Inside our podcast production agency, one of my big pushes over the last couple years was to convert to Scrum-style project management so that we could be working on 2-3 service improvement projects at any given time.

So I wanted to give you a glimpse into that system and the projects we’ve run this year to improve our podcast service. If you’re a current client you’ll recognize some or all of these projects (not all applies to every client) and if you’re looking to launch a podcast this gives you insight into what it takes to keep up in the world of podcasting.

Here are the bigger service improvement projects we’ve run just in 2021.

Headline and subject line optimization

We started using a headline optimizer first (we use this one) and then added the email subject line optimizer later.

The goal was to raise the quality of our average episode title, and this site helped us gamify the process by scoring each title.

Not only did we find ourselves writing better episode titles, but we also shared and celebrated when we wrote high-scoring titles.

Milestone Episode Notifications 

Milestone episodes are your 50th, 100th episode, or hitting a milestone in download numbers like 100,000. 

Watching for milestone episodes has helped us to get clients thinking early about special episodes, new ideas or ways to get more promotional juice out of that milestone.

That led to special strategy calls, creative episode ideas, and even me guest hosting on Lars Hedenborg’s 450th episode. 

Client Update Email improvements 

We wanted to make the email more useful for gauging audience growth and decision making on topics.

So we added a new Weekly Stats Graph that’s more readable and actionable than other graphs (in my opinion) and gives a better sense of where audience growth is going.

We also changed up one of the stats included in our email to include top episodes of the last 90 days, rather than all-time. That gives you a better sense of what the best topics are and removes the all-time episodes which change less frequently.

Leveraging opportunities to put clients on podcasts we produce

For clients in real estate that meant looking for ways to put them on Real Estate Uncensored. So it’s now part of our weekly meeting to ask the question, “What client should be putting on other shows we produce?”

We also added certain clients into our BusDev system to specifically look for ways to introduce them to podcasters we connect with.

Since we don’t offer podcast booking as part of our service (with good reason), this gives us a way to systematically get our clients more exposure. I always want to look beyond having good intentions, and build things into our systems to solve problems once and for all. Weekly questions are a good way to ensure that things stay on your radar.

Highlight Clips going out the same day as an episode release 

We used to have Highlight Clips go out the following week to point back to the episode and drive new traffic to it. Nothing wrong with that, but as our production process got even better and we got raw episodes from clients further in advance, we were able to move this up. 

This one is a little subjective, as I can see a case for Highlight Clips going out at various times, but all the feedback we got from clients on this change was positive. 

Better feedback to clients on great episodes or areas for improvement

Most of our clients are experienced public speakers and frequent podcast guests, so I don’t believe they need micro-managing and intensive coaching on how to become better podcasters.

However, some clients wanted more feedback from us, and I felt like we needed to give more encouragement when clients were naturally getting better from repetition.

So we started building in ways to get feedback from team members (like writers and audio editors) all the way back to clients. So if your microphone sounded particularly good in a certain location, or an episode was particularly good because you had a great vibe with the guest and asked great questions, we’re getting better at passing that on to you and celebrating improvement.

More personal email templates 

One of the changes over the years has been the drop in email deliverability, and how aggressive email services like Gmail have become about screening.

So as an agency we’ve nudged clients away from heavily branded email templates (even though they make our agency look really good). We’re nudging everyone toward extremely personal emails that look like they could have been sent by our clients off the cuff, at least at first glance.

We’re basically trying to do 2 things: avoid triggering filters that send your emails into Spam, Social and Promotion folders, and also avoid triggering people’s real defenses that come up when they get a corporate looking email. Most of our client’s sell extremely personal services like coaching, so personal emails not only avoid filters but I think do a better job of building the relationship.

Those are just some of the improvements that we’ve implemented that affect most or all of our clients. That doesn’t count the improvements that affected specific clients, or projects that turned out to not move the needle or weren’t scalable. 

So if you’re running a podcast, these might spur some new ideas for experiments you can run.

Yet I want to point out the bigger lesson: It’s great to build a system. But as soon as you build a system, you must also build in a system to improve and fine-tune the original system.

That’s what we do with our Service Improvement Projects, and by running several at one time we can experiment, find things that move the needle for clients, then roll them out to other clients.

That’s what keeps our systems improving over time.