10 Ways To Grow One Gigantic Mailing List

Hi! We're back from our Summer Holidays, Ian spent a lovely 2 weeks down in Devon dodging the rain, whilst I avoided the Olympic madness in London and spent the time in Berlin. So we are back now bringing you more tips and suggestions we have scoured from the web, and as we were away there's a lot to catch up on.

The first thing to catch my eye is an article on how to grow your mailing list. This in my mind is the single most important thing a band should be doing, after writing some amazing music!

Musicians have to get over the fact that their music won't be magically discovered as it was before the internet, and staying connected to your fanbase is imperative, and the best connection you can have (after their telephone number which is highly unlikely) is their personal email address.

Jon Ostrow, Cyber PR’s publicity director has written an article that hits the nail on the head and lists 10 Ways To Grow One Gigantic Mailing List.

Continual and correct engagement with your fanbase is crucial to keep them loyal, and with sense of exclusivity you will continue to keep them that way.

He mentions in his article...

When building and nurturing a fan base, your objective is always to strengthen loyalty, then size. Going way back to the ‘1000 true fans‘ theory, having 1000 super fans who buy everything from you and are in constant support of you is far more beneficial (and lucrative) than 10,000 casual fans. So, creating a strong sense of exclusivity is very important when offering something in exchange for an email address. You want your fans to feel as though giving their email address to you is meaningful, as if they were joining a club or community, ultimately strengthening their loyalty to you.

Check out his 10 winning ways to grow your mailing list here

 

Link

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/08/02/call-to-action-10-ways-to-grow-one-gigantic-mailing-list/

 

by Steve

 

 

 

Where Do You Start Marketing Your Act and Your Music?

 Throughout the years I have known many many bands that seem to think that their music will do all the talking. That somehow their fantastic songs are all they need to win the hearts of the listener and convert that person into a lifelong fan. 

This in a sense is true conviction that any artist should have about their music, and that's no bad thing because inside that is also how we all feel we discover music, on a personal level, but the reality is we wouldn't hear anything if it wasn't for marketing, which is the first basic concept to understand in developing any career these days in the music industry 2.0.

The independent DIY artists really needs to embrace marketing, and Cyber Pr head honcho Ariel Hyatt has put together a cool set of posts explaining in 3 stages how to increase your fanbase and income. 

Ariel starts off saying that bands and artists seem to be more concerned with increasing the numbers and getting new fans, which is no bad thing thing, but also puts the emphasis on focusing on the fans that they already have.

  These fans don’t need to be found, because they are already your fans. Studies have proven that it is much harder to make a new client and get them to purchase something than it is to get a client that already knows you and trusts you to purchase from you over and over. 

It's all very well building numbers, but engagement is the key, and keeping your act in your fans mind. Building a solid marketing strategy is key to getting new fans and keeping old fans interested. 

You can read her full post here

Links

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/04/16/basic-marketing-principles-for-artists-part-1-3/

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/04/23/basic-marketing-principles-artists-part-2-increasing-frequency-purchases/

http://arielpublicity.com/2012/04/30/basic-marketing-principles-artists-part-3-increase-amount-money-charge/

 

10 ways to get your fan's email address

This post has 10 great ideas for how to get a fan to hand over their email address, and you could even still use the pen and paper form like this extremely cool band above!

I measure my success as a recording artist by the growth of my mailing list. The best way to get someone to subscribe is to offer something in return, and a great song is a powerful incentive. Here are ten techniques to negotiate that delicate exchange:

1. The classic squeeze page. You’ve probably stumbled onto one of these before: a fine-tuned infomercial-style pitch with a clear call to action and no exit links. The sole goal of the site, often just a single page, is to generate conversions. In our case, a conversion means “squeezing” an email address out of a potential fan

Read it all here.

You might also want to check out our 'Fan List' section on this at our main site.

The money is in the list!

We've witten about the importance of your mailing list a fair bit on the Dailies and in the Fan List section of the main site.

But the point often needs to be hammered home, as in this post on the Prescription PR blog, which once again points out that collecting email addresses of your fans, really does result in more revenue for your band. The money truly is in the list!

The piece is also a great overview of how to set up a mailing list and what your options are.

One important answer to this tricky question is this: the money is in the list. What list, we hear you ask? Well, the list of people who have given you an email address. Generating a decent database is one of the most important things that a band can do these days, but, perhaps understandably – as “data management” isn’t exactly the sexiest aspect of a rock career – it can get overlooked by bands. So in this article we’re going to spell out the benefits of having a good fan database, suggest ways to build one, show you how it can generate dosh and outline some pitfalls to avoid. What on earth else do you need?

Check it out here.

 

 

Band email marketing - so bad by so many!

I'm still trying to finish our series on how to run your band mailing list - the two parts that are up already are well worth a look though.

The service that we recommend for running the ultimate fan email list is Aweber. There are other music-industry focused services that are really good (Fanbridge being the most obvious), but we feel that Aweber is the most powerful email system - that it wasn't made for musicians isn't the point. They do email list management and they do it very well. By all means, use another option - and many integrate in other applications, like Nimbit and Topspin - but as a stand-alone, Aweber is the daddy!

However, this article on their site makes us think that they are looking at artists very seriously and thinking that their service is right for us.

The article looks at why so many artists, even if they are collecting email, don't use that asset properly.

It's got some great stuff in it - and in the comments.

A few months ago, we stumbled onto Nine Inch Nails’ creative campaign. We wanted to see what other bands were doing, so we signed up for their emails.

Well, they’re not doing much. Most of their messages are infrequent and uninspired. Worse, many bands haven’t sent anything at all.

Why is this? I’ve got some theories of my own. And then I want to hear what you have to say.

Read the whole post (and the comments!) here.

3 email marketing tips for musicians

This is great and you MUST watch it.

Greg at Gen-Y Rockstars is the real deal. He markets music (as well as marketing in many other types of business) using the techniques that he preaches.

I listen to what he says and you should too.

 

3 Email Marketing Tips For Musicians from Greg Rollett on Vimeo.

If the video doesn't embed, you can see it and read a transcript at Greg's site here.

We've told you many times on the blog in our fan email list posts that we (and Greg) use Aweber to run our lists. There are many options that are integrated with other parts of your music promotion (notably Topspin and FanBridge) and Aweber isn't the easiest to use, but it is the best!

Get people on your band mailing list and don't make them leave!

Two interesting articles that look at best practice for your fan list.

Firstly, there's this piece from FanBridge about how you should follow up with your new fan subscribers - essentially, how pushy should you be?

This is probably one of the most common questions artists have when starting to communicate with their fans. We all know the first contact is very critical and we want to make sure we not only give them a reason to read the first campaign, but to keep on doing so over time.

We asked this question to some of our industry experts to get their opinion on what should be the first thing artists communicate to their fans after joining their mailing list.

Read their view here.

And then there's this great piece from Mashable - which is where the picture above is from - that looks at why people unsubscribe from email lists or 'unlike' you on Facebook. Although it's about all consumer activity, you can apply it to your music fanbase pretty much wholesale.

More than 90% of consumers unsubscribe, “unlike” or stop following brands because of too frequent, irrelevant or boring communications, according to a report by social media and e-mail marketing services company ExactTarget.

Released Tuesday, “The Social Break-Up” is a study that surveyed more than 1,500 consumers, exploring changing online behaviors and top motivations for “unliking,” unfollowing and unsubscribing from brand communications via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.

Here are a few key findings from the study:

Read the reasons here.

The key is balance and keeping your fans engaged without winding them up!

10 ways to force your fans to download your song

Marcus at The Musicians Guide (@themusicguide) posted this useful list the other day.

He was inspired to write it by Brian Hazard's post on ways to get people to hand over their email addres - which we also looked at here.

In my opinion, none of the tips below will increase the rate of visits to downloads (or conversion rate) quite as much as an improvement in song quality, but these tips are still likely to have a positive effect when used to complement great music.

1. Offer your fans exclusivity
We all love something that’s special to us, exclusivity in itself is a form of incentive as it gives a feeling of superiority. Offer your mp3 exclusively to your mailing list subscribers or Facebook fans or live show attendees before the rest of the world to reward them for their actions.

Get all 10 tips here.

 

 

You might not need MySpace or FaceBook but you do need a mailing list

This is a great piece on HypeBot about how Robin Davey's band have given up on social networks as a way to reach fans.

Instead they've made their artist site and their email list the core of all their fan interaction. I'm not sure that I'd abandon social networks - I'd rather maintain a presence on all platforms and focus people back to a great and regularly updated website - but I can't fault the data.

Last week one of our artists made two posts to the blog on their site and then emailed their list. The traffic to their site jumped exponentially (1000% the day of the email, 500% the day after and 250% the third day). As you'd expect, it takes a few days for people to open and read email, but, also, over 40% of the people on the list clicked through and spent over a minute on the site.

You NEVER get that kind of traffic and conversion from social networks - it's just not possible across all the noise!

Read our posts on building a fan mailing list and start one now if you haven't already.

No matter how many fans you have on a social network, it is the platform itself that dictates how you can communicate with them, how you can post updates, how many words you can use – the connectivity with fans is limited.

When MySpace crashed, we lost that connectivity with 40,000 + legitimate fans and our 1 million or so plays became meaningless, it is nothing more than a number. When it comes to your next release, it means nothing unless you can reach those fans again. It quickly became apparent that we could not communicate with our fans the way we wanted through these means.

We have always maintained an email list and we realized that the majority of our traffic came from posting direct to our fans through this platform. We decided to stop updating our social networks and exclusively use our email list last year. The overwhelming response from fans was fantastic. To make it a successful two way tool, when we send emails we are not just plugging our latest release, we mainly communicate our feelings and thoughts on topics we feel our fan base would like to talk about. We openly encourage people to reply and we feature the best replies we get. It's not actually that groundbreaking an idea, and I have to credit Bob Lefsetz email list as an inspiration, but it works very well for us.

Read the HypeBot piece here.

 

Move your MySpace fans to Facebook or your email list

After yesterday's post about MySpace, several people pointed out to me that many artists have a dormant or, at best, unmotivated fanbase languishing on MySpace.

Shouldn't they be making efforts to reinvigorate that relationship and get those folks to interact with them somewhere where they are more active - perhaps their own site or Facebook, or get them on to their fan mailing list?

Of course, they should, and a bunch of people think the same thing and have been writing about it.

With the hook-up between ReverbNation and MySpace you get a whole bunch of their fan tools that you can now use directly inside MySpace. Whilst this means that it is now easier to communicate with your fans within MySpace, it also means that, for the first time ever, you can contact them all in one go and ask them to join you somewhere else!

Not sure they thought that through!

If you have a ReverbNation account, you can log-in and message them all to join your ReverbNation mailing list. You can then always move them from there to your mailing list system of choice - Aweber if you know what's good for you!

This post tells you how - http://blog.reverbnation.com/2010/12/23/4-easy-steps-to-increase-your-mailing-list-with-myspace-messaging/

GarageSpin has a list of methods that will help you move your fans somehwere new.

And, of course you can check out ReverbNation's original post about using their tools within MySpace.

And, you may as well watch their video about it too:

Whatever you decide to do about maintaining or ditching MySpace, make a concerted effort to let your fans there know that you can offer them more somewhere else before abandoning them as digital dust.

10 ways to get a fan's email address

Brian Hazard has some really great 'how to' posts on his Passive Promotion blog - and seeing as he is primarily writing about what he does to sell his own music his information is backed up by real experience.

This one lists 10 ways to trade some of your music for a fan's email address - thereby allowing you to build a fan mailing list.

I measure my success as a recording artist by the growth of my mailing list. The best way to get someone to subscribe is to offer something in return, and a great song is a powerful incentive. Here are ten techniques to negotiate that delicate exchange:

Read Brian's list of 10 great methods here.

 

Give back to your fans

Image by Libertinus.

Chris at TightMixBlog churns out amazing quality advice on a virtually daily basis.

This is no exception.

A list of things you should do to take your relationship with your fans to a deeper level - and I nicked the photo too!

Your fans are the lifeblood of your career. Without fans, you don’t have a music career, you only have a music hobby. Fans buy your products, listen to your music, give you feedback, share you with their friends, come to your shows, and wear your t-shirts. They are the people that enable you to become a full-time musician, and live the artist lifestyle. The most loyal of fans will stand by your side through thick and thin, buy all of your swag, and help you in many ways throughout your career.

It’s the end of the year, and showing some appreciation to your fans for all the support they’ve given you can go a long way. They deserve a bit more than music and t-shirts.

Read Chris's post here.

How to write engaging newsletters to your fans

Photo by digitpedia

We looked at this the other day - see the post here on Posterous MIIM Daily - where we pointed you to a mammoth post on how to email your fans by Pet Marmoset. And, it's a cracker.

So, of course are our two posts on how to build a band mailing list.

But, today, there is another bunch of world class information on this very topic from PR and cyber guru, Ariel Hyatt.

Her piece looks at many aspects of how to send your email newsletter to fans including timing, tone and frequency. It's backed up by recent data that proves that email is still the best way to reach out to fans.

Boston based research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey has recently completed a study that all musicians should know about.

Here are the important highlights:

“Three-quarters of web users are likely to share content with friends and family, and nearly half do so at least once a week. But while much social networking content is built around such shared items, most people still prefer to use email to pass along items of interest.”

Read the piece here.

 

How to write effective emails to your fans

We have @BuzzSonic to thank for putting me on to this. His tweets are fantastic and always on the money.

This mammoth post on the Pet Marmoset blog is a perfect companion to our posts on building a fan mailing list.

It is essential to build a mailing list for your fans and it is also essential to learn how to communicate with them by email and how to analyse and improve the response you get from those mailings.

This is a great post to help you do that.

Moreover, if you are an artist or you are in a band and you confidently think your fan emails are good and effective, I would like to ask you how you know this is the case. How do you know you are successful? Are you assuming your emails work because people come out to your shows and because the fans you encounter mention that they like your emails? I would like to politely challenge your confidence and proclaim that if you’re not actually tracking, analyzing and optimizing your emails, based on real response data – than you truly have no idea if you are successful with your emails or not. But don’t worry…. you’re not alone.

Read the whole post here.

 

Some exchanges of email for free mp3's will fail

Read the linked article and the comments, since this is a debate, not a statement of fact.

As a DIY musician you are constantly being told that freemium is the way to go and to build an email list from that exchange. I wholeheartedly believe in that.

However, this article argues that the level of effort required by a potential fan to get the 'free' mp3 is too much of a burden and hence not as effective as it should be. I have written before about this - saying that you shouldn't view it as free since you are asking someone to invest their time to download, listen and form an opinion. That is a cost to them. That's why I advocate giving away a bunch of tracks - one free mp3 doesn't cut it for me.

The entire music industry is infatuated with the idea of free. It is a valid and strategic marketing tool. But if not used correctly, then it holds no relevance for  the oversaturated fan. There have been numerous times when I've gone to a band’s site to get a free mp3 and have decided to not complete their process. The reason being that the value of the mp3 was not free, it was work.

Read the article and the comments here.

 

What are the best places to get more fans on your email list?

On our blog we cover in detail the ins and outs of building a fan mailing list.

But, as well as adding people to your list on your band site, where else can you gather names?

This article asks three experts that question - with a somewhat obvious yet very important thread running through all the answers.

Acquiring new fans is not always easy, especially when time is wasted in approaching people in the wrong places and/or at the wrong time. In order to grow your fan base, it’s extremely important you are able to select WHERE and HOW it is actually productive to try to get new fans. This will allow you to fully exploit your opportunities through the use of appropriate strategies.

Read this article in full on FanBridge's blog.