Viral Marketing - International case "Hotmail.com" (PART I)

Hotmail.com is one of the first free web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,

2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out:" Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com/"

Here's what it looked like:

__________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at:
http://www.hotmail.com/

and,

3. Stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends,

4. Who see the message,

5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then

6. Propel the message still wider to their own ver-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Hotmail's practice was to append an advertisement of itself on each message that is sent using their service. When a recipient gets interested and clicks on the ad, it will lead to hotmail's website for him/her to signup. This will go on and on, and the growth is similar to an exponential curve.

In the first 18 months of being in business, Hotmail.com garnered 12 million subscribers with a total marketing budget of less than $500,000. That's a new customer acquisition cost of 4 cents per customer!!!

source: Xcellent marketing , SPD4290vm, hotmail.com