Rypple, or else

Like any company, we are always looking for ways to get people to come back and use of our service. We do this in a variety of ways. First and foremost, we try our best to make Rypple an engaging and compelling experience that people want to use again and again. The more they ask, the more feedback they get, the more value they see, the more they ask.

Another important mechanism we use is regular (e)mailing to our users to remind them of our service and motivate them to come back. We are not alone in employing the approach. I get regular correspondence from most of the social networking or community forums in which I participate, prompting me with subtle reminders of various kinds to log in and participate.

I recently stumbled upon a web service that scours the social networks updates from your contacts and aggregates the information in a single place. Pretty cool, but for whatever reason it just didn’t stick for me. I continue to run around and log into each of the sites in which I’m interested to check up on the activity.

Yesterday, I received the following email from them:

To paraphrase – we’ve been holding up our end of the bargain, but you just don’t seem to care about your friends. So, we’re deploying a team of ‘net ninjas and purging the web of all evidence of their digital lives….unless you come crawling back and apologize for your negligence.

OK. A mild exaggeration, but it captures the basic sentiment. I’ll take the guilt trips from my Mom (sometimes), but the idle threats and blame games are counterproductive.

So what should a reminder mail contain in order to be effective?

• First and foremost, it should strike a friendly and engaging tone. We try very hard to make sure our messages are inviting, polite and conversational.
• The content of the email should remind me of the value I get from the service. After all, the primary driver of repeat use is seeing true value. Our email reinforce that Rypple is about getting quick, confidential and trusted feedback that helps you improve and get ahead in your career.
• The email should try to identify any barriers to use that a user may have, and help to reduce those barriers.  In our reminders, we provide example questions that our users can try for themselves, just in case they aren’t quite sure what kind of questions should be asked with Rypple. We also include pointers to other activities that they can do to better acquaint themselves with how others are using the service.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all communications should treat users with respect. We will never lay blame on a user for not engaging. We will use it as an opportunity to better understand how we can evolve our service to better meet their needs.

Does this mean our outbound email is perfect? NOT AT ALL. We’ve heard a lot of feedback about how we can improve it – some people find it too long, some find it too frequent, and others mistake it for spam. We occasionally receive an email asking to opt out of our mailings (you can do it in your profile settings, by the way), and we try to always reach out to these users to ask about how we can better keep them informed about our services.

In short, we are listening and constantly refining our approach to help you make an informed decision about whether Rypple is right for you. If not, no hard feelings. And we promise we won’t delete your friends or their blogs from the internet (or tell your mom).