Evernote's Target Market

[SarahAziz 1]

I am a product manager and I am creating a persona for Evernote users. All the users that I find online are business users. Are there any different kind of users that use Evernote? And what is their percentage? 

 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, SarahAziz said:

Are there any different kind of users that use Evernote? And what is their percentage? 

There are three account levels  Basic, Premium, Business
with some Plus accounts remaining from a dropped tier level

There's no percentage published, but a long ago discussion indicated a less than 10% paid account conversion rate

[gazumped 11,652]

1 hour ago, SarahAziz said:

I am a product manager and I am creating a persona for Evernote users. All the users that I find online are business users. Are there any different kind of users that use Evernote? And what is their percentage? 

Hi - out of around 250M users,  I'd guess the vast bulk are not business,  and range from students studying at all levels of school,  to the elderly trying not to forget where they left their keys (not being disrespectful,  I'm in that group too...).  I doubt anyone outside Evernote knows the total number of active users,  or has any accurate idea of the range of profiles - you'll probably get some idea here in the forums if you can put together a short questionnaire that anyone can complete,  and copy it to the Facebook group plus any other social media forums you can find...  

[SarahAziz 1]

On 12/6/2019 at 7:04 PM, gazumped said:

Hi - out of around 250M users,  I'd guess the vast bulk are not business,  and range from students studying at all levels of school,  to the elderly trying not to forget where they left their keys (not being disrespectful,  I'm in that group too...).  I doubt anyone outside Evernote knows the total number of active users,  or has any accurate idea of the range of profiles - you'll probably get some idea here in the forums if you can put together a short questionnaire that anyone can complete,  and copy it to the Facebook group plus any other social media forums you can find...  

Thanks for your reply. That was super helpful.

[SarahAziz 1]

Thanks a lot for you replies. It was super helpful. 

[SarahAziz 1]

Hello guys,

I want to know what is Evernote's target market?  Who are Evernote's users? Is it more targeting business professionals or other users? 

 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

4 hours ago, SarahAziz said:

I want to know what is Evernote's target market?  Who are Evernote's users?

I merged your two discussions for this topic

Evernote is a generic digital filing service; storing and organizing (computer) document/files    
The target market is anyone with a collection of document files; which is basically anyone with a personal computer, tablet or smart phone.

Evernote provides a note editor; another target market is anyone who wants to create content   
However files of any format can be stored; images, pdfs, word processing, spreadsheets, ...

Evernote supports document sharing; this is another target market

>>Is it more targeting business professionals or other users? 

Evernote is attempting to move into the business market.      
I don't know how successful this is; the 200 million plus user-base is mostly non-business

[gazumped 11,652]

36 minutes ago, SarahAziz said:

Hello guys,

I want to know what is Evernote's target market?  Who are Evernote's users? Is it more targeting business professionals or other users? 

We already had this discussion - please don't post similar queries in different forum threads

- As I already suggested if you have some specific questions,  you might get some usable responses.  We're all users here (Evernote Forum's staffers are unlikely to volunteer any information) and you'll get a range of opinions,  but no real usable information.

If you post a questionnaire,  some of us may be willing to complete it.  Information like age / occupation / business or personal use would presumably be helpful...

 

[SarahAziz 1]

I am a new product manager. There is a difference between persona and target market. 

[gazumped 11,652]

I'm an old Marketing Manager so I'm familiar with the concepts.  You still won't get any useful information by asking open ended questions...

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

10 hours ago, DTLow said:

Evernote is a generic digital filing service; storing and organizing (computer) document/files    
The target market is anyone with a collection of document files; which is basically anyone with a personal computer, tablet or smart phone.

Evernote provides a note editor; another target market is anyone who wants to create content   
However files of any format can be stored; images, pdfs, word processing, spreadsheets, ...

As always, I respectfully disagree with @DTLow's understanding of Evernote's primary nature as being a "digital filing service." I would point out that it's called Evernote, not Everstore, but the ability to add attachments to notes has created a very active segment of the Evernote clientele who use it mainly to store files, as DTLow describes. I do do some file storage with Evernote, but for me it's primarily for taking notes on research and writing projects, and on household needs.

[DTLow 5,736]

36 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Evernote's primary nature ... I would point out that it's called Evernote, not Everstore

A discussion for another day.  I'll leave you with

 

[CalS 5,280]

To confine EN to A or B does it disservice, EN is whatever the user wants it to be.  To presuppose or state otherwise makes little sense, to me anyway.  😊  Lets call the whole thing off.

[jefito 5,589]

4 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

As always, I respectfully disagree with @DTLow's understanding of Evernote's primary nature as being a "digital filing service." I would point out that it's called Evernote, not Everstore, but the ability to add attachments to notes has created a very active segment of the Evernote clientele who use it mainly to store files, as DTLow describes. I do do some file storage with Evernote, but for me it's primarily for taking notes on research and writing projects, and on household needs.

Don't get distracted by the "note" in "Evernote". In Evernote, a note is just the primary unit of information storage (with notebooks, tags, stacks as structuring facilities), whatever it contains and how it got there, whether entered text or images or web clips or other attachments. The "note" in "Evernote" doesn't necessarily imply note-taking, though Evernote certainly can do that (leaving aside any debate as to how good it is at that, pace Markdowners). For some users, note-taking is the primary focus, for others, not so much; it's a spectrum (I'm probably 33% note taking, and 67% the other stuff). But the underlying note storage system works with whatever stuff you can stuff into a note, and that's universally true for all Evernote users, whether they're note takers, web clippers, image savers, etc. So I think that it actually is a fair assessment to say that the primary nature of Evernote is indeed a digital filing service. But that doesn't preclude or otherwise denigrate use of Evernote primarily as a note-taking facility. If Evernote isn't primarily a generic digital filing service, then the corollary would be to say that people who do only web clipping in Evernote and never take notes in it are somehow doing it wrong, and I doubt very much that you'd ever say that.

[PinkElephant 8,077]

I think EN is sort of a Swiss knife: Able to do many things, maybe each one not as good as dedicated special programs, but in combination better for many use cases.

For me the killer feature is the ability to store all sort of information in one place, structure it flexibly (without duplicates) and retrieve what I need very fast and easy.

The ability to take notes or to import stuff by scanning with the mobile app comes along, but for me mainly supports the main usage. Other nice features are sharing, pdf annotations etc. I doubt there is a main use case.

As a privat company, EN needs a sound percentage of paying individual and professional users to stay in business.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

19 hours ago, CalS said:

To confine EN to A or B does it disservice, EN is whatever the user wants it to be.  To presuppose or state otherwise makes little sense, to me anyway.  😊  Lets call the whole thing off.

This, I think, is the best take on it, similar to what @PinkElephant said. EN's marvelous flexibility is perhaps its key feature. But I would insist that a "note" is not whatever happens to get stuffed into the EN interface.

17 hours ago, jefito said:

The "note" in "Evernote" doesn't necessarily imply note-taking, though Evernote certainly can do that

Perhaps someone who's been with Evernote since its very early days can indicate how it was presented early on. But until shown otherwise, I have to believe that the name "Evernote" was at one time significant, and that we only think of a "note" as

17 hours ago, jefito said:

just the primary unit of information storage (with notebooks, tags, stacks as structuring facilities), whatever it contains and how it got there, whether entered text or images or web clips or other attachments

because that is what Evernote has come to be for many people due to its flexibility. A "note," in the dictionary sense, to which I can add sound files, images, and Web pages is a much better thing than what a note was before such digital tools came along. But the notion that actual note-writing is somehow a second-class stepchild among Evernote's uses (at least, that's how I'm hearing it) seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse.

But in the end, who cares? Not me. Glad that other people have de-paperized (does it mean something that that rhymes with "vaporized"?) their lives with Evernote. I just don't see it as the fundamental purpose of the service.

[CalS 5,280]

19 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Perhaps someone who's been with Evernote since its very early days can indicate how it was presented early on.

The early marketing that caught my eye was the "Second brain" tag line.  Note just being a vehicle to that end.  Fit me to a tee, someplace to store whatever and find it later. 

On a less serious note, a simple search for note definition yields the below.  Which supports both positions, note writing and aid to memory.  So, whatever at this point.  Coke or Pepsi?  😊

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

Note (heh) "a brief record ... written down as an aid to memory." Not photographed/scanned/recorded/clipped. Written. But please, I'm done with this.

[PinkElephant 8,077]

„Note“ in German means a single element of music, many of them making up for a Mozart Symphony, or a piece from Guns n‘Roses.

One of them makes no sense, many of the same will drive you crazy, but if different ones are combined by a maestro, the world will swing.

[CalS 5,280]

2 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Note (heh) "a brief record ... written down as an aid to memory." Not photographed/scanned/recorded/clipped. Written. But please, I'm done with this.

written down has been typed most of my lifetime.    I too am done.  All Good!!!

[s2sailor 2,184]

5 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Perhaps someone who's been with Evernote since its very early days can indicate how it was presented early on. But until shown otherwise, I have to believe that the name "Evernote" was at one time significant, and that we only think of a "note" as

 

It definitely was significant.  The pre-cloud version was actually EverNote.  It was changed to Evernote once they came out with the cloud version.  Never heard why.  It has expanded over time to be a more complete digital file cabinet, but its early DNA was as note storage. 

[jefito 5,589]

17 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Perhaps someone who's been with Evernote since its very early days can indicate how it was presented early on. But until shown otherwise, I have to believe that the name "Evernote" was at one time significant, and that we only think of a "note" as

Um, it's not called "EverNoteTaker" is it? That would be the counterpoint to your 'it's "EverNote", not. "EverStore", so that implies its primary purpose is note taking'. Or that a "MacIntosh" can't be a computer since everyone knows it's an apple (or a Scot). By that token, Evernote could just as well be a music preservation application (musical note, anyone?). Anyways, nobody's claiming that the term "Evernote" is insignificant, it's just that the "note" bit of it means more than just user entered content, because that's what's done all the time in the computer world. Consider, e.g , files", "directories", "folders", "windows", "mice", desktops", ad infinitum, all commonplace terms that have taken on new meaning in the context of computers. None of this is to say that note-taking is a "second-hand stepchild"; really what Evernote did was take a common concept and extended it into the computer world.

Indeed, using "Note" was a great, but easy to make choice (consider all of the other "note" programs out there that use "note" as Evernote does). It's is familiar and user-friendly name for that "electronic bag of stuff that I keep my computer content in", too, rather than, say Notion's "block": it extends the original meaning into other preservation-worthy content things that you find on a modern computer. And it goes well with the familiar extended metaphor of "note", "notebook" and "tag", each of which is also somewhat extended for the computer age. 

BTW, I've been an Evernote user since 2008, (AKA the "Timeline Folly Years"). The motto is "Remember everything", not "Remember only that stuff I typed in". See https://evernote.com/about, maybe? Also, perhaps of interest, Stepan Patchikov, the Evernote founder, received a patent for an "Electronic note management system and user-interface" in 2004 (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/051798330/publication/US8880597B1?q=pn%3DUS8880597), wherein it seems pretty clearly understood that a note is not just user-entered dat, which I'd say goes towards original intent.

I honestly can't remember the marketing around Evernote in the early days; I'm pretty sure I saw a reference to it somewhere, probably LifeHacker, (Buddha help me) and realized that it might be a good fit for collecting the sorts of things I need to do my work: screen caps, code snippets, and yes, "notes" as in "brief records of thoughts...". It was, once they ditched the timeline: the underlying storage concept of an "Evernote" as a collection of computer content was the key for me.

[DTLow 5,736]

On 12/10/2019 at 2:17 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

that we only think of a "note" as  ...

Getting further off topic; in Evernote terms, I think of a note as a container   
With Evernote/Mac, it's a folder in the OS file system   
There's also note metadata stored in a database

We can store files of any format in the note container; pdfs, images, web clippings, ... 
Every note has a content.enml file (basically .html)    
- it holds the content developed using the Evernote editor plus links to file attachments

[CalS 5,280]

Through all this, let us not forget search, my personal how-come-for-why.  The only reason I put anything into EN is so as to be able to get at it later with ease.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

Wow, the patent application. @jefito, the obsessive in me bows to the obsessive in you. 

[jefito 5,589]

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Wow, the patent application. @jefito, the obsessive in me bows to the obsessive in you. 

Ha-ha -- I can be obsessive sometimes, but this was something I wasn't looking for, but stumbled across in Pachikov's' Wikipedia page and thought it might be of interest... maybe to other obsessive types. I'm done, now I swear, on this subject anyhow.

7 hours ago, CalS said:

Through all this, let us not forget search, my personal how-come-for-why.  The only reason I put anything into EN is so as to be able to get at it later with ease.

That's the flip side of being able to store all that diverse collection of stuff -- finding any of it. We could use a file system to store all of our stuff, too (and little known fact: the Windows file system supports tagging; see e.g. https://www.howtogeek.com/344543/how-to-tag-any-windows-file-for-easy-organization/) but Evernote's search seems a lot more accessible to me.

[CalS 5,280]

14 hours ago, jefito said:

That's the flip side of being able to store all that diverse collection of stuff -- finding any of it.

Funny thing, my main purpose in starting with EN was to find things.  Found myself not forgetting things, just not remembering them at the right time, mostly work stuff and mostly about what others were doing.  I had “notes” but where were they.  EN even without reminders solved the problem for me.  

And then it morphed into my work and life second brain.  So now I’m paperless and have access to whatever wherever I am.  😎

[jefito 5,589]

2 hours ago, CalS said:

And then it morphed into my work and life second brain.  So now I’m paperless and have access to whatever wherever I am.

I'm waiting for it to hurry up and become my first brain because the current first brain isn't doing so well...

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, jefito said:

I'm waiting for it to hurry up and become my first brain because the current first brain isn't doing so well...

It’s definitely a continuum!