Monday, August 14, 2006

Coding a "Tell A Friend" Utility

A popular item on websites and within email messages is a "Recommend Us" or "Tell A Friend" link. This is a structured way to let the viewer recommend your products or services to to one or more "friends". When they click Submit, each friend get an email that was partly scripted, and partly annotated by the viewer. A confirmation copy goes to the viewer, and a copy goes to you with a list of the referrals.

Alpha Five made this pretty simple - to get a full copy of the code required to create this utility, click here.

Note: SPAM laws dictate you cannot add these "3rd party" referrals to your standard email list without their permission. The fact that your 3rd party is, in effect, sending this email to someone they know personally, makes it legitimate. But you should structure your email such that they are inclined to opt-in in order to receive additional messages from you.

2 comments:

Blue said...

I was not able to follow the link to your site. Is this code still available?

Steve said...

I updated the link. You need to create an account after clicking the link.