KnowTheMusicBiz.com » Biz Blog, Featured » 10 Email Marketing Tips for Musicians
10 Email Marketing Tips for Musicians
- Begin with a Goal in Mind – Why exactly are you sending out emails to your fan list? This is a very important question to think through before hitting the send button on your next newsletter. Hint: Email newsletters are a great way to maintain and strength relationships with existing fans. Also note, email is a very poor tool for trying to recruit new fans. Focus your email efforts on providing as much value to your fans as possible.
- Go Pro – If you are serious about building relationships with your fans and marketing your music, using a professional email solution is a must. Sending emails to fans from your Gmail account might seem like a simple solution, but it’s not! There are several companies that provide professional email solutions designed specifically for musicians including, FanBridge, Nimbit, Reverbnation and Topspin to name a few. Professional email solutions are a great investment of time and money. Go pro today!
- Segmentation – Segmentation is a term used to describe a targeting strategy in email marketing. Targeting the right fans with the right message is critical to your long-term email marketing success. For example, don’t email everyone on your entire list about an upcoming show you’ve booked in Memphis! Pull a list of your fans in a particular market, Memphis for example, and only email them about the initial show announcement and a potentially a follow-up reminder or two as the show date approaches. Segmenting your audience helps prevent “list fatigue” from your subscribers that can lead to the dreaded “unsubscribes” from your list. Additionally, segmenting provides real value to the people you’ve targeted and are most interested in a particular piece of information (fans in Memphis hearing about a local, upcoming show for example).
- Personalization – Remember that whole “building a relationship with fans” goal? A little personalization in an email can go a long way with fan goodwill and marketing effectiveness. Emails that begin “Dear David” (John, Kate, etc.) are much more personal and effective than emails that begin without a greeting or with just “Hey fans”. Most email marketing tools make automatically including your fans first name in the greeting quite simple. Reverbnation even has a tool that will search the Internet and find the names of your fans if you only have their email address.
- Frequency – Be consistent with your email communications but be very careful with the frequency they are sent out. I recommend consistently emailing your entire fan list on a monthly basis and rarely more often than that. It’s ideal to send out your monthly email on the same day each month, the first Tuesday of each month for example. Emailing your entire list too frequently will ultimately lead to lower open rates and higher unsubscribe rates. Twitter, Facebook and blogs are much better tools for more frequent communications
- Content Matters – Don’t forget that your fans are music fans! Always be sure to include your music for download or streaming and videos in your emails. Providing exclusive content for members of your list is a great way to keep fans engaged and looking forward to getting your next email. Don’t sweat the quality of your content too much. A live video shot with a flip cam or a new song recorded in your living room can turn out to be real fan pleasers.
- Give to Get – If you want something from the fans on your list be prepared to offer them an incentive in return. For example, if you want fans to join your street team or vote for your band in an upcoming contest offer them a free MP3 download of a new song as a way of saying “thanks” for helping.
- Analytics Rule! – Another advantage of using a professional email tool is the analytic reporting they provide on how your fans respond to your emails. Monitoring key statistics such as open rates, new subscriptions and unsubscribe rates will help you better understand the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. If you send out an email that results in a high unsubscribe rate you did something your fans didn’t like. Figure out what went wrong and be sure not to make the same mistake again.
- Cross Promotion – Always cross promote the other places where you connect with fans in your emails. If you have a band website, Twitter feed, Facebook Fan Page or blog be sure to always include links to these sites in your emails. Also, make it easy for your fans to sign up for your email list by including an email list signup option everywhere you have an online presence.
- No Spam – It is very important that you NOT add people to your email list who did not personally sign up for it. Remember, emails are great tools for maintaining and strengthening fan relationships. Email is a highly ineffective as a tool for obtaining new fans. Adding unsuspecting names to your email list will only foster a negative impression of you from potential fans and might even get you dropped by your email provider. Don’t do it!
Written by David Rose
David Rose is the Managing Editor at KnowTheMusicBiz.com. David is an entrepreneur, music lover, tech enthusiast and the former VP of Corporate Development at Yep Roc Records and Redeye Distribution.
Filed under: Biz Blog, Featured · Tags: Email Marketing
