I’m frequently asked what makes a good viral campaign. More often, I’m asked how to do a really great viral campaign on a shoestring budget. Even more often, the request is for a cheap viral produced overnight that catches on like GMail on steroids.

Once you know the answer to the first question, the next two take care of themselves. So I thought I’d share with you our five secrets to a successful viral campaign.

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Ever wondered how many emails are sent each day? Well, we got out our abacus and started counting. Turns out, over 171 billion – yes, billion – emails are sent daily. That breaks down to 2 million email messages every second. The bad news? Around 70% is considered spam.

Source: About.com Email

I re-read a terrific article on ClickZ the other day cautioning marketers to make sure they calculated the “True” cost of ownership when developing the business case for in-house email marketing versus outsourced solutions. The rationale in the article still holds true six years down the road – especially in this day when email marketing management is becoming increasingly complex.

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Dear Aunt May,

- Shopping Diva, Vancouver, BC

Dear Diva,

Well sweetie, I guess that all depends on the sorts of shops you frequent! Just like the apples at the green grocer, there’s both good and bad in the bunch and it’s up to you to pick out the sweet from the rotten. So how do you do that?

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JavaScript is a powerful and flexible programming tool, allowing designers to integrate interactivity and responsiveness to web pages.  But what’s good on a web page isn’t necessarily good in email marketing campaigns, and JavaScript is especially bad in HTML emails.

JavaScript, as its name indicates, is a method for executing scripts on your users’ computers; in other words, a JavaScript is a tiny program.  And like any other program, the script that runs can either do what the user expects, or something else entirely – just like a virus.

Most major email clients are set by default to disable JavaScript functionality to help protect users’ computers.  Spam filters also often see JavaScript as malicious code and keep it from even getting to an inbox altogether!  Even if your message makes it through to your user, most web-based browsers (like Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail) won’t run JavaScript’s – which means they won’t show your message.

So how do you get your message through?  Keep your emails strictly to HTML, so you’re making sure you reach the largest amount of your recipients possible – and add a link to a landing page on your website that has your interactive content there instead.