We're excited to tell you about our latest initiatives to enhance content discovery inside and outside of your podcast application. We now support email notifications to let your audience know when new content has been published to their favorite series.

Here's how it works. Audience members who follow shows will receive an email anytime a new episode is published. By clicking on the "Play Now" button in the email, your audience will be directed straight to the new piece of content either on mobile or desktop. When a new episode is published to the News Show, listeners will also receive a notification via email.

Your audience members can continue to manage preferences on their own and can opt to not receive these new notifications by simply clicking the unsubscribe button in the footer of the email notification. If you have followed a podcast show and still have not received an email notification, be sure to check your junk folder and/or your organization’s email filter for issues.

Because notifications are sent to those following podcast shows, it is important to encourage your audience to take this action, especially at launch. Take the following ideas into consideration if you are looking to increase show follows across your podcast program:

• Ask that listeners follow your show in your episode description or any promotional trailers.
• If you have the budget to spend, promoting your podcast with a contest or swag giveaway is an engaging way to drive new show followers.
• Consider promoting your podcasts in correspondence with an upcoming company event like an all-hands meeting, product launch, company party or additional training event. Use these events to remind your audience to listen and follow relevant shows.
• Include your podcast information in new hire onboarding materials. Make sure to explain how to follow podcast shows within the uStudio application.
• Send communications to leadership teams to get them on board, explain the benefits podcasting will bring to their teams, and ask for their partnership to encourage their teams to follow relevant podcast shows.

If a user chooses to follow your podcast show, it tells you that they found your content valuable and they are looking forward to hearing more, especially since following is not required. This new update is just one of many promotional features offered through the uStudio application - our private podcasting solution will always get your messages through.