When you think of public radio, you think of great shows, compelling stories — and tote bags. Pledge drives (and the tote bags that go with them) are a staple of public radio, since so much of public radio’s revenue is reliant on direct support from listeners.

But the team at New York Public Radio discovered those on-air pledge drives don’t  translate as  well to podcasts, even for massive hit shows like Radiolab. Jake Fenske, the VP of Digital Membership at NYPR, told us that while the station “has built a significant membership base from their  broadcast audience,” but given the rapid evolution in the podcast space, there was an opportunity to rethink their fundraising and membership model for podcast listeners.

That’s where Supporting Cast was able to help.

NYPR had three primary goals, Jake said: 

• Building a deeper connection with their most loyal listeners.
• Introducing a younger and more diverse audience to the listener-supported model.
• Creating a new stable and predictable revenue stream for the organization.

Radiolab memberships with Supporting Cast helped NYPR achieve all three goals - and develop some key insights along the way.

While pledge drives on the air are seasonal, NYPR can promote Radiolab’s membership program — The Lab — nearly year-round. The team uses a combination of in-show promotion, email marketing, and special  promotions like branded merch or special events to drive quarterly boosts in Lab membership. This way, every few months there's another targeted membership push.

The numbers.

The Lab launched in December of 2021. And while it was successful early on, Jake acknowledged that “it’s taken some learning to figure out what works best.” Luckily though, Supporting Cast was able to make  that testing straightforward.

The Lab launched with $5, $10, and $20 monthly tiers. Jake and team at NYPR initially expected that the middle tier would be the most popular, but many early members opted for the lowest-cost tier instead. With that information in hand, NYPR leveraged SupportingCast’s A/B testing framework and experimented with replacing the $5/month option with a $7/month option, so that a random sample of users saw tiers of $7, $10, and $20 instead. They learned two things:

1. The higher base price didn’t hurt conversion rates for the entry-level tier, and
2. Better still, more users were motivated to hop to the middle tier than before.

The successful A/B test empowered Radiolab to generate even more revenue from its supporting members. Such testing is “much harder to execute and measure in our other membership areas,” Jake said, but the results were a win/win: no loss in subscriber growth, and a net gain in revenue per member . 

How they drive success.

“The show itself is the biggest way we can actually reach people,” Jake said. Radiolab has healthy back catalog listening, so promos in those episodes — and baked-in spots in current ones — help drive more members.

And The Lab offers real value: Members  get exclusive bonus content, ad-free episodes, merch, early or exclusive access to events, and more. A recent push late in the fall of 2023 took a page from the on-air pledge drives and offered a gift of a t-shirt when a new member joined. Subscriptions that month were eight to nine times higher than a typical month.

But the most important thing Radiolab does to grow The Lab’s membership is make sure to tell their listeners about it consistently. Messaging about The Lab is both a promotion of the membership model, and an education on how public media is funded. The whole goal, Jake said, is “building deeper connections - relationships and loyalty with our audience,” so they take time to explain the many reasons to consider becoming a member — from  the extra content for the listeners to the way listener contributions help make the show possible. “They love the Radiolab,” Jake says of the show’s listeners. They’re motivated by the idea that “everybody chipping in makes the show better.”

Apple Podcasts

There’s no denying that Apple Podcasts is a hugely important part of the podcasting ecosystem. Radiolab offers  an Apple Podcasts Subscription too, but it only includes an ad-free feed, rather than the numerous extras available when becoming a member  directly through The Lab. “There’s a certain segment that’s only going to use the Apple Podcasts payment button, so sure, we’ll offer that option, too,” Jake said. 

But their heaviest promotion is reserved for The Lab, since that’s where Radiolab and NYPR can develop direct relationships with the audience — offering those extras, building an email rapport, and leveraging custom messages in listener feeds to announce special events that are only for members.

Having fun with it.

The pricing tiers on Radiolab might look strange to folks who aren’t familiar with the show. When you choose a tier, your choices are Vipers, Butterflies, and Mantis Shrimp. Those in the know recognize those creatures from a classic episode of the show that looked at how different living things perceive the universe and color. “It’s a wink and a nod to people who are friends of the show,” Jake said, “and injects a bit of playfulness into the experience.”

And the revenue really matters.

The Lab continues to grow. In the past six months, the membership program generated as much revenue as it had in the prior twelve. 

And, of course, that matters. “By building this recurring revenue stream, we’re better equipped to weather things that are out of our control, like macroeconomic conditions or Apple changing how episodes download to devices,” Jake said. He added that the NYPR team can predict membership revenue with greater accuracy now, which helps the organization plan better.

Remarkably, NYPR achieved all three goals: They made more money, they can predict that revenue more reliably, and — perhaps best of all — The Lab successfully skewed younger than the show’s overall audience, strengthening Radiolab’s relationship with a key demographic they were looking to grow.

With The Lab, NYPR took a forward-thinking approach to audience engagement and revenue generation in public media. By partnering with SupportingCast, Radiolab effectively implemented a subscription model that aligned with both its mission and its audience’s interests. The initiative not only provided financial benefits, but also helped cultivate a more robust, engaged community around Radiolab, demonstrating the power of subscription for serving podcast superfans.