Developing a consumer database by capturing email addresses during a pre-launch phase for a beta site, product or service release is easy to do and can serve as a spring board for amplifying viral pass along once your service, product or brand is made publicly available.

If you’re looking for a great  example of a beta release site, check out Likaholix “a fun and easy way to share and discuss your likes and discover new ones with people you know.”  It appears as if the company is diving into the “interest + relationship = trusted recommendation” arena.  Very interesting!

So how did Likaholix.com create a great beta release site?  It starts with a pretty simple landing page with a number of well executed elements to capture email addresses.  Note: This  framework can drive a 20% to 40% conversion rate for email capture off traffic to the site.

Here are few key takeaways to consider as you build your beta release site:

1. Prominently position data capture elements. The goal is acquire as many emails as early as possible to support future release goals as well as to gain insight from users. The underlying goal is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to sign up and become registered active users.  Start by making it as easy as possible for people to see how to sign up.  Site visits for early releases are in many cases are friends and family as well as individuals that have a category affinity or interest in a technology or service. Think technology application geeks that want to be the first to try something and, blog about it.

2. Keep data requests to a minimum. In this case, Likaholix is only asking for an email address.  Very smart.

3. Create exclusivity. Likaholix uses “private beta” and presents a relatively small pool of participants with an added “counter” of the number remaining beta accounts remain to drive email submissions.  The call to action - Request Account - is used to reinforce the perceived notion of exclusivity.  Again, very smart.

4. Deliver an activation link in an email communication that is triggered off the submission of an email address. There is always room for upgrades and, in this case I believe Likaholix would benefit by expanding their email communication model to include:

I. A reference to their privacy policy with a link to a privacy policy page. It is on the site but always nice to reinforce this information in the confirmation email.

II. Reinforce the incentive - five Amazon Kindles to drive activation — in the communication and turn it into a data capture vehicle.  Before Seth Godin sold Yoyodyne to Yahoo, he was running one the best email marketing data capture models online.  His Get Rich Click (GRC) framework prompted users for information before they could gain access to other links/contest information. In any event, Likoholix does request additional information - name, screenname and password - when you activate your link.  Again, nicely done.  Small innocuous data elements.  One small step for user, one giant step for Likoholix.

III. Leverage celebrity endorsements.  The activation email doesn’t mention Paul Buchheit or Jason Shellen.  Paul and Jason are Google rock stars and are likely to drive Tweets and blog posts because of the work they did at Google.  This is a missed opportunity to fully leverage the implied technology endorsement!

IV. Humanize the closing by including the name of the founder(s) or community director.  I would encourage Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan to be people signing email communicating to members of Likaholix community.

V. Add the “if this wasn’t you who requested to use to this cool tool” disclaimer paragraph to inform non-requesters that their email address is not going to be sent to fundraisers but rather that they — the receiver — simply need to act like a couch potato and do nothing because this is the last time they will hear from your great company unless they of course decide to click the activation link.  Problem solved.

5. Include a simple incentive framework to boost conversion off the data capture page. The incentive - the possibility of winning one of five Amazon Kindles - was enhanced by an implied technology endorsement from two super geeks (see above) who are judging the contest.  And, more importantly, a viral marketing campaign (get 10 friends — kind of a mini Moby campaign was integrated into the beta release to stimulate tool usage and viral pass along.  Well done Likaholix!

6.  The link to the Privacy policy is a nice touch.

TAGS: Likoholix, Bindu Reddy, Arvind Sundararajan, Google, beta release, viral marketing, Amazon Kindles, Paul Buchheit, Jason Shellen, Seth Godin,

In May of 2006, I published a research paper with Osterman Research highlighting the challenges brands would face as they embarked on implementing word of mouth marketing campaigns.  The study took 6 months to implement and eventually grew to 54 pages of content.

My goal was to provide organizations interested in, or even intimidated by, word-of-mouth (WOM) campaigns with data and guidance designed to help them integrate this exciting strategy into their marketing and media plans.

The study is titled Perceptions, Practices & Ethics in Word of Mouth Marketing.  And, I’m making it available again.  Is it still relevant?  Well, from a planning standpoint I think the topics are still as relevant today as they were two years ago.

I also turned the release of the study into an example of how to support viral marketing pass along.  The study was downloaded over 150,000 from May 2006 to February 2009.

Here’s how we did it:

1. We started with no marketing budget and decided to use a free e-book framework to drive distribution.
2. We became members of communities to hear what was going on and to gain qualified participants for the survey. This platform also allowed us to announce to relevant communities when the study was available.
3. Created a database. We captured the email addresses, names, and company names of all survey participants. We also included email requests for the survey that were appended to the database. There are 217 records in the database for email requests.
4. We communicated. We thanked individuals for participating.  And, sent them a link to pick up the results.
5. We said something important. The study took 6 months from formulation to publishing and we focused on giving readers valuable and actionable information. The content publishing focus was on tips and techniques.
6. We focused on co-creation. This is an important step. We reached out to 45 industry experts and competitor firms in our industry ten days before we published and, asked them for their feedback and insight. 38 individuals responded, and 17 of those people provided lengthy comments and insight that enhanced the quality of the work and required us to rethink some of the conclusions and rationale. Personally, I’m still thrilled and humbled that competitor firms say that the work is incredibly valuable and comprehensive.
7. We recognized the contributions of those that contributed feedback.  And, even asked some individuals for reviews of the study that we published as Accolades.
8. We did a blogged press release. Having a blog press release really helped to drive distribution.
9. We created a counter so that we could track downloads.
10. We provided links to relevant publishers that cover the WOM industry.
11. We talked about the study at industry events.
12. We commented on comments to be part of the conversation.  Thanking people for reviews gave us more content to reference in the form of lists of people who were talking about the study.  This became blog post content.
13. We shared our success by publishing download counts.
14. We published snippets of content from the study with additional insight on our blog.
15. Once it was added on Wikipedia — we linked to it.  NOTE:  If you feel the study is worth adding back into the Wikipedia article for Word of Mouth or Word of Mouth Marketing, I hope you’ll add it as a resource.

In addition to the 150,000 downloads, I was interviewed for a New York Time article on social media and generated $1.685 million in new business.

TAGS:  Word of mouth, word of mouth marketing, wikipedia, Osterman Research, Audience Machine, content distribution, viral marketing,

Audience Machine to provide unique social networking technologies and viral marketing services to Brands, Entertainment, Health & Wellness and Education Companies

Los Angeles, CA and Charlottesville, VA — February 17, 2009 — Los Angeles, CA and Charlottesville, Virginia - February 17, 2009 - Social networking and viral marketing expert, VBMA (Viral & Buzz Marketing Association) board member, and Perceptions, Practices & Ethics in Word of Mouth Marketing author Todd Tweedy today introduced, Audience Machine Inc., a unique technology company helping online brands who want to identify, cultivate and mobilize communities of individuals with shared interest across social networking sites to build their businesses using Audience Machine’s online marketing tools.

Guided by Tweedy, and video technology pioneer and advertising veteran Dan Bates, Audience Machine helps brand and product managers, chief marketing officers as well as ecommerce executives to establish new networks of social networking connections and dialog in support of purchasing preferences and participation in word of mouth referrals.

“Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are relationship amplifiers for brands, products and services that can have a profound influence on preferences, referral behavior, information consumption and internet usage if advertisers are prepared to listen to, act on and match the right technology and community practices to support a desired purchase outcome or subscription,” noted Todd Tweedy, co-founder and CEO of Audience Machine. “There is a natural migration of dialogs from offline sources to online social sharing sites. Marketing executives want to embrace customer-facing ad strategies and incorporate social networking processes in their firm’s online marketing DNA that can boost product perceptions and potential sales but many enterprises lack the expertise and resources to realize those objectives. Audience Machine was founded to give online brands unique technology solutions, community development processes, marketing services, analytics, and expertise they need to engage and collaborate with audiences.”

Audience Machine also announced that is has signed a strategic business development consulting agreement that will be led by Provident Financial Management, a prominent established leader in entertainment and media business management.

“Audience Machine is at the heart of an evolving consumer-facing marketing phenomenon that is transforming connections on social networks into a powerful audience generation channel. Led by an experienced executive team and founded on concrete business fundamentals with a number of high-profile clients already on board, Audience Machine is a rising star among our media and communication clients,” stated Craig Sussman, Business Development Director at Provident. We’re excited to support Audience Machine as they grow their technology and services business practices with customers that want and need to expand and sustain business growth by creating networks of social commerce.”

Word of Mouth Communications Opportunity
The eighth annual Burson-Marsteller/PRWeek CEO Survey published in November 2008, which surveys CEO’s about the changing influence of different types of media as well as plans for digital communications including social networking, reported that 60% of CEO’s noted that word of mouth has the fastest growing influence on business in the past three years but that just one-fifth of firms have used social media to communicate with stakeholder groups.

The proliferation of social networking and community sites has transformed viral and word of mouth marketing practices into a practical and necessary communication solution due in part to research findings that note that nearly 80% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over all forms of advertising and marketing. These authentic and trusted voices serve an important role by distributing compete information for others to act upon across search engines and into indexes of shared knowledge that people can access along with advertiser-generated experiences and evidence whenever 1,463,632,361 internet users from around the world - based on Internet Usage and Population in North American data provided by Internet World Stats - need to research a brand, product or service.

Audience Machine Team
Led by Tweedy, who’s career started in the political grassroots mobilization arena working on Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, Inaugural and issue-based public relations campaigns, the Audience Machine team has 35 years of combined leadership experience in online marketing, real-time communications, ASP development, video ad technology, viral marketing, search engine optimization, and community development practices.

Dan Bates, co-founder, president and COO brings a vast wealth of knowledge in community technology development, online video, online advertising and a decade’s experience in filmed entertainment and music. Bates previous served as CEO of Avant Interactive, an object-based video ad serving technology provider.

About Audience Machine
With offices in Los Angeles, California and Charlottesville, Virginia, Audience Machine is a provider of unique community technology solutions and online marketing services. Audience Machine works with online brands to identify, cultivate and mobilize communities of shared interest to establish social commerce that CMO’s, brand and product managers, and ecommerce executives can enlist to grow their business. The company is privately held. For more information, please visit Audience Machine’s website - http://www.audiencemachine.com, email us at info@audiencemachine.com, or call 1.800.573.1536. Audience Machine is presently engaged with several beta customers and will release its first product in Q2 of this year.

About Provident Financial Management
Established over twenty-five years ago with offices in Los Angeles, Woodland Hills, San Francisco and New York, Provident has become a leader in various entertainment and media business management practices. Provident recently established a strategic and business planning department to assist mid sized and emerging entertainment and media companies with their growth and business development needs. Provident Financial Management is part of RSM McGladrey one of the largest and most prominent accounting firms in the world. For more information on RSM McGladrey, please visit http://www.rsmi.com.