Monifesto

What is a viral loop? A viral loop is the process a user goes through starting with entering a website and ending with inviting new users. A viral loop is exponential in nature and can result in a product or service offering becoming very popular in a short amount of time. Check out tagged.com for a great example of a viral loop. They basically jump right to the inviting new users phase early in their process.

Tagged.com viral loop:

Register a user -> User tells friends -> User uses product or service -> User evaluates product or service.

So how does one go about building a viral loop?

Step 1:

You need to create various avenues for people to locate your viral loop. These typically include your homepage, blog, email, RSS feed, paid advertising, traditional advertising, text messages, social network sites, etc. The trick with this step is that you want to make your process available to the user, but in a way that is not in their face. It is the difference between someone inviting his or her friend to try your product or service, or you spamming that same person. Which would be better received?

Step 2:

This is the most obvious and important step. You must have a product or service people want. If nobody wants what you are offering, you will not generate sales or leads. Your products or services should hook into people’s motivational hotspots, greed, vanity, lust, personal expression, competition, etc. The hotspot you chose will largely depend on your product or service.

Step 3:

Reduce the barriers your users have to leap over in order to purchase or use your product or service. Check out slide.com, they have a great example of this with there slideshow widget sign up process. It is very short, quick, and easy to use. The more steps a user has to go through in order to get your product or service, the more opportunities you provide them to drop off. Think about each step in the process like it is a landing page. You want to measure each landing page of your process to determine how many people drop off for each step of the process. Then for those areas with high drop rates, optimize the page or the process and re-measure. Keep iterating through these steps until you find the most optimal process, which is the one that yields the highest sales, sign-ups, leads, etc.

Example viral loop:

Product: Posters

User selects Desired Posters and clicks next button –> User enters personal information and clicks next button –> User enters emails to invite 5 other users to review the posters she selected “Hey check out these cool posters!” –> Order confirmed/processed/emails sent invited users.

How to measure your viral loop effectiveness?

To measure the effectiveness of your viral loop, you can make use of this handy dandy formula.

Viral Loop Factor
X * Y * Z = Viral Loop Factor

X = Conversion Rate (Percentage of invited users who buy product/service or sign up etc)
Y = Engagement Rate (Percentage of users who invite at least one friend)
Z = Invitation Rate (Average number of invites sent per user)

A viral loop factor of greater than 1.5 implies you are growing exponentially.

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Tags: Viral Loop, Viral Marketing