This host that saw 90% growth in one month — here’s how they got there

CNET’s Executive News Editor Roger Cheng brings listeners a digestible daily snapshot of top tech news stories via his podcast The Daily Charge and now his Subtext campaign.

Last month, the Daily Charge’s Subtext campaign grew by over 90%.The team at CNET seems to have it all figured out. They shine across all four of their campaigns by using a an effective cross-platform promotion strategy, inclusive of social posts embeds, strategic call to actions and podcast mentions.

How did they do it?

CNET’s all-star Senior Audience Engagement Manager Caitlin Petrakovitz cleverly prompted subscribers, of their limited time campaign covering CES, to sign up for one of their other Subtext campaigns as the trade show came to an end.

In one final text before sunsetting the CES campaign, she sent a rollup encouraging users to sign up for all three of their other campaigns and included links. The results were awesome!

• The Daily Charge grew 12% after the first referral text from the CES campaign — the single biggest day for growth! By the last prompt, the sub list grew 35%…all in a matter of a week.
• Stream Source, a campaign on the best movies and tv shows available to stream, grew over 10% after including its link to sign up in just two texts.

It wasn’t just this creative approach that contributed to the growth last month. Caitlin admits there was more:

“We found most success growing subscribers by using embeds in our content. This gives both loyal and new readers the opportunity to find our campaigns within content they’re already interested in.”

She credits the campaign’s high engagement to Rogers unique connection with his fans and his ability to break news via text.

“Host Roger Cheng is great about sharing breaking news right when it happens (like the recent Bezos announcement), which often gets immediate engagement from his subscribers. He also frequently solicits questions or comments for the guests he’ll be having on his Daily Charge podcast.”

The Takeaway: If you run multiple Subtext campaigns, leverage the audiences you’ve worked so hard to build by sharing links and encouraging cross-campaign sign ups as a growth strategy.

Questions on this strategy or anything else? Reach out at hello@joinsubtext.com