Hi, I have now just designed a "Tell a Friend" script, which has taken me about 5 hours to do, it that. I was just wondering if doing something like this is legal or not. I say this as people will go to my site and if they like something they then may want to tell their friends about it and then use my "Tell a Friend" script. They will be able to quickly email up to 12 of their friends at one go. Do you thing something like this is legal or not as I am not sending any spam emails, their friends are sending them the emails. Also, Youtube and many other entertainment sites are also using this feature on their sites. Also, do you think I would need a unsubscribe link or something in the email just incase someone doesn't want to receive emails from my site anymore, because their friends keep spamming them or something with my tell a friend service. What do you thing? Is it a good idea?
its not a legal issue, many websites do have tell a friend script but you need to keep a check on spam and monitor it properly. although most websites provide this option when the user is registered and he logs in his account, so u can track the origin of spam. unsubscribe link surely is important.
I should be alright with it even though people will not be registering to use it. This is because I will be having a link that people can click on and once they do that they then submit their email address and will never receive an email from my Tell A Friend service ever again, no matter if their friends try to send emails to them from my site, they just won't receive them. I have also tried using 3 tell a friend email sites to see what their emails look like and I have not seen one have any information on how to stop receiving these emails. So, it looks as if mine will be better than there's in that people can easily stop getting the emails. It will be included in each email on how to stop receiving them.
You will need individual confirmation if you plan to gather and use the email addresses in this tell-a-friend script for any purpose. Other than that, you should be fine, I've seen many sites using a tell-a-friend script & I use it on some of my websites as well. Read through the CAN SPAM Act for more information.
You should be fine with this. Just watch out for people trying to abuse your forms with the use of bots to send out spam. Maybe implement image verification on the forms before users can submit the form? An unsubscribe link in this case is not required and is purely optional!
What do you mean by individual confirmation. Do you mean that I will have to get each persons permission before sending an email. If this is the case then I don't know how I can do that as I don't know where the emails will be going to. It is the friends sending the emails and not me. Anyway, I have a unsubscribe link just incase people started getting spammed and things.
I mean individual confirmation if you plan to send any more emails to them (them being the email addresses entered in your tell a friend script), or use them for any other purpose.
OK Thanks for letting me know. I was not going to keep any emails, but I may keep them now, not to email them, but more so that I can see how many tell a friend emails has gone out to each particullar email address just incase someone says, I have received something like 2,000 emails from you in the last few days, when they actually received 5 or something.
I notice you mention that you use it on some of your websites. Does it work well. Do you get much extra traffic from using this feature on your site. Also, what sort of site are you using it on. I know it is likely to work best on an entertainment type site that offers funny videos and free online games, but I was thinking of maybe adding it to product pages aswell so people could tell their friends about a product that they may be interested in. I am firstly adding it to the free online games section of my site and then will look into adding it to the products section of my site and maybe other sections aswell only if I see some good results from having it in the games section first. Although, I will do this, I will not be putting it on every page as that will just annoy my visitors.
Correct. It also works decently on a forum where I offer $100 to the person who tells most friends in a month. Don't expect magical results though, but it will add to your traffic
That's quite a good idea to offer an incentive as longs as you gain more out of it than what you spend. But then again, I would thing if you had done that then the people could just find large quantities of emails on the web and then submit them. In other words, spam. Also, how many uniques do you roughly get from doing this "tell a friend" service. I have been planning to add this to my site for some time, but have never got round to it, but after reading about it on the news that viral marketing is working very well for youtube, I thought that I better get it going ASAP. I think this is one way that youtube is getting a good amount of traffic. I also thing tell a friend is related to viral marketing if I am right.
I forgot to mention, I check the conversions. Viral marketing, hmm that depends on what your website contains. The ring prank is viral by itself.
Yes, as Jesus Christ mentions you should not have any legal implications unless you are storing user's data. If you do store personal information, you should check your country's regulations on personal data retention, data control and what details you are required to publish to your end users.
What about if you store the emails that don't want to have emails of your anymore. You will have to store them so that your scripts know what emails not to send to. I will not be sending them any emails even if I do store them. This includes trying to sell them things, sending newsletters, etc. I will be doing none of this I will only need them so that I the scripts know which ones don't want the emails anymore. I already have a privacy policy and terms of use in place.