Imagine this. You plant a GURL (general URL) on a social network. A user responds to the link. Using the information he provides, you create a PURL and include a “forward to a friend” option with the offer. The user then forwards the offer to thirty people within his network. Ten of those thirty respond to the offer, and forward it to more people within their individual networks and in this way, the campaign goes viral.
What we’re talking about is combining the power of PURLs and one-on-one communication with the trust and reach of social media to create a campaign that grows itself!
We know, your head must be spinning just thinking of the possibilities. Calm down, breathe, and read on to find out how this works.
PURLs are effective because they are personal, customized and focused. Social media sites make a PURL experience even more exclusive and effective. How? People login to social networking sites there to receive and share information with their communities. They are more receptive to offers that they see on the site because they trust that social media network. This trust is much higher when they receive a link or offer from someone on their friends list, or a group or community they are acquainted with.
How a social networking site converts a GURL to PURLs: By planting a GURL on, say, a Facebook page, a marketer draws people into an offer. When they respond, their information is used to create a PURL that initiates a one-on-one dialogue between the potential customer and the brand.
How social media can make a campaign go viral: Forward-to-a-friend campaigns encourage recipients to send out an offer to their friends. When a user forwards a link to more people, an API draws information from the social networking site creates PURLs for each of the recipients and their friends, and lets them share the one-on-one experience within their networks.
