Over the past few days I've been putting together a viral campaign for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). The campaign revolves around a charity drive involving a well known radio personality walking from Durban, South Africa to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe in order to raise money to fund sterilisation of dogs and cats from impoverished areas. Naturally it was a great project to work on, and I'm hoping it will involve the public and be a big success.

One thing that did occur to me though was the relative scarity of viral campaigns on the internet today. I generally take a look at most that enter my inbox, but I find they are few and far between for the most part, and my email address is well known enough that I should be seeing a fair sample. So, this either means that they are not very effective, or an underused emarketing tactic. I doubt it is because of effectiveness, from my own experience those I have worked on have provided good growth in length and detail of the subscriber database.

I believe the problem may lie in the increased investment required. Luckily, in the internet era everything is measurable, and viral campaigns should not be excluded from ROI calculations. One needs to first establish whether the primary goal of the campaign is to increase the number of subscribers or the amount of knowledge on those you have already. Once this is done, you can work out how much you are prepared to pay for a new subscriber, or new information on existing subscribers. Setting goals for your viral campaign is important, and measuring your returns after the campaign is finished even more so.

For those interested, here's a link to subscribe to the campaign list (it's not live yet), and one to donate.