Insomnia

This morning, I received an letter from WinZip Computing. In this letter, they were respectfully asking me to make sure that no unlicensed copies of their software was being used at our company and to prepare for a call from their representative that will assist us in our audit.

I'm going to channel Seth Godin here but that was an awful piece of negative marketing. The letter is full of words and phrases like: "It has come to our attention" and "internal compliance". Nowhere in the letter do they tell me what their software can do for me or my organization and why it would be a good idea to give them money instead of using what is available for free in my OS or on the internet. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind paying for software, I make my living from people selling software. But it has to add value.

What is more ironic is that I got this email because we were a WinZip customer. We bought licenses a few years ago when there was a compelling reason to use their software. Now that the reason is not so compelling, they "threaten" me into compliance instead of telling me why I should continue to do business with them. If I was not a customer of theirs, I would not have gotten this "request for compliance".

There was an email address on the letter and I will follow-up with them with a letter thanking them for the reminder that I should let everyone on my staff know about the existence of excellent WinZip alternatives like the free 7-Zip. And that they should uninstall WinZip to be compliant with their license requirements.

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