With Goalhanger, there’s something for everyone. Founded by Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport, and former professional footballer Gary Lineker, the media production company initially made sporting documentaries and ventured into podcasting in 2019. It now boasts a slate of 12 shows ranging in topics from sports to politics to Sherlock Holmes—and with tens of millions of downloads each month, it’s no wonder they consider themselves the UK’s leading independent podcast production company.
The Goalhanger team attributes much of the company’s success to their focus on fostering and nurturing their community of listeners through multichannel communication. Their Discord servers maintain a steady hum of activity. Not only can you catch a new episode of at least one of their series almost daily, but you can also then spend a Saturday evening with the hosts at a live show. And if you respond to any one of their newsletters with substantial feedback, you’re likely to get a response from Goalhanger’s Community Manager James Regan.
“People want more than just to listen to things—otherwise, what's the difference between that and, say, traditional radio?” said James.
Of course, managing these relationships takes a lot of initiative and a hefty marketing toolkit, which for James, includes Mailchimp’s Campaign Manager, Customer Journeys, and integration capabilities. We chatted with James to learn more about how the Goalhanger team juggles communications for a wide range of shows to keep the conversation flowing with their listeners.
What does it mean to be a Community Manager?
My job has to do with customer-facing interactions through our principal shows. That involves triaging the email inboxes for each show in the morning, planning the live events, and managing the online community spaces like Discord and some social media accounts. And it's my responsibility to oversee all the newsletters and communications that go out to our different segments. We exclusively use Mailchimp for that.
I’m a little bit of a jack of all trades. A community manager is a relatively new function in the whole industry, let alone in this company, so a lot is up to us on how we shape it and what expectations we have of it. There are operational tasks like triaging an inbox that I do every day because that definitely helps with reputation and churn. But also there are longer-term strategies to plan and execute around nurturing a community and better serve our listeners.
What’s your strategy for building and maintaining a strong 2-way dialog with your audience?
It’s about being responsive. The fans are committed, and it comes from a place of love. But they're also not afraid to give their feedback. When it's justified, I think being able to respond and adapt to that feedback is a strength and will drive success for the company. We love it when people give suggestions on what they want to see more of. This feedback has informed a lot of the things we’ve done, and the success speaks for itself. So they're not just getting something from it—we're getting something from it, too. It's a really good dynamic.
When it comes to keeping in touch with our members, I think finding the balance of how much you communicate with them is directly related to churn. Because if you over-message, people get sick of it and they churn—they either unsubscribe from the mailing list, or they unsubscribe completely. But if you don't message them at all, they're like, “Well, what am I paying for?” It's about finding that middle ground. I can't tell you definitively what the number is, but I do believe instinctually that mailing does help provided you find the balance.
Tell us more about the role that Mailchimp plays in building this connection.
We use Mailchimp to send a weekly newsletter with membership deals and other value-added content to each of the membership pods. There's always a call-to-action to reach out, and we do have very engaged listeners who will answer it, so it's very handy that they can reply to a newsletter that's sent via Mailchimp, and the response lands in the respective inbox. That means I can respond really quickly if I need to, like if there’s a technical issue with receiving our content. Responding quickly helps minimize churn, which is obviously a big thing with subscription models.
There are 12 shows under Goalhanger—how do you juggle all the campaigns going out to so many different audiences?
The simple things that improve quality of life really help. The replicate tool is so useful when I know that I've settled on a template I like and it’s uniform messaging across the shows because I can just swap in new information. On a Thursday, I'm typically formatting these emails to go out on Friday morning, so it saves a lot of time. I have 12 different campaigns and segments to juggle in my head, so the Campaign Manager is really useful because I can look at the campaigns I've scheduled to make sure I don’t miss anything. Or sometimes, I'll look at the calendar and notice that we’ve been hitting them a lot this week already. Maybe we've already sent them 2 or 3 emails apart from the weekly newsletter, so I don't know if it's helpful to reach out again right now.
And Customer Journeys really help me work smarter, not harder. We have one that goes out to each audience after they’ve subscribed for 3 months saying, “We really appreciate it. Let us know if there's anything you're missing,” and you'd be surprised how many people actually respond to that. It’s an automated message, but incorporating that human touch really builds that connection with people.
So it's those little things that make Mailchimp an obvious choice for functionality and longevity.
What other platforms are a part of your marketing toolkit?
Our principal platform is SupportingCast, which has a really good integration with Mailchimp through the API, and we have a couple podcasts on Patreon, which also has a good integration with Mailchimp. We also host on Apple Podcasts, and it can be difficult to get data from there to Mailchimp, so that’s where landing pages come in handy for capturing newsletter signups for those members.
Our social accounts are huge when it comes to interacting with our listeners. For example, Tom and Dominic from The Rest Is History are very avid Twitter* users, and the show has its own Twitter account as well. We often use posts to drive engagement with our newsletters, like if we're doing a live show presale event where we're mailing out an exclusive code just for members.
And the social share function in Mailchimp comes in handy because we’ll amplify our newsletter through Twitter as well. If we send at 9:30 on Friday morning, and someone signs up at 9:35, they won't have to wait a whole week to get their first newsletter.
How do you tailor your content around the demographics of your audience?
Our listenership, especially our members, tends to be older—I'd say over 30 years old a lot of the time. And they’re middle-class high earners. They prefer traditional formats like email. Especially with The Rest Is Politics, for instance, we do get a lot of emails, and they'll say, “I don't really like Discord,” or “I don't use Twitter.”
One of our newer podcasts is Sherlock and Co., which is a fictional drama show. The demographic is so different from any of the other shows—I think almost half of the club members are under the age of 21. This membership club loves Discord, and they're very active on there. They also love Twitter and TikTok. They do have a newsletter, but it's not important to them.
So yeah, the way we engage is highly dependent on the demographic, and being able to adapt to meet those kinds of needs is an interesting challenge.
How do you know who you’re talking to?
The predictive demographics within Mailchimp can give pretty good feedback. For members who join clubs through platforms that don't automatically share data with Mailchimp, we encourage them to sign up to the newsletter through landing pages, and we find out a lot about them that way.
Often, we do build relationships with a lot of listeners and learn about who they are that way. On The Rest is Politics, for example, there's a lovely lady called Pamela, who emails us at least once a week, if not twice or 3 times. She'll listen to about 20 minutes of the podcast and then email in her thoughts based on what she's just heard the hosts say. When I started, she'd been doing it for ages, but people were just so busy they didn't really have time to reply, so I just made it my personal mission. I don’t have much to say, but it's really nice that Pamela's making this effort, and I just want to acknowledge it.
That's such a great story. Have you met her in person?
Not yet. She lives in Northern Ireland, and we just haven't managed to do a live show there yet, but every time we announce live shows like in London or Edinburgh, she's like, “When are you coming to Belfast, or even Dublin?” I'm waiting for the day that we do that.
What’s coming up for Goalhanger?
The company's expanding all the time as we add more shows and membership clubs. There are currently about 40 of us at the moment, but 2 years ago, there were probably about 10 people. Right now, a big area of expansion is around social and video. We’re adding more content to our Youtube channels, and people really respond to it. I think there was a pendulum swing where everyone wanted podcasts to listen to, but it's swinging a little bit back now where people are like, “I like listening to it, but I also want the option of seeing them,” It's a great hybrid model.
It does seem like it’d strengthen that connection with the hosts a bit more, as if you’re in the same room as them.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a part of the charm of podcasting compared to other broadcasting mediums—it does feel like you're part of the conversation. You feel like you’re a silent partner listening to your 2 friends have a very intelligent conversation at the pub over some pints. It’s kind of an intangible feeling, but you don't get it with other formats.
Published: October 9, 2024
*Twitter is the former name of the platform X.
Disclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the individuals involved and do not represent those of Intuit Mailchimp or any of its cornerstone brands or employees.