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1. Protect
2. Access
3. Share
4. Cross-platform
5. Integration with premium content storefront(s)

1. Protect

Users want to protect their content, plain and simple. They place real value (See Have you insured your digital assets against loss, theft or breakage?) on their personal photos, videos, financial records, etc. Going forward, users will have even more content and the value will approach priceless as nowadays there is usually no hardcopy photo in case the digital version disappears via hard-drive failure, theft or damage via ‘spilt milk.’

2. Access

I have content in many locations – my work PC, home PC, personal and work mobile phones, wife’s PC, tablet and multiple external hard-drives. I want easy access to this content any time, which is impossible when it’s scattered everywhere. If I can automatically (read – little to no effort on my part) sync or just backup the content from all my devices into the cloud, then I’d be able to go to just one place – my personal cloud – to access all of my content

3. Share

In general, humans are very social creatures with a desire to share our experiences – whether stories, ideas, photos, gossip, etc. One of the major drivers for Facebook’s success has been the ability to post and share photos with friends and family. Industry experts say this is also why Facebook bought Instagram for $1B, because Instagram had a great app for sharing photos… which was encroaching upon Facebook’s turf.

So it makes sense that any cloud backup service should support sharing via email and with the most popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and possibly with LinkedIn and even Pinterest, which is quickly gaining popularity with scrapbooking aficionados.

4. Cross-platform

I don’t want my cloud service tied to a particular platform or OS. I want to be able to easily backup and access the content from various devices running various OSes – iPhone, Android tablet, BlackBerry, Windows’ PC, etc. Any service limiting or restricting the ability to access content from a particular platform violates user need #2 – Access.

5. Integration with premium content storefront(s)

Many users like to buy premium content online – music, videos and apps to start with. I’d like my premium content purchases to automatically appear in my personal cloud, instead of having to download and then upload the content. The popularity of Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s storefront support this user need.

Since I paid for this content, I should be able to access it and listen or view on any platform I want. Also, I don’t want content in proprietary formats, which might limit me to a particular device OS; this would be a violation of user need #4 – Cross Platform.

Summary

These 5 user needs might sound simplistic, especially considering the multitude of available services and slick marketing, but they represent what users really want from a cloud backup service.

This is the third in a series of blog posts on best practices for consumer cloud services.

A service’s lifetime revenue potential is often based on the level of engagement

In general, a service’s lifetime revenue potential is determined by the level of user (customer) engagement – and thus the service provider has an incentive to drive service usage – not just having a lot of registered users. In fact, the more engaged the user the less likely they are to churn. For example, experience shows that the more user content that a provider stores for a user the less likely that user will be to migrate to another provider (see graph below).  Also, active users are more likely to recommend the service to friends and family – providing personal, free marketing for the service provider.

 

Once awareness has been established with the customer the path to purchase should be as simple as possible with a focus on removing all potential barriers. One of the most effective tactics we’ve found is leveraging a pre-embedded application on the device. This concept is analogous to purchasing a Blu-ray player pre-installed with NetFlix.  In this instance, discovery of the service is greatly simplified leading to significant conversion. At NewBay we have seen the number of registered users for a service jump more than threefold when utilizing this strategy. This best practice removes both the discoverability issue and purchasing barrier of having to go to an app store or website, find the app, download and install it.

Other examples might include in-store acquisition or including the service in an online purchase flow (e.g., ‘suggested other services’ presented at point of checkout or sale), soft button integration on the device (e.g., online vault or social network destination when sharing content), or integrating the service sign-up into the handset startup wizard, which can result in registration rates as high as 85%. Service analytics show a large and threatening looking ‘Terms and Conditions’ screen can scare prospective purchasers away, so go with a T&Cs link (at the bottom of a registration/purchase page) instead.

The Commercial Offer

The structure of the commercial offer can make a big difference in uptake. For example, a content backup or sync service could be offered as a standalone service with a specific service fee, but this approach creates friction in the buying process. Some better ideas might include bundling the service in an expanded or premium data plan; packaging it with a handset insurance offer; or utilizing a diversified monetization strategy comprised of service fees, advertising, premium content sales, service overages and upgrades. A major but often overlooked monetization contributor – extending customer lifetime value – comes from increased brand/service loyalty (e.g., reduced churn) – and provides for additional months of service versus the standard contract (tenure). Other options might include a ‘try and buy’ program (e.g. offering a free 30 day trial) or the popular ‘freemium’ model, offering some amount of storage upfront for free (e.g., 1 GB) and then charging for additional storage usage. This approach allows people to try the service and once they get used to it, determine if it’s worth paying for an upgrade.

Capturing the Customer at the Point of Sale

Proven time and again, the most critical and cost effective time to attract a user to new services is when they buy a new device.

For example, think about how many more hurdles you have to overcome to sell an online backup (Digital Vault) service to an existing customer without a pre-embedded app? This customer would need to discover the service, learn about it, find, download and install the app/client, register and finally start using the service. This is a worst case scenario.

Now think of the opposite situation. Since NewBay offers white label digital content services, I’ll walk through a best case scenario that I’m intimately familiar with. ‘Maria’, an existing or new customer, walks into a retail store and needs a new phone. The retail assistant helps her find a phone and then explains how they offer a free service to migrate all the content on her old mobile phone – contacts, settings, photos, music, etc. – to her new device. During the setup of the new phone the assistant offers Maria a few options, for an extra $2 a month her handset can be automatically backed up (on an ongoing basis) to a digital vault that she can access from the web or use to restore content to a new phone in case she ever loses or has her phone stolen. The backup (protection) service could also be included in a handset insurance program or bundled as part of a mobile data package.

This scenario has removed several hurdles from the acquisition process. When deploying a new service, try to win the customer over at the initial point of sale – whether in the retail store or online.

Click HERE to download the free white paper:

Five Best Practices for Digital Content Services

Why am I so certain? Largest reason being Google has yet to produce a service that actually considers the user.  Their products are designed by engineers for engineers and typically rolled off the assembly line a wheel, transmission and couple air bags short of road ready.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some obsessive Apple fanboy – I’m actually a cheapskate reluctantly married to Android.  I’m also a user of Gmail, Docs, Picasa (occasionally), Google Music, etc., and find most of it, from a user perspective, to be a pretty painful experience.

Take photos for instance. If I go into Picasa on the web, my option for sharing is e-mail?!  Really?  Not even their own social networking, Google+, is there let alone and heaven forbid allowing me to share with alternative social networks!  Did I mention, if I want to use Picasa on my phone I have yet another application I have to install and it’s not even built by Google.

To be fair, Picasa will probably go the way of Buzz and other lab rat projects but I am growing weary of being a lab rat.   Have you seen the new commercial from Microsoft – “Beta Testers”.  I never thought I would see the day Microsoft would hit the nail on the head, but this time they nailed it!  Google Drive is no doubt going to be the talk of the tech wire for months to come, but when the dust settles we’ll find that the consumer will be left “beta testing” yet another alpha service from Google.

If your audience doesn’t know about your service don’t expect them to buy it.

This seems pretty simple, but service providers (operators, OEM device makers and application developers) still miss this point. I’ve segmented this best practice into two parts – discoverability and advertising.

Discoverability

Nothing can quite drive home the importance of discoverability quite like taking a swipe through your local smartphone app store where many applications simply die off into obscurity shortly after launch. In the case of the iPhone, on any given week about 100 applications receive predominant placement out of the >500,000 in inventory. Of course, new apps get a couple of weeks to prove themselves, but over time only .02% of total inventory is presented to the general consumer on a regular basis.

Many of these applications die off because they lack the merchandising tactics to be discovered on an ongoing basis. Without the right marketing programs consumers can’t find the service and in turn sign up for it. This means the service provider has no chance to make money if the user doesn’t find their application.

When it comes to implementing a personal cloud service many of the pitfalls exhibited by the scenario above can be avoided by focusing on the right merchandising tactics, including everything from having a dedicated landing page with service promotion to logical website navigation, preferred service (app) logo placement on devices to ongoing merchandising placement in ‘new’ or ‘top picks’ application lists, search engine optimization (SEO), etc. One of the best techniques for ensuring service discovery is to integrate the application into the native functionality of the device – like startup wizard, media galleries or share destination. Sadly, many service providers take the ‘build it and they will come’ approach, putting little effort into identifying distribution channels or merchandising tactics.

Advertising

This section consists of offline and online advertising channels and promotional strategies.

Offline advertising

Examples of this include anything from retail store ads and interactive retail kiosks, to radio and TV ads, billboards, bill inserts and more. In addition, more personal approaches might include user recommendations, ratings, use cases (scenarios) or testimonials.

Online advertising

Examples include banner ads, landing pages, mobile portals, social media (Facebook ‘like’, contests, Tweet-fests, Pinterest conversations, etc.), SMS campaigns, webpage, service-link redirects (to preferred service), eblasts, interactive campaigns, demo videos, sharing and a service launch press release. In this medium, online ratings, recommendations, and testimonials can be particularly helpful to leverage peer groups as purchasing influencers.

Promotional strategies

These include doing a highly visible public launch, seasonal campaigns (e.g., Back to School, New Years), sponsorships, referrals, and something as simple as using the word ‘Free’ in ads – which surprisingly can drive a lot of interest as many people like free stuff. Sharing and digital referrals have been effectively used by companies to generate new business, especially when successful referrals are tied to financial incentives such as service credits, coupons or discounts.

Click HERE to download the free white paper:

Five Best Practices for Digital Content Services

Field tested recommendations to improve the success rate of your digital content services and applications

The first half of this white paper discusses the five basic tenets behind a successful digital content cloud service – or likely – just about any service out there.

1. Educate your customer – increase user awareness

2. Capture your customer – remove purchasing barriers

3. Drive service usage – facilitate service usage

4. Focus on user experience – intuitively functions as advertised

5. Optimize for mobile – minimize impact to network, device and user experience

The second half of this paper evaluates the live digital content cloud service of one of our customers in the context of these best practices. Applying some service analytics, we’ll take a look at the impact of the best practices, show their results and recommend improvements. For confidentiality reasons, customer names are excluded and specific performance statistics and dates are masked.

Click HERE to download the free white paper:

Five Best Practices for Digital Content Services

Field tested recommendations to improve the success rate of your digital content services and applications

The Cloud then evolved to include content synchronization.    People had laptops and desktops with different information that needed to be synced and accessible from one place with the ability to share.

Now, with the increased use of smart phones and tablets, the amount of content people store is also growing.  Not only do the files, photos, music and videos need to be backed up, but people also need an easy way to access and manage this content, the Cloud as we know it today.

With NewBay’s SyncDrive solution, the Cloud enables users to securely backup and store all their content such as photos, videos and documents in the Cloud and instantly access, share and replicate the files across many devices such as PC, mobiles,  and tablets from anywhere at any time.

What’s the most recent trend in the evolution for Cloud?  What if I wanted to watch a YouTube video that I saw on my mobile device earlier in the day, in my living room? Or look at my photos from last year’s summer vacation, on a 50 inch screen? The ability to access your personal content from the Cloud on a Smart TV is the next step.   If a product like SyncDrive will allow you to access and manage your personal content from devices such as PCs, mobiles and tablets it only makes sense that you’d be able to access your Cloud from your living room on your big screen Smart TV.

Evolution of Cloud

NewBay’s demo stage at the BlackBerry stand

NewBay demonstrates how operators and device makers can use NewBay SyncDrive to enhance a simple backup and restore solution or offer a complete sync management ‘anytime, anywhere’ service.

BlackBerry PlayBook equipped Porsche 911 featuring NewBay Cloud Storage

RCR Wireless interviews Steve French, VP of Global Marketing

NewBay will show a variety of social networking, photo and video sharing, and notification services from companies like Verizon and Telstra. The company will also demonstrate a NewBay Digital Vault white-label personal content cloud solution from a tier-one LTE operator that lets users access their content anytime, anywhere and from any connected device.

NewBay will be reporting live from Mobile World Congress. If you’re not attending, follow us live from the show at newbay.com/mwc2012social to get a play-by-play of what’s happening.

To request a meeting or demo at the show, please email NewBay at sales@newbay.com.