SiriusXM Is Using Data to Drive Growth Beyond the Car

When you think of SiriusXM, your hand might instinctively reach for the radio button on your dashboard. However, since Suzi Watford arrived at the audio business as its first chief growth officer (CGO) from Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in January 2023, she’s been trying to connect the dots between its in-car listeners and digital streaming, accessed on its owned and operated platforms, smart speakers, gaming consoles and platforms including Apple TV. Six months into her new role, Watford has been tasked with building what she dubbed the “next-gen SiriusXM” for its 34 million paying subscribers, helping it reach listeners beyond the car. “We’re in the midst of an evolution,” she told Adweek, “we’re obviously built from the car, but now with all the digital technology that exists we’ve moved into streaming, so we’re asking how we can expand that and grow from there.” Customers that listen more outside of the car are more likely to retain their subscription than those who don't, Watford said. While part of her remit is encouraging listenership outside of peoples' vehicles to drive retention, reaching new audiences is also key for growth, and partnerships with the likes of distributors, including Roku and Sonos, have been instrumental in introducing the brand to new audiences. Entries Are Open for the Adweek Audio Awards Digital audio has recently surged, accelerated by the 2020-2021 pandemic and lockdown era. While growth is slowing, eMarketer and Insider Intelligence forecast that by 2024, a fifth of all time spent with digital media in the U.S. will go to digital audio, with users listening to an average of 1.45 hours per day. In 2022, SiriusXM posted annual revenues of $9 billion, up 4% year on year. Within this, ad revenues were down slightly at 2% for the first three months of the year. It wasn't immune to the economic challenges facing the tech and publishing industry, either, laying off 8% of its workforce at the outset of 2023 as part of a new operational design that chief executive Jennifer Witz said would allow it to "move faster and more effectively" in a tough market. Driving growth via new and existing audiences When U.S. car buyers drive away from a dealership, chances are high that SiriusXM satellite radio service is both a standard feature on their radio and free for a trial period. A chunk of the company’s 34 million subscriptions is driven by these partnerships, which make it easy for trailers to transition and listen to its 425-plus channels. A large part of Watford's job is thinking about how best to serve SiriusXM's content up to users in a way that brings in-car and streaming together, using digital to complement the car funnel and grow both businesses. Leaning on a huge piece of research on customer segmentation from the marketing insights team, Watford is figuring out how the wider marketing team can curate content on its own platform and deliver creative campaigns that both grow its core audience and find new ones. Suzi Watford leads SiriusXM’s growth strategy in subscription, marketing and analytics across its subsidiaries, including Pandora. AI will play a role in helping the businesses' creative teams scale up how they target audiences and serve up creative assets. It's currently testing this across different categories. Watford's opening point of call was merging SiriusXM's marketing performance and social media teams to better showcase its diverse pool of content – which ranges from Howard Stern’s “Howard 100” talk radio station to Kevin Hart’s “Gold Minds” podcast. “[Merging those teams] was a reflection that there's a huge opportunity to do more with our content and get it out there,” she explained. With Sirius it's working out what we stand for at a brand, channel, then host level.Suzi Watford, chief growth officer, SiriusXM “The content and trial experience used to be confined to the car, but now technology means we have the opportunity to showcase what we’ve always had, to take it out of the car and into the digital ecosystem.” Data puts listeners in the driving seat With the experience of successfully building out the WSJ’s paywall under her belt, Watford is taking a data-led approach to content curation and community, which she hopes will drive further growth. This means understanding what makes customers stick around, whether that's sport or exclusive podcasts, and using that data to bring new ones in. "There's a lot of similarities between audio and news. In publishing, [you'd] have a big overarching brand, then the sections, the journalists. With Sirius, it's working out what we stand for at a brand, channel, then host level," she explained. Adweek Podcast: Yeah, That’s Probably Another Barbie Marketing Stunt Original podcast content, including Hart's show and "It's Me, Tinx,"—a series from the “big sister” of TikTok—drove significant growth for the business in Q1 of 2023, with programmatic sales doubling year-on-year and ad revenues growing 34% in the same period. "We have a huge opportunity among growth segments who are likely to be younger, more diverse. So we're thinking about how to program content around sport and music to bring those audiences in," she said. As it develops this "next-gen" growth proposition, the business is rethinking how it surfaces and delivers talk content. Speaking to investors in March, Witz teased the launch of a "data-driven platform" in the second half of 2023 that will give listeners more control of the listener experience and improve discovery. "Our new platform will streamline purchasing and usage in and out of the car and enhance the value of SiriusXM, making our service worth the premium for a wider range of audience segments," she said. "With strong similarities between talk radio and podcasts, we can do more to seamlessly integrate them across our service and provide more control and discoverability for our subscribers."

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SiriusXM Is Using Data to Drive Growth Beyond the Car

Former WSJ CMO Suzi Watford has brought her own blend of newsroom thinking to the audio giant

Rebecca Stewart

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Rebecca Stewart