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February 2002
Website Technique
Recommend Forms
by Tom Antion
There is not much doubt in any marketing circles that
third party endorsements from credible people are more powerful than all
of your self-generated pronouncements of greatness.
You can make it easier to stimulate these third party endorsements by
installing recommend forms on your website and suggesting that visitors
use them.
These forms can be used to recommend any of your products or services.
PROMOTE YOUR EZINE
I use a recommend CGI script to get people to promote my free Ezine
"Great Speaking." A CGI script is a piece of computer
programming installed on your website server computer. (Unless you are
pretty savvy technically, you wouldn't install this yourself.) When
someone fills in the form and hits the "submit" button a
complex series of events is kicked off behind the scenes. That gets your
marketing done automatically.
Here's how my "Great Speaking" recommend form works:
When you visit http://www.antion.com/recommend.html
you put your name and email address in the recommend form. You then put
in the name and email address of your friend along with a personalized
massage to your friend. When you hit the submit button several things
happen.
1. Your personalized recommendation goes via email to your friend along
with a customizable message from me and subscribe instructions for
"Great Speaking" ezine.
2. You can get an optional copy of what was sent to your friend sent
back to you via email.
3. I get notice via email that someone recommended "Great
Speaking" and a copy of what they said.
4. The form pops back up with a thank you note from me to you along with
a suggestion to recommend "Great Speaking" to more of your
friends and colleagues. The form keeps popping up until you get tired of
it or run out of friends.
This is all automated. I had this installed several years ago for a very
small amount of money (about $85.00) and it's been working flawlessly
ever since.
My record so far is 15 recommendations from one person. I also suggest
to the person recommending that they use this as a way to stay in touch
with clients because it's a nice, quick, and inexpensive way to let them
know you are thinking of them.
This script has resulted in thousands of new subscribers to "Great
Speaking."
Many people ask me if I can email to the persons that were recommended
to "Great Speaking." The answer is NO! That would be spam
email because I have no relationship with these people. I realize that
some people may risk it and claim they had a relationship through the
recommender. But I say it's just too risky that someone will complain.
RECOMMEND YOUR WEBSITE
The same form could be used to recommend your website or free e-book or
whatever you want.
I got this script from a good old boy at http://www.willmaster.com
. The basic script is actually free if you can install it yourself. I
got the $50.00 version that has the recurring pop up feature, i.e., it
keeps popping back up for more recommends until the recommender quits. I
also paid the creator of the script $35.00 to install it on my web
server.
Before you dive into a project like this, read about whatever script you
pick to see the server requirements needed for it to work. Then call
your web host to see if they are using what your script requires.
For instance I think my script needed to be hosted on a UNIX server ( I
say I think, because I don't know anything about that stuff and don't
want to) and it required CGI BIN access (same thing. I don't know what
this means and don't care). All I did was call the web host and ask,
"Do you use a UNIX server and do you allow CGI Bin access?
They said yes. I called Bill back and sent him a check and the
passwords. He installed the script and tested it and sent me
instructions on how to change / customize the sign up message.
I haven't had to fool with it since..
I recently looked into recommend forms that use different types of
programming like ASP, PHP and other acronyms I don't understand. I asked
top search engine expert, John Heard, if he thought these forms would
hurt my search engine positioning and he said no. So feel free to use
any form you like.
You can find many of them at http://www.willmaster.com
or type "recommend forms" with quotation marks around the
words into any major search engine.
If you would like a form like this that takes only about 2 minutes to set up
http://www.kickstartcart.com
has it's own module included with it's other advanced marketing features.
Get a 30 day free trial by clicking the link above.
For my "Great Speaking" ezine I put the following text in each issue:
Please recommend this E-Zine to
anyone you know that is interested in being a better presenter, or who
may want to make money speaking and training. (It's a good way to stay
in touch with client's too.) You don't even have to mail them an
article. http://www.antion.com/recommend.html
For http://www.GreatInternetMarketing.com
I simply put a link with text: Click
here to recommend this site to a friend which is hyperlinked to the
Kick Start Cart automatic recommend form http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/tellafriend.asp?MerchantID=16070
Make it easy for people to recommend your products and services and you'll tap the power of the third party endorsement.
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