Dropbox and the Human Touch
A few months back I got an email from the crew at Dropbox reminding me to use their service. If you haven't tried it yet, Dropbox is a neat file syncing service that lets you back stuff up online as well.
Anyway, usually I hate reminders to use a service - I find them intrusive, and the repeat offenders get put on my spam list even if the service/product is actually pretty cool.
But Dropbox's email actually made me smile:
It's got three key attributes that make it much less annoying than other reminder emails:
1. It's visual.
I get it, you want me to use your service. But please don't show me a long bullet-point list of why you think you rock. Dropbox gets this, and replaces long text with an image instead.
2. It's funny.
The picture did actually make me chuckle. It won't win any best joke awards on BET and Carlin certainly wouldn't be impressed, but in my book any laughter is better than none (and certainly better than a groan as I hit Spam). Further, it shows they have balls, which is always a good thing.
3. It's human.
This is the most important part: the hand drawn image really lets me connect with the company. Dropbox isn't just a bunch of faceless programmers shoving their product down my throat - somewhere somebody actually sat down to draw this picture, and that's a powerful thing. So powerful that I actually pictured him or her doodling away with their tongue stuck out. Pretty cool.
Even though in the end the email didn't get me to keep using Dropbox (I honestly don't have a need for it), it did get me to take the time to write about it, which in the end is almost as good.
It's got three key attributes that make it much less annoying than other reminder emails:
1. It's visual.
I get it, you want me to use your service. But please don't show me a long bullet-point list of why you think you rock. Dropbox gets this, and replaces long text with an image instead.
2. It's funny.
The picture did actually make me chuckle. It won't win any best joke awards on BET and Carlin certainly wouldn't be impressed, but in my book any laughter is better than none (and certainly better than a groan as I hit Spam). Further, it shows they have balls, which is always a good thing.
3. It's human.
This is the most important part: the hand drawn image really lets me connect with the company. Dropbox isn't just a bunch of faceless programmers shoving their product down my throat - somewhere somebody actually sat down to draw this picture, and that's a powerful thing. So powerful that I actually pictured him or her doodling away with their tongue stuck out. Pretty cool.
Even though in the end the email didn't get me to keep using Dropbox (I honestly don't have a need for it), it did get me to take the time to write about it, which in the end is almost as good.