Owning Retention with Gameball

Gameball is a marketing programme which helps their customers achieve growth and customer retention through gamification, loyalty initiatives and customer engagement techniques.

‍Gameball’s aim was to expand their brand awareness through different content strategies, one of which was a podcast. Well, let’s just say… they came to the right place!

The Concept

‍Whilst conceptualising the show’s identity, Fame and Gameball discovered that they both identified with the mantra: retention is the foundation of growth.

‍Putting this ideology at the forefront of the creative process, Retain: The Customer Retention Podcast was born. Fame helped Gameball:

• Design a playful thumbnail which was in keeping with their gamification-esque brand identity
• Coach their enthusiastic, wonderful host, Lauren
• Solidify their understanding of podcast analytics

The Results

With the benefit of the podcast being centred within an industry filled with thought-leaders and marketing influencers, Fame used this to their advantage by initially growing the show with well-known figures in customer retention.

By piggybacking off the guests’ established followings, the show was able to grow rapidly. This, in turn, has opened up the door to an even bigger profile of guests which ultimately has led to the show ranking #3 for the high volume term "customer retention" in Apple Podcasts in the UK:

The Numbers

From the first month of tracking to its peak, Retain has grown on every measure:

• Downloads grew 7.9x
  • 557 in Nov 2022 to a record 4,389 in Aug 2024
  • An average of 2,606 a month across the first eight months of 2024
• Above the monthly download goal in 19 of 20 months
  • 40,598 downloads delivered between January 2023 and August 2024, against a combined goal of 27,523
  • 48% ahead of goal overall
• Followers grew 10.5x
  • 91 in Nov 2022 to 952 in Aug 2024 across Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts
• 32,504 LinkedIn impressions from community posts
  • 20 posts about guest episodes, reaching 7,706 views between them
  • An average of 1,625 impressions a post

Big-name guests

The show's rapid growth was built on guests with large followings of their own. Over more than 60 episodes, host Lauren DeSouza has interviewed:

• Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer for Shepard Presentations, in the very first episode (listen)
• Rand Fishkin, serial entrepreneur, author and Co-Founder of SparkToro (listen)
• Bruce Temkin, known as the "Godfather of Customer Experience" (listen)
• Peter Shankman, six-time bestselling author, entrepreneur and keynote speaker (listen)
• Kris Rudeegraap, Co-Founder and CEO of Sendoso (listen)
• Dave Kerpen, New York Times best-selling author (listen)
• Dan Gingiss of The Experience Maker, Joey Coleman of Design Symphony and Howard Tiersky, CEO of FROM

Two of the standout episodes, below:

Retain: The Customer Retention Podcast has now published more than 60 episodes. With its dedicated listenership and increasing respect within the industry, it keeps climbing the rankings.

As Gameball attest to, Fame has truly enabled them to add an extra string to their content production bow. Their brand’s recognition is increasing with every new listener and now they are a trusted source on customer retention.