Tell A Friend Forms Are Not Opt-In

What’s a Tell a Friend Form?

A Tell a Friend (TAF) form is one where someone visiting a site enters the email address of one or more other people (in theory, their friends) that they believe would be interested in receiving information from that site.

Those people (the “friends”) are then sent one or more messages from the website owner.

Why Can’t I Use Tell a Friend Forms?

The problem with such Tell-a-Friend forms is that the person whose email address is entered never requested that information, and as a result, any email messages sent to them would be unsolicited.

It doesn’t matter if it’s only one “invitation” message, or if you’re using Confirmed Opt-In. Sending unsolicited email messages to people is spamming. And spam isn’t welcome at AWeber.

So My Subscribers Can’t Refer Others to My List?

They can, and we do recommend that you take advantage of referral/word-of-mouth marketing, but you need to do it in a way that still gets everyone’s permission before you start emailing them.

What we recommend as an alternative is adding a section to your messages that:

• Encourages Subscribers to Pass the Message to Others
• Tells People How to Sign Up to Your List

That way, your subscribers can forward your messages themselves to their friends, rather than generating a message sent by you through some sort of form.

Their friends can then easily sign up for your list by following the instructions in your message. If their friends have a problem with being sent that message, they take it up with your subscribers (who forwarded them the message) instead of with you.

For Example…

Here’s a snippet you might include in your messages:

Referrals are a great tool for building your list, provided you get them in an opt-in fashion.Tell a Friend isn’t.