Seth Resler

By Seth Resler, Jacobs Media

It’s safe to say that 2020 has not turned out to be the year that any of us in the radio industry were hoping for. As the pandemic has required us all to do more with less, ambitious digital initiatives have been shelved. Instead, we’ve been forced to pivot by adapting to work from home, figuring out how to entertain during a crisis, and — perhaps most importantly —teaching our listeners how to listen at home when, according to Jacobs Media’s recent survey of radio listeners, over 20% don’t have a working radio in their home that they use.

According to Geopath, March and April, the number of miles Americans drove dropped precipitously. Broadcasters suddenly needed to drive their audience to other methods of listening: the station’s mobile app, smart speakers like the Amazon Echo, or even streaming video devices like the Roku.

While most people know how to find their favorite station on a car radio, it’s not safe to assume that they also know how to pull it up on their Google Home or their Sonos Speakers.

How does a radio station reach its listeners when it can’t reach them through its airwaves?

Renting Versus Owning

In times of crisis, people often return to the basics. In terms of digital strategy, this means focusing on two things: your station’s website and your email database. While these tools aren’t as sexy as podcasts or TikTok, they remain the workhorses of any competent digital strategy.

In the digital sphere, we often talk about the difference between assets that are “rented” and those that are “owned.” For example, while it is possible to reach listeners through Facebook, this is a rented medium, subject to the whims of the “landlord” – in this case, Mark Zuckerberg. If he chooses to “raise the rent” — in this case, change Facebook’s algorithm — stations may have a harder time reaching their Facebook followers.

In fact, many stations reported a significant drop-off in engagement after Congressional inquiries into the social media giant in 2018, leaving them with the option of paying for advertising to reach their followers or accept the loss. Given the recent advertiser boycotts, it’s entirely possible that Facebook could make further changes to its algorithm. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and even Google search results all carry the same risk to stations that rely on them as a means to reach their audience.

By contrast, if a station has captured the email addresses of thousands of its listeners, it is not subject to whims of any middleman. Email addresses are an “owned” asset. Once you have somebody’s email address, you can always reach them again at no cost, especially if you’ve cultivated a strong response rate by sending compelling information.

So when the need arises for stations to suddenly pivot and drive listeners towards a mobile app or smart speaker skill, email becomes incredibly important. Yes, you can supplement this messaging with “rented” channels, but email will prove the most reliable. In fact, a recent study by Campaign Monitor showed that during March, email send volumes were relatively steady and open rates actually increased. Email marketing remains a rock in choppy seas.

Adjusting the Email Strategy in a Pandemic

Unfortunately, too many stations have allowed their email databases to languish or, in some cases, they never created one at all. In the best situations, radio stations send out one weekly all-encompassing email to the entire database. These emails tend to be a laundry list of upcoming concerts and contests with a sprinkling of ads, rather than targeted campaigns sending relevant info to segments of the database. They weren’t particularly compelling in the best of times, and now that concerts have been canceled and prizes are hard to come by, there’s even less reason for listeners to read them.

As we navigate turbulent times, often with even more limited resources than normal, it would be wise for radio stations to refocus on the basics; it’s time to revisit your email marketing strategy.

As concert calendars grow sparse and prize closets bare, radio stations should center their email strategies on another asset: their on-air content. Listeners return to stations over and over again not to find out who’s playing in town or to win beer koozies, but because they like the content that they hear. So it makes sense that the on-air content should be the focus of the station’s email strategy.

If your morning show has die-hard fans, email them about the morning show. If your afternoon drive personality hosts a popular feature, send it out to listeners who may no longer be in the car at that time. If your local music show has a community of passionate devotees, engage them via email. But don’t combine these all into one hodge-podge blast; target listeners based on their specific interests. In doing so, your open rates and click-through rates should rise.

Example: An Automated Morning Show Campaign

The trick to doing this, of course, is to figure out how to execute the strategy without overtaxing your resources. Fortunately, email campaigns can be automated to reduce the burden on the staff. For example, radio morning shows can borrow a concept from podcasters and combine it with an automated email campaign to boost engagement. Here’s how it works:

When podcasters publish a new episode, they also publish a “show notes” webpage. These pages contain an embedded audio (or video) recording of the show, a short summary, and often links to things mentioned. Each show notes page has a unique URL so that it can be shared on social media, found through search engines, and yes, sent to fans in an email blast. Radio morning shows can do the same thing, providing an opportunity for fans to listen to the show on demand in case they missed it live.

Once your morning show is in the habit of publishing show notes regularly, you can set up an automated email campaign to send these pages to fans on a daily basis. To do so, you’ll need an RSS feed for the show notes pages and email marketing software that’s capable of sending RSS-to-email campaigns. I don’t want to get too far into the digital weeds here, so just send this tutorial to your digital staffer and let them set it up.

Now that your automated email campaign is up and running, promote it by encouraging people to sign up to receive the morning show recaps. Use your airwaves, your existing email database, and your social media accounts to do this.

Over time, you will see the number of subscribers in your email database go up and the number of website visitors — in particular, return visitors coming via email — increase. In other words, this campaign will grow your website and email database, the assets that you own.

Create similar automated email campaigns with other on-air features, such as popular specialty shows, and now you’ve got a full-blown strategy for growing your email database. If stay-at-home orders return in the wake of rising cases of coronavirus, now your radio station will be well-positioned to drive listeners to mobile apps, smart speaker instructions, or any other method of listening.

In other words, if your station’s fans are listening to the radio in their cars less, email marketing could be the most powerful weapon in your arsenal.

Seth Resler is a broadcasting veteran who, for more than two decades has worked behind both the mic and the programming desk in major markets, including New York City, Boston, Seattle, St. Louis, Providence, and San Jose. He left radio in 2006 to enter the world of online marketing. But he kept returning to the broadcasting industry, teaching radio stations how to apply the online marketing techniques being used by Silicon Valley companies. He blogs about digital strategy for radio broadcasters. He also hosts the Worldwide Radio Summit podcast, the CES for Radio podcat, and The D Brief podcast. In 2015, Seth joined us as our Digital Dot Connector, helping radio stations combine all of their digital tools into one overarching strategy.