📈Sigh. Chartable’s long gone. What now?

➡️ measuring the impact of podcast friendships

It’s been two months since we bid adieu to Chartable. Personally, I miss it a lot. There was nothing quite like it; evidenced by the fact that I am yet to find a drop-in replacement for it.

I hope it’s okay that I’m not going to talk about how to replace Chartable. That topic has been covered already, quite well by Dan Misener and James Cridland, among others.

However, I do want to talk about what the impact of Chartable shutting down has been on some podcasts we work with – be it established or evolving podcasts. I want to share some of the conversations we’ve been having with podcasters since news of the platform’s sunsetting was announced, and the insights I’ve gleaned from them.

🌚 A Bit of a Panic Pickle

The first reaction was, of course, of despair. The news spurred conversations like this, forcing people to come to terms with the fact that no one-to-one replacement exists. I remember my reaction clearly – panic. Our work at Tink involves setting up quality cross promos between podcasts to grow the audience. We conduct that with love and seriousness, as evidenced by Wil’s fantastic issue on feed swaps last week.

💌A Love Letter to 99PI's Feed Swaps

We also take tracking these promos very seriously. Now, with Chartable gone, many conversations around tracking promos were, to say the least, thrown for a loop. I won’t lie to you – I felt the responsibility of a marketer who loves analyses very seriously in those days. It was up to me, and the likes of me, to start thinking about a solution for this situation. And that’s what I tried to do.

😌 An Important Re-centering

Long have I spoken about how to measure your success without losing your mind.

🧮 Launch Series: the Metrics that Matter

I knew that this was (is?) my chance to recenter the conversation around metrics that matter.

Now, let me be super clear – I’m not saying that tracking promos is not essential. I’m out here spewing stuff like “did you know that feed drops have an average 2% conversion rate which is so much better than most digital marketing advertising?” unprompted on 9 am calls.

What I’m saying is that, while we figure out how to better track our promos (be it through swap.fm or otherwise), we might want to remember another thing.

🌝 The Crucial Question

How else can we measure the success of our promos? Or, may I reframe this question to – how can we measure the impact of our podcast friendships?

While we wait or innovate a unified way to track promos that most of us can agree on, can I be the annoying person in the room who reminds us that there are different angles to measure the impact of our podcast friendships?

Such as:

• Measuring the replies you’re getting on pitches for swaps. The more the replies and the easier the pitching, the better your community!

• Asking listeners what they think of the swaps you run – do they like them? Hate them? Listen to them?

• Asking listeners how they found you – was it through a swap with another show?

• Keeping an eye on your pitch letters – if it’s more of an informal one than a formal one, it’s safe to say you’re just telling your friend about your show.

🎯 The Way Forward

I know my system isn’t perfect. Far from! But, I also know that once I started presenting these angles to clients, they were open to a more holistic approach to growing podcast friendships.

I loved Chartable for many reasons; they were innovative and now seem irreplaceable. However, what I loved most was how they empowered the independent creator to grow and measure community. If I may be so bold – I hope that these musings of mine offer you ideas on different ways to do so.

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✨ More Magic

• Tink’s Founder (and resident fairy-in-sparkles) Lauren Passell is doing another one of her spectacular Radio Bootcamps on Podcast Marketing 101.

• Recently, Dan Misener of Bumper also wrote about how to measure podcast audience retention. Check it out!

• The Whickers Awards are now accepting proposals for The Podcast Pitch, a competition offering prizes of up to £15,000 to narrative podcasters. More here.

🎧 From the Desk of Tink

Lost Cells is a 6-part multilingual series (English, French, and Spanish) that uncovers the misconduct of a Swiss-based stem cell bank, weaving together personal accounts from families across the globe. As these families embark on an emotional quest to secure life-saving stem cells, they confront broken promises, ethical challenges, and uncertain outcomes, prompting listeners to consider the ethical implications of the pursuit of hope at any cost.

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Thank you for reading! Next week, Wil returns with some more podcast marketing magic. ✨

Until then, stay warm and joyous,

Shreya 🥰