
What would you do if your employer created a form email for you to send to your friends and family encouraging them to check out the company's products and services? Would you send the email or hit delete?
Right after Christmas, Kevin Conroy, AOL's product chief, did just that. Conroy shared the holiday email he supposedly sent to friends, family's and professional contacts. Think of it as the corporate version of the annual holiday letter.
In his email to employees ,where he shared the email he sent to his contact list, Conroy suggested that employees use that same email( or variations thereof) and send it to their friends and family.
It's a long , long email complete with hyperlinks, testimonials from major media outlets , and did I mention hyperlinks?
Depending on your vantage point, AOL was either:
(1) Attempting to launch a word of mouth marketing campaign(WOM)
(2) Asking employees to spam family and friends.
Either way, the initiative signals the very sad and pitiful state of AOL's business.
From the ValleyWag:
His topdown directive did not spark any bottom-up fervor, it seems, as
he had to forward the message again on Friday, asking employees for
examples of get-out-the-users emails they'd sent.

Critics are saying that it is nothing more than an attempt on AOL's part to force employees to spam their friends. From The Silicon Alley Insider, a post entitled AOL to Employees: Please Spam Your Friends About Us!
Alas, not surprisingly, it seems no one forwarded it[...]So if you suddenly get an uncharacteristically stiff email from your
AOLer buddy about the company's new products, forgive him/her.
Expressing enthusiasm about AOL is now an AOL job requirement!
If AOL thought they were implementing a WOM marketing strategy, it might be beneficial for them to review some essential criteria required for a successful WOM campaign , From a book summary of Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing by George Silverman,
3.
Word-of-mouth offers an authenticity to it because the source is
normally independent of the company, he or she is offering his or her
own candid opinion and therefore, the marketing appears credible.
6.
Studies have shown that a satisfied customer will tell an average of
three people about a product or service she likes, and eleven people
about a product or service with which she had a negative experience.
The fact that it appears AOL employees opted to not share the email says a great deal about their own satisfaction with the company.
This is a company without evangelists.
Perhaps if the company spent time figuring out what it needed to do to gain the support and loyalty of its employees, the friends and families would suddenly appear.
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