that users will enjoy and want to share with their friends.

So how do you do it? You can use either a mailto or a webform. If you use a mailto, it will need your user to have a working email account installed on their computer. If you use a webform it could be caught in a spam filter. I would experiment with both and see which returns a better CTR (click through rate) for you.

[peter andreas]

Thanks, to be safe I have a mailto running on one page but I have purchased this nice little form which tracks referalls etc-IF it gan get caugt in a spam filter does that imply that our site is sending spam even if its not meant to be? The mailto seems more voluntary and requires the referrer to take some definite actions even if it means those annoying waits while outlook or whatever opens-I suppose we could offer both with a note saying use email or our form.

[wkitty42]

FWIW: i believe i'd go with a very simple form that's mostly hardcoded... i'd allow only the destination email address to be put in and the sender's... then in the hardcoded portion, you'd include a link to whatever landing page you want them to go to... maybe something like the following in the final results...

hello $dest_email!
$sender_email thought you might enjoy visiting this site, your_url_here. Drop by for a visit. We look forward to seeing you.

or something like that... that way, the only things that can get "spammed" are the sender and destination email addresses with no way to put anything else in since its all hardcoded except for those two... the only problem i can see would be possible "flooding" where someone sets a bot to nail that form and flood one or more destination addresses with your message...

[peter andreas]

Thanks for that. That bot scenario sounds too scary for me. Is a mailto tag safer or can that too be used to flood emails? To me risks outweigh the benefits I think.Thanks