January 12, 2005

It's not email. It's not a web site. It's not RSS. What is it?

A friend of mine told me about something she was considering for her business, the Viral Marketing Tool.

Here's what it is. It's a program that people download to their computers that contains your marketing message in a window that looks like this:

During the setup phase of the viral marketing tool (VMT), you type in your messages, links, graphics, logos and everything. You also tell VMT when and how frequent you want your message displayed.

Once someone installs your custom Viral Marketing Tool, your message is displayed right on their computer - no Internet connection, no spam blockers, no email, no web sites, no RSS. Cost $350.

While this program is interesting, one detraction is that it is not easily update-able. Let's say you have a new product but 5,000 people have already installed your VMT.

There's no way you can easily push a new update to them or have new content automatically displayed. They will have to install a new version of your VMT.

David Badurina, creator and president of Viral Marketing Tool answers my questions about the lack of an online update feature here:

First, file size. Programming in an update feature would increase the size of the file and then it becomes an unattractive download and that's not good for your numbers.

Second, security. Nothing would prevent someone from purchasing a version of VMT from me, and then in a couple of weeks sticking in tips that had all sorts of malicious code and links in it - and there's zero quality control in that scenario. That would end up getting the program blacklisted and my business - as well as the businesses of my clients - would suffer greatly.

Third, practicality. Inevitably, someone would forget the deadline and not develop new tips which means that VMT would start opening up blank on people's computers and that's just irresponsible and again reflects poorly on me and all of my existing clients.

I'm tempted to try VMT for myself - but with email newsletters and web sites around, I'm not sure if VMT is for me. Maybe it's for you.

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