Dropbox Does It Right
The Cloud Storage Wars are heating up, and it’s going to be interesting to see the tactics that the various players choose. There’s only so much free storage you can give consumers before it all becomes meaningless (See Cell Phone Minutes as an example), so it’s going to come down to cross-platform compatibility, but also just plain customer service/delight. To that point, Dropbox has a good lead on the rest of the industry, and they’re recognizing that. Recently, Dropbox announced that it would double the amount of storage that its ‘Pro’ (paying) customers would receive. No tricks, just whatever you were paying for, you now have twice as much. Brilliant.
Even more brilliant was the company’s next move – it began sending out emails to its earliest paid subscribers, thanking them for being a fan of the service for so long, and making their previously paid subscription free – for life:
“Hi,
Let’s be real — you’ve got a ton of cred for being one of the earliest Dropbox users on the block. For sticking with us for all this time, we’d like to give you your 25 GB subscription for free! No fine print, no catches. You’ll no longer receive a bill for your current Dropbox account. It’s yours for good!
Keep it real,
- The Dropbox Team
Absolutely brilliant. No one knows how many of these letters they sent out – obviously there’s a cost involved, but I would imagine that the number of paid subscribers that Dropbox added in the past few weeks has more than paid for this promotion to its oldest supporters. Don’t forget to also count the value of the word of mouth sharing that the affected customers generated. Brilliant.
Great job, Dropbox. Skydrive/SugarSync/Box/etc – your move.
**I’ve got plenty of storage on Dropbox, but if you aren’t using it yet, I’d ask you to use my affiliate link, so we both get a little extra**