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Many times a day do I see this little message embedded in an email and I always wonder about it:

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.

I imagine it has ZERO impact. I mean if someone forwarded me an email which I thought was interesting, it would be natural to find the subscribe button and click it, right?  Having a prompt is not necessary. And since most emails only have the article teasers in them, the click thru to Read More takes them to a website which is probably full of subscribe buttons.

But this article isn't just an observation that marketing people, like sheep, tend to repeat what everyone else is doing (BTW, often a good strategy).  Everyone else puts this line in their emails so what the hell, let's put it in too. I also have a better idea of what to put in the newsletters. How about:

"Do you know someone who might find this article interesting? Be generous and Share it with them."

IMHO, this could have a little more impact.  But, like all digital marketing things, these should be measured. Back when I was hands-on doing digital marketing, I did encourage people to forward newsletters and often, the message was more finetuned than that in that I would suggest a target audience. For instance: 

In newsletters about the process of learning to read, I would often point out what should (and shouldn't) be done with children at a specific age or developmental stage. So prereaders, for instance, should hear lots of rhyming poems and stories. They should play rhyming games like Hig Pig. To get ready to learn to read, the kids should learn to pay attention to sounds so that they eventually realize that sounds are  interchangeable parts that words are made up of.  HAT  BAT  FAT SAT CAT.  Good old Dr Seuss books are great for this especially if the reader reinforces the rhymes when they read them aloud.  The big point is that in the early years, learning the letters is a lot less important than building skills with sounds (and words) so that kids can recognize the similarities and difference between similar sounds such as MOON vs NOON. (phonemic awareness and phonological skills are the technical terms for this).

I would end newsletters by suggesting that if they know parents of prereaders who might find these insights timely, they might share this newsletter with them. 

I believe that this let to a lot more growth through social referrals. But, when I was hands-on doing this, our tracking was pretty limited so I don't have the data to prove it.  Do you have data on which approach you are using?