Last year, Firefox published an episode of IRL: Online Life is Real Life called The Surveillance Economy, all about how large tech companies use our personal data for profit.

This episode was published on February 4, 2019. The episode’s initial download pattern looked very typical: a large spike on release day, followed by a strong first week as the IRL team continued to promote the episode.

Remember, this episode was originally released in February 2019.

Fast forward 12 months , and we noticed something very interesting — a surge of downloads for this nearly year-old episode:

Where did all those downloads come from? What happened?

Simple: Firefox promoted it.

Specifically, they used one of their most powerful owned channels: Snippets in Firefox. Well-placed in-app messaging drove meaningful listening of a still-relevant episode. Here’s what that looked like:

I’ve written before about the power of your podcast’s back catalog, and this is a great example of how evergreen episodes + powerful owned channels can help yield ongoing results for a podcast.

Remember

• High-quality evergreen audio is an investment that continues to pay dividends over time.
• Your back catalog probably still has lots of value in it, but it’s not going to market itself.
• Not all back catalog episodes remain equally relevant or marketable. Carefully choose which episodes you promote.
• Brands that care about long-term, ongoing relationships with their audiences should look beyond the initial spike of downloads, and consider the lifetime value of their shows.

Which episodes from your show’s back catalog are still relevant? How will you continue to market them?

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