Reminders- do they work? I have a love/hate relationship with reminders- the concept itself is brilliant and is often all it takes to get paid or get the recipient of the reminder to do something- people forget, I know I often forget things, but the key is this- don’t send any more than three. Any more than that and they lose all value- another key is this- they must increase in urgency- here is the most perfect example I can give- my laptop bugs me daily to update Windows– literally, every day it asks me ever so politely if I “would like to update now?”- it even goes one step further with a little personalisation- “Let’s get it out of the way now shall we”- like “we” are best friends! I love it! But you know what I do each time I see it? Click the “Remind me tomorrow” option- I just couldn’t be bothered restarting my computer and having down-time- so I choose the easy way out. Paul 1- Laptop- 0. Every single day this happens and every single day their reminder doesn’t work- purely because there is no urgency and they are too frequent- If however the reminder said this to me “Update now otherwise your system may be compromised” I would literally drop everything and do it.
Cheers guys!
Reminders- how to make them work for you!