Member-get-member marketing is potentially very powerful, but generally woefully under-exploited by brands. Providing an “email a friend” link is the lowest common denominator, but what about providing a reason for people to spend their time promoting you?
Amazon’s hugely successful Associates program gives it’s 900,000 participants worldwide a cut of the action worth up to 10% of every purchase made their your referral. Rival hosting companies Dreamhost and Bluehost’s affiliate programs have netted them thousands of advocates, posting on forums and hosting reviews across the web to spread the gospel of the service and earn some payola. And the age-old contest technique of giving extra entries for any friends you sign up has been given a twist for the digital age by the Orange Balloon Race.
However the best MGM initiative I’ve seen lately is World of Warcraft’s Recruit a Friend program.
Blizzard has sidestepped the slightly dirty business of paying cash to it’s members for spreading the word by providing relevant in-game bonuses instead. Besides the obvious free game time, more exciting is innovative ideas like the ability to level-up your friend and obtaining a unique zebra mount for your character. Anyone familiar with the game knows how prized the various mounts are, so it’s a really nice incentive.
I also really like that they further incentivize you to introduce your friend to the social aspect of the game and help them get started by offering triple experience bonus just for teaming up with them and slaying animated baddies together.
Blizzard has done an amazing job of designing the WoW game experience and is very in touch with it’s passionate user base, and so it’s no surprise it’s put the extra effort into designing an affiliate program that is both provides real unique value to members and is actually likely to work.
However, there’s no reason many brands on the web couldn’t do the same!
Have you seen any innovative branded MGM schemes recently? If so I’d love to hear from you in the comments or by email.
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“Blizzard has sidestepped the slightly dirty business of paying cash to it’s members for spreading the word by providing relevant in-game bonuses instead.”
It is very obvious to me, that those with an interest for gaming, would prefer in-game bonuses, but to call the very common habit of exchanging cash for services for dirty…
I hope you stand by it, and do your work for free!
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