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up vote 13 down vote favorite
3

Its a common feature of many sites... the "Email a friend" link that sends an email to the users' friend(s).

e.g. something like:

Hey {friends name},

I found this great site called {www.mysite.com} that lets you {verb} all your {noun}s in one place and you can share them with all your friends!

Check it out at {www.mysite.com}

Regards, {username}

I'm fairly skeptical myself and never click these links/fill out the forms but I'm presuming that I'm not like everyone else.

On the flip side I'd like to think that the current user would best know who might be interested in my site/application and thus be the ideal sales(wo)man for me.

Any stats on how successful these are would be greatly appreciated.

PS I should state that in my case I am considering this option for a Web Application vs. a Web Site (I'm not sure that makes much difference but thought I'd add that)

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8 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

According to preliminary findings of a study (N=245) by MarketingSherpa and QInteractive (pay site), e-mail is still the dominate means of sending links to friends and family.

Here are the numbers:

  • 78% use e-mail
  • 22% use social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
  • 17% use other means
  • 13% share it offline (phone, txt, or conversation)
  • 4% post it to their blog

Multiple answers were possible, I guess.

This does not answer the question, of course, since it say nothing how this is done. However, it's probably save to assume that most people use copy'n'paste instead of these "ShareThis" buttons.

Hope that helps.

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1  
Thanks @Claus, this is indeed the kind of info I'm after. I agree with @Justyn that Twitter and Facebook maybe better options but I think there is still value in offering all 3. In time I guess I will see which ones get used the most, and which generate the most successful references. – scunliffe Oct 27 '09 at 12:42
1  
You're welcome, scunliffe. It probably also depends on your product, target audience and your prdouct's diffusion. I'd also say, the call-to-action (for sharing), its place and its design are more important than the combination ot means. – Claus Schwarm Oct 28 '09 at 10:49
+1 valuable. I wasn't anticipating that Claus – John Bogrand Jun 18 '10 at 1:59
up vote 7 down vote

In my experience, these aren't used as much as you might think. You'd probably be better off with "Tweet This" and "Share on Facebook" options. People are more likely to share when they don't have to feel guilty about sending their friends yet another email.

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1  
@Justyn - seems this answer got the most votes but it looks like there is still some life in user based email marketing. @Claus & @DThrasher point to some articles/data that indicates a multi-pronged approach is likely best - as email still seems to be king in the way people share data. – scunliffe Oct 28 '09 at 13:20
Adding my vote here. There are so many ways to share that don't seem disingenuous - like "Tweet," "Share," "Digg," etc. - that sending a clearly impersonal email is probably unwise. – JoshSamBob Oct 30 '09 at 18:47
up vote 6 down vote

The MIT Haystack blog recently featured a post about social link sharing behavior. It has some interesting statistics about the key ways people discover interesting sites. It also discusses the motivations behind why people share links.

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up vote 2 down vote

I had a membership site with that as one of the tools for our members to promote the site to others. Yes, it got a small percentage but...it did get used. I think the approach should be about giving your users many different options (as mentioned above, share on facebook, tweet this, email a friend...and more. A lot of little options can add up to a decent number. And if there's any community aspect to your app/site then the more people can recruit others they know, ultimately the dynamic of the site overall will be all the stronger. The downside is development cost, which shouldn't be very much. And some screen real estate. Promote all of them, track your metrics, see what works and go from there.

Best of luck.

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up vote 1 down vote

I don't have any hard stats for you but I have seen this type of feature used on large sites quite a bit. Not in a generic "come see this site" way but rather to forward useful/relevant information to a friend. For example, a product or a real estate listing. It's faster than opening and e-mail client, composing an e-mail and pasting a link.

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up vote 1 down vote

I've seen people use these to email the website link to their own email address to save it for later or to check out on their phone.

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Good point! I've actually used this to email myself in the past... I'd forgotten about that angle. – scunliffe Oct 27 '09 at 12:44
up vote 1 down vote

Yes another way to get users to share the link is to give them an incentive. Dropbox has done a wonderful job with this.

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up vote 0 down vote

We've been using AddThis with their "Share" button on our start up web site. It's easy to create, customize, and add a link to a page that enables the "share this" menu you'd like.

They provide excellent analytics support - you can not only see what sharing services are being used but you can also tell which services are being used for which content and then which services are bringing new people to your site.

Easy, effective, and free. What's not to like?

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