Patreon
Patreon is changing the way creatives make a living, so keeping everyone on the same page—with content and conversations together—is especially important.
The challenge: Creative process blocks
Founded in 2013, Patreon is seeking to change the way musicians, artists, and other creatives get paid. The subscription-based platform allows creatives to build their own fan pages to drive membership. As a company, Patreon aims to move as quickly as their creators. But it was hard to be nimble when the team was constantly jumping in and out of different apps and windows trying to follow a conversation. The team would spend time digging for old links and copy/pasting past feedback, leading to a more disjointed creative process.
“Slack is for instant communication, and then Paper is where all of our living, breathing documents go. And it’s amazing to have the two joined together."
- Christine Donaldson, Creator Marketing Manager, Patreon
The solution: Dropbox Paper + Slack integration
Using the Paper and Slack integration, Patreon has been able to improve their creative process. When their Creator Marketing team pastes Paper links to proposals and designs in Slack, collaborators can see a detailed preview of the document’s first few paragraphs and image. "It really helps to quickly scan the important parts, and we can see who else was in the doc and any changes they made," Christine Donaldson, Creator Marketing Manager, says. Patreon marketers also simply type "/paper new [title]" in Slack to easily create new docs when ideas come to life. Finding Paper docs in chats is also simple and fast, with search functionality built right into Slack.
“One of our core behaviors is to move 'fast as hell,' so that we can put creators first and serve their community. And that means that we need to collaborate and communicate very quickly as a team.”
- Christine Donaldson, Creator Marketing Manager, Patreon
The results: Moving "fast as hell"
Because marketers and creatives no longer has to jump between different apps, they are able to stay in their creative flow. That lets them focus on building new plans and processes to better serve their creative community. The integration also helps with coordinating feedback from internal teams and gathering input from external parties, such as animators, illustrators, and videographers. “Communicating with my team in Slack is now a seamless and uninterrupted experience,” Donaldson said. “I can instantly share all of my notes, strategies, and reports from Dropbox Paper without jumping out of the conversation.”