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!