Growing Stadia by finding it’s unique voice
Stadia is an amazing technology, but that alone doesn’t guarantee success. I was the design lead for growth and user acquisition on Stadia. That role required me to develop and ship ideas that would meaningfully grow Stadia’s user base. I created flows, features and promotions that acquired well over 90% of Stadia’s user base.
Our founders are Stadia’s most loyal users and our pre-order program is how we found them
Six months before launching Stadia we offered the Stadia founders edition for pre-order. This was announced during a special press event with a great website on the Google store. It was a successful program that not only represented all our launch users, but our mot loyal customers.
The Stadia Pro free trial was an important growth tool
When Stadia first launched the strategy was to require new users to purchase Stadia hardware in order to get access to the platform. Six months prior to launch I proposed an alternative plan to offer Stadia free for all users to sign up and play. Just after launch I was given the opportunity to explore this idea and a small team was formed around it. Within 3 months we had a detailed plan and broad agreement from leadership. The project grew to encompass most of the Stadia team and required broad changes to most of the Stadia app and business model. Ultimately it was a huge success for Stadia and remains an active promotion.
Pro Pass prepared us for the free trial
Prior to launching our free trial offering we ran a series of campaigns called using a feature called Pro Pass. We emailed existing Google users offering them 3 free months of Stadia Pro. This gave us baseline metrics that we used to inform our free trial launch.
A $10 discount on your first purchase
We knew that customers who purchased games were more engaged and retained better. We offered a $10 discount on everyones first purchase to help get them started. It became a successful feature they we’ve kept on for all new users.
Youtube Premium extended trial
We found through research that YouTube Premium customers had a great deal of overlap with ideal Stadia customers. We decided to offer an extended free trial to YouTube members, which was a big success.
Google One extended trial
Google One customers are some of Google’s most loyal and engaged. We offered and extended free trial to One customers and emailed their subscriber base with the offer which was an effective way to grow Stadia.
Free play days grows Stadia through our unique superpower
Most modern gaming platforms offer promotions to play a popular game free for a limited time, such as over a weekend. On most platforms these promotions are merely ways to sell the game and it’s add-ons. Stadia can offer anyone on any device the ability to sign up and play that game instantly, for free, with no downloads or installs. This fundamentally transforms the value of these promotions from a sales initiative into growth initiative. I lead design for this feature which has become an evergreen growth and sales tool for Stadia.
Our YouTube Premium hardware giveaway promotion was the single most successful campaign in Stadia history
Based our continued. success with the YouTube Premium audience we planned to do something a little bigger. We decided to offer hundreds of thousands of Stadia hardware bundles free to YouTube Premium customers. This was a technically complex campaign that had to come together quickly. I lead design for this promotion, which was dramatically more successful than any previous effort.
Building off our instant gameplay superpower we launched pre-orders + demoes
The best thing about Stadia is how easy and convenient it is to just play. Within minutes a new user can create an account and be playing on any device. We really leaned into this unique capability with a special event called “Good Stuff”. This event was several days of game announcements that went up for pre-order and more importantly offered instant play demoes. This campaign was a huge hit and drove a lot of new users, press and critics to try Stadia for the first time.