ZOOM - University of Maryland (UMD)
UMD needs to stay in touch with its alumni community and to increase awareness of what the university and alumni departments have to offer. In order to accomplish these tasks, UMD and Redhead Interactive developed the Zoom campaign. The Zoom campaign employs a multi-pronged viral marketing strategy to increase awareness and to gather contact information from alumni worldwide. WebFirst developed the Zoom system to execute this campaign. Initially a seed group of alumni were sent an email directing them to the Zoom web site. These alumni could then “ZOOM” other alumni by sending out emails via the new Zoom site. These emails would, in turn, ask other alumni to “ZOOM” more alumni and so on, while UMD collects the email and contact information automatically.
By collecting this data, UMD can stay in touch with its alumni, notify them of upcoming events and include them in fundraising strategies. In order to advertise this initiative, TV spots were placed on NFL football and World Series games, as well as on popular prime-time shows such as ER and The West Wing.
