Tag: Email Marketing

When it is used well, email can be one of the best methods of encouraging more people to buy your music and to strengthen your fanbase’s devotion to you. Unlike jostling for attention in the overcrowded arena of social media, jumping right into people’s inboxes is a more convenient and target-focused way of promoting your recent album.

However, people consider their email addresses as private information that they wouldn’t just give out to anyone. By consenting to have their email addresses included on your email list, they are trusting that you’re going to send them only valuable and interesting information instead of spammy material. Abusing that trust will make them unsubscribe from you.

The fear of getting unsubscribed from discourages musicians from employing email marketing. However, there is actually a way to overcome this fear and ensure that your subscriber fans will remain trustful of you by only sending them content they find valuable and relevant. The first step to overcome this fear is organizing your email list.

Why should you organize your list into segments?

If you want email marketing to work well for you, you need to be sending messages or content to your fans or industry connections would want or need to see. You can set up different lists of recipients regardless of the email service you are using. Email lists are usually organized into two groups: one list contains the email addresses of your fans and the other contains the email addresses of your networks in the music industry. Your industry connections wouldn’t want to receive your marketing communications; they would simply consider it to be nuisance junk clogging their inboxes. In the same vein, fans wouldn’t appreciate receiving messages that pitch your upcoming gig to venue owners, so it would be best for the fans’ emails and music industry colleagues’ emails to be grouped into separate lists.  

Segmenting your list will help send emails that your subscribers want to receive

Let’s now focus on your fans list. You can actually further subdivide this list into three groups, each receiving only a distinct kind of marketing communication different from the other: leads, fans, and buyers.

Leads are people who just recently joined your email list for reasons such as wanting to receive a free song or an extended play. They might also have been enticed to subscribe to your list after having read your blog and are interested in following and being notified of your new posts. These kinds of people may not want to buy your music yet so sending them a message informing them of an upcoming sales event will probably just annoy them.

It would be better to further deepen interest in your pieces or album by sharing content about these things. Sending them interesting feature stories of your life or music career can also work and you may include in one of these stories one interesting song for free which includes a subtle but inviting link that would lead them to a site where they can buy the full album. You may ask them for their feedback after a few days or a week while inviting them to buy it.

In contrast to leads, fans are those who have been subscribed to your list for a longer time. They are also the ones who are more consistent in opening, reading and clicking through the links in your emails, and you can identify who they are based on your email analytics. They are also those people who have responded to surveys or participated in a contest you organized.

While some fans may be inclined to purchase your album, others prefer just listening to it regularly. Instead of sending them free music just like you would with leads or offers to buy the more expensive music packages, it would be more expedient for fans to receive a link to the digital download of your album.

The buyers are your most reliable subscribers. They are the ones who have actually bought something from you such as a signed album or a souvenir like a poster or a shirt. They are most likely people who would buy your newest album releases, and they can even be interested in making further purchases if you give them to have the opportunity of doing so.

The best emails that you can send your buyers are those messages that would offer these fans the chance to take advantage of a pre-order sale hours before your album is open for sale to everybody else. In addition, you may try offering deluxe or limited edition bundles that have bonus tracks or content. You can also offer them albums that come with a signed T-shirt or a discount. This is a great way to show your appreciation for your dedicated fans!

Promoly is a music promotion platform for musicians. If you’re looking for a music PR service to deliver music to your mailing list, get in touch to see how we can help today.

 

As a musician, you want to keep your fans informed on what you have been up to. Although email newsletters can be seen as old-fashioned and ineffective by many, they are actually one of the best ways to keep your followers updated.

Believe it or not, most people check their email every single day, whether it’s during their commute to work or before they go to bed. Thus, emails can be as powerful as social media when it comes to customer outreach. This article will tell you some tips on how to create an effective email newsletter that your fans will want to read!

1. Start With a Strong Subject Line

The subject line is the first thing that your followers see. Thus, you should always keep it short but impactful. One effective tip is to include their name into the subject line. This will immediately grab their attention and they are more likely to open the email. You can utilize newsletter management software to help you with the task.

2. Be Personal in the Introduction

To hook the readers from the first sentence, make sure that you talk about something personal rather than things that relate to your product or services. Get on a personal level with your fans by sharing what you have been up to recently, such as your current inspirations or a piece of news that interests you. This will get your readers to connect with you, and they will be more invested in your story and what you have to say.

However, be sure to avoid controversial topics that will instantly turn some readers away. Some sample topics that you can mention could be a trip you recently went on, a new thing that interests you, books or TV shows that you’re currently obsessed with, or your new favourite band.

3. Update Your Readers in the Body Part

The next part of your newsletter should be about your current projects. This is where you tell your fans what you have been up to. For example, if you have an announcement or an event coming up, you should use this space to talk to your readers about it.

4. Direct Your Readers Through CTAs

This last section can be considered as the most crucial part of the email newsletter. It is known to marketers as a call-to-action (CTA). If you’re still new to sending out email newsletters, you should avoid asking for money right away as it would quickly drive people away. Instead, encourage them to follow you on social media, such as Twitter and Facebook Page. You can ask them to check out your Youtube channel for subscription as well.

Most importantly, you should use this opportunity to promote your music by encouraging them to follow you on Spotify or Soundcloud.

After you’ve established some rapport, you can go deeper by inviting them to buy your music or your merch. Furthermore, you can even direct them to your crowdfunding campaign as well. That being said, the most important thing to remember is to have only one CTA per newsletter. Otherwise, your readers can get overwhelmed with the choices that they end up not choosing anything at all.

Promo.ly is a music promotion platform for musicians. If you’re looking for a music PR service to deliver music to your mailing list, get in touch to see how we can help today!

 

When you’re just starting off your career as a jazz musician, chances are that you don’t have the means to advertise using traditional methods such as with newspaper ads or paid promotions online. Instead, you have to gain exposure organically and use free services like a business Facebook page to promote yourself and your latest track.

However, with so much activity online, it is likely your social media posts will be missed as people scroll through their busy news feeds. Plenty of your posts will eventually be forgotten. The question is, how do you effectively inform your followers of your upcoming gigs or latest downloadable tracks when they don’t notice your posts on Facebook? Luckily, a mailing list is something that you can use to maintain direct contact with your audience and improve your jazz career.

What Is A Mailing List?

A mailing list is an online collection of all of your followers who want to be kept up-to-date on your music career and what you are doing. When signing up for the list, people have to input their email address, name, and any other information that you may need. The mailing list allows you, a musician to send material to all of the individuals who signed up to your list, making it easy for you to communicate with your fans.

How Does A Mailing List Help My Career?

You’re probably wondering how having a mailing list helps your jazz music career. After all, a lengthy list doesn’t necessarily earn you money. However, there are indirect benefits of using a mailing list. Being in constant contact with your followers allows you to develop and maintain a relationship with them. You can communicate with them through a weekly newsletter or provide updates about your upcoming summer tour.

The newsletter that you send will go directly to their inbox, making the interaction more personal and encouraging your fans to respond to your calls-to-action like buying your CD. If you’re going to be playing at a local music bar next week, tell everyone about it on the mailing list. This will motivate followers to come if they are nearby and even bring their friends or family along.

It’s Not Too Late To Start Building A Mailing List

Whether you’re 3 months into your jazz music career or 3 years in, it’s a good idea to start building your mailing list as soon as you can. Obviously, the earlier you do it, the better, but even after a few years, your fans will still be interested in joining the list. Create an online form and share it across all of your social media platforms. Ask people to sign up and slowly the list will grow. In no time at all, you will have a strong fanbase to be proud of!

Managing A Mailing List

Now that you have a mailing list full of fans, start to send out information about your tours and releases. You want to maintain consistent contact but refrain from sending material out too often. Doing so can come across as too aggressive and cause some fans to unsubscribe. You should send out material once a week, at most, and once a month, at a minimum. The right number will depend on how much time you have to write a newsletter and how often you have news to update your followers about.

Promo.ly is a music promotion platform for musicians. If you’re looking for a music PR service to deliver music to your mailing list, get in touch to see how we can help today!

 

Building an email marketing list is so, so important.

It’s a powerful marketing tool and is often overlooked. Your email marketing list is your essential weapon of promotion; it can make you money and it can be used a service.

Get this picture in your head: You own a record label. Your goal is selling music. Now imagine you have an email marketing list containing 5000 people that love your record label and the music you release. Now envision sending 5000 people an email with a link to your own online store where they can directly purchase your music.

We’re talking about completely cutting out the distributor here.

Let’s say your single costs £2 to buy directly from your store and 20% of your email marketing list buys it.

That’s right, you’ve just made £2000 from sending a single email. #Winning.

If you are anything like me; your cogs are probably whirring, the light bulb has lit up and you are probably thinking, ‘hang on, I could do something like this too’. You’re goddamn right you can.

Here are the basics…

First thing’s first, you need to collect the email addresses and to do this you will need a landing page (a landing page is a specific web page advertising a specific product, the product in this instance is your music).

There are many landing page builders available, some cost a lot, some don’t.

On various projects I use Thrive’s landing page builder that is hosted on WordPress, it’s a one-off purchase and fully customisable, I really like it. Thrive is one of those “everything in one box” apps that plugs into WordPress. It comes with stacks of landing page templates that are easy to manage, it’s pretty much plug and play. It’s great if you’re strapped for time. It also doesn’t cost a lot. It was around £60.

Without being aware you have already been part of this workflow pipeline during your time on the internet. You’ve landed on a page; found something appealing, submitted your email address and in return, you‘ve received an email.

See how this works now? The landing page is where your customers will end up when searching Google, clicking on a Facebook ad or clicking a Tweet, etc. Essentially it doesn’t matter where the traffic comes from at this stage, but what matters is collecting their email address and keeping it for future use.

On the landing page you need to display your promotion or product, perhaps an embedded SoundCloud player featuring your latest release or mix, an email sign-up box and a call-to-action (CTA) AKA a reason why the person should hand over their precious email address in the first place.

The CTA

In a nerdy kind of way, CTAs are really interesting. I enjoy psychology and how people perceive words and actions. What’s even more interesting to me is how those people act on those words and actions.

A CTA is an instruction, which is carefully written, designed for a purpose, normally to get someone to take action. However, people have started to abuse CTA techniques, by combining them with subject lines.

You’re probably aware of a little guy called ‘clickbait’; he is the worse kind of example of CTA abuse. He’s very deceptive and has normally been put together by a scheming journalist. We’ve all clicked on link laced with ‘clickbait’ and thought “well, this has nothing to do with the reason I clicked or signed up”. This is precisely the point, it’s designed for one aim only and that is to gain traffic.

All I can advise is to not go down that route as it won’t benefit in the long run.

The best kind of CTA is a different beast; it’s still a clever piece of writing tailored for your audience, but without the deceptive attributes. You’ll normally find it right before a sign-up box on a landing page or website.

It can give the customer a sense of reassurance that signing up is the right move to take. The CTA can be persuasive, thought provoking, clever, funny and even inspiring.

A well-worded example; Netflix’s landing page features a sign up box which says ‘See what’s next. Watch anywhere. Cancel anytime’ and on the button underneath it states ‘Join free for a month’.

This is both a strategic play on words and a reassurance of intent. ‘See what’s next’ could mean see what film is next, or see what happens next after signing up. ‘Watch anywhere’ tells you that Netflix can be taken and viewed anywhere, suggesting that it’s available on all portable platforms. ‘Cancel anytime’ tells the consumer that it’s not a contract and can leave without giving notice. So, in a mere 7 words this CTA explains and codifies Netflix’s business model in your head.

Landing pages

Make your landing page interesting, think carefully about the colours, your wording and the branding. Try to keep a coherent look and feel throughout your page. It’s very important.

Regarding colours; here’s something for you to Google, or Bing if you’re that way inclined. Why are oranges in the supermarket placed on blue packaging?

Once you’ve got your answer think how it could apply to your landing page.

Going back to the landing page; for a prime (pun intended) example, look at Amazon’s front page. The balance of space between elements, the slick navigation and the clear intent. There’s something compelling about a well-crafted landing page; it draws you in.

The professionalism of the presentation is like an imaginary force that makes you click that ‘add to basket’ button, and once you take that first step it presents you with even more products you can buy.

So you (if you’re like me) add a little more to your basket. Once you’ve purchased a product (or 12), Amazon email you with another offer you can buy (upselling).

Amazon has spent millions perfecting this loop, both in the psychology and technology and they are the ultimate selling machine.

Think about it, they now have you by your balls (ladies, your metaphorical balls) You now need to get your customers by the balls.

What I’m saying is, dangle your music in front of the customer, get them interested, caress them a little (intellectually), get them warm (with more tailored content) and then reel them in like a whopping fish. I appreciate this is a terrible mixed metaphor; but such is the music Industry; always changing.

Here’s an example of this workflow from the customer’s view:

 

Your fan is browsing Facebook or social media of choice.

⬇️

They find a song/ad you posted about – The ‘dangling’ part
⬇️

The fan clicks the link ⬅️ The getting ‘interested’ part

⬇️

Fan lands on your landing page and sees the product ⬅️ The ‘caressing’ part

⬇️

Fan thinks, “cool, it’s only £2 direct from the label page” ⬅️ The ‘getting them warm’ part

⬇️

Clicks the CTA or purchase button ⬅️ The ‘reeling them in’ part

⬇️

Email them right after offering another product. ⬅️ The ‘upselling’ part

 

Collecting emails

To collect a person’s email address you will normally need an email marketing platform running in the background, let’s use MailChimp as an example.

In Mailchimp you need to create an empty list which connects to your landing page sign-up form. When a person inputs and submits their email address on your landing page, it will appear in the Mailchimp email marketing list. Mailchimp has sweet automation too, you can tell it to email to every new address collected without you having to intervene.

Hopefully, you now understand the basic process of collecting customer email addresses from a landing page and are already thinking of ways to use this technique.

This email marketing list tactic can be used in many instances. For example; free releases, competitions, mixes, vinyl giveaway or anything else that tickles your pickle (or floats your fish; whichever metaphor you prefer).

To learn more about music marketing & promotion take a look at the articles on our blog