Forward to a friend: room for improvement

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on April 11, 2008

There are two types of email content. The first is the content we tweak, test, craft and obsess over. The second is the content we wrote once, then forgot.

Offers and article teasers fall into the first category, administrative footers fall into the second.

Unfortunately, some content languishes in the second category that should rather go in the first. "Forward to a friend" (FTF) links are perhaps one of those.

Unless your emails are specifically designed as part of some viral campaign where forwarding is a core goal, you probably give no thought to the wording or location of the FTF link.

It's likely buried down the bottom of the email and features exactly that wording..."forward to a friend" or the equally exciting "Send to a friend."

But just as we've rediscovered the value of repositioning the unsubscribe link, perhaps we need to give some love to FTF; reconsider both its position in the email and, more importantly, its wording.

Is "forward to a friend" sufficiently inspiring to provoke someone to do so? Would it not be better to say something more relevant to the content being forwarded?

At a simple level, would you write "forward to a friend" in a B2B email? Wouldn't "forward to a colleague" be more appropriate?

And we can do much better than that.

What's better? "Forward to a friend" or "Let your friends get free shipping, too. Forward this email!"

FTF deserves the same attention you'd give to any call to action in your email.

If you're looking for inspiration, Chad White's blog on retail email often has examples. See, for example, the "cleverest use of send to a friend" category in the Design Hall of Fame: 2007 Inductees post or this post on a JCPenny email.

Anyone else got some good examples?

More on copywriting | Tags: email marketing, forward to a friend, send to a friend, viral marketing

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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