Musicians Achieve Your Goals! (Use Your Email)

Any paid-up superfan has gone on a journey from supporting an artist that no one’s ever heard of to seeing them flourish into the success they knew they always would be. Since it’s essential that artists build a relationship with their potential superfans, most of them stick to social media. But email is actually just as powerful a tool. Here, Guestblogger and musician Mirjam Sieben offers up some email marketing tips and reveals what something as simple as an email can do for your music.

An Extra Bubble

If you build a mailing list next to your social media channels, you can create an extra ‘bubble’ where you can reach your followers. This actually might be one of your most important ‘bubbles’, because – unlike social media – everything is 100% under your control. It’s also more simple and direct. If someone signs up, you can reach them until they decide to unsubscribe, and there’s no need to combat any complex algorithms to do any of it. Also, what if your most successful channel suddenly ceases to exist? (remember MySpace? When that platform failed, musicians lost contact with countless followers). Even despite the fact that not everyone on your mailing list is actually going to open your emails, the percentage of people who do open and read them is actually way higher than the average reach you get with your average social media post.

Make an Impact with Email

Besides helping you to build a relationship with your followers, email works better than social media when it comes to sales, whether it’s merch, physical releases or tickets. No matter how much someone likes what you do, most people need at least 5 to 7 moments of contact before they finally act. So using multiple bubbles ensures that your message is seen multiple times. Email is still considered the best sales tactic and it’s sometimes said that email is 40 times better than social media at stimulating your audience. Basically, with email you can really make an impact.

Don’t Use Your Inbox

A common error that a lot of musicians make is to just send mail-outs from their normal Gmail or Outlook mailbox. If you really want it to work for your music, then it’s better to send emails to your fans using what’s called ‘autoresponder software’, and there’s plenty of it to choose from. For my own band, I work with Mailerlite and another one that you’ve probably heard of: Mailchimp. In the first place, this kind of software gives you a good system for building up your mailing list via tools like a sign-up form. It also makes it easier for people to unsubscribe.

Musicians Achieve Your Goals! (Use Your Email)

A Way Out

At the bottom of every email you send, you’re actually obliged to give people the option to unsubscribe. Think about it. If you’re subscribed to mail-outs that you’re just not interested in any more, it’s actually painful to have to personally write to the band and ask if you can be removed from the list. In any case, it just makes sense to set up a simple unsubscribe option for your audience, because what’s the point of emailing anyone who doesn’t want to hear from you?

Manual & Automatic

When you work with an autoresponder, you also have access to a lot of statistics and data and you can plan your mails and automate an entire email series. In any autoresponder you also have the option to send two different kinds of emails: campaigns and automations. Campaigns are sent manually in real-time, or on a date and at a time that you’ve set. Auto response emails are your automations, which are sent out in response to something. So, for example, if someone signs up to your mailing list, you can set up an automated welcome message, send them some promised downloads and maybe follow that up with some introductory emails. This means people don’t have to wait until you have the time to make and send something manually.

“Keep your subject line short!”

The Subject Line

The only purpose of the subject line is to get people to open the email. There are a number of marketing tricks you can use, including ‘scarcity’ (‘Today Only!’, ‘Don’t Miss Out!’ etc.). ‘Opening a loop’ is another one, where you pose a question or start a statement that can only be answered or finished when you open the email – something that’s going to pique curiosity. So, when it comes to writing your subject line, it’s important to tell people what’s in the mail and get them excited about it, but without actually telling them what’s in the mail. So avoid putting a table of contents in your subject line. Sometimes, just writing the same kind of subject line you would to a mate can work. It can be as simple as saying something like ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ In any case, it’s really worth just being yourself.

Throw Out the Newsletters

All going well, the contents of your email has one main goal, so avoid sending out ‘newsletters’ that are packed with a list of different news items. Try to write your emails as if you’re writing to someone you know and keep things as simple as possible. Also, there’s no need to use a fancy newsletter template. Just stick to the basic version with a bit of text and, if you need it, add a photo or video. This looks way less spammy and feels a lot more personal. It also makes it look like you’re using email marketing as a kind of personal tool, rather than using it as …email marketing. That way you’re likely to reach more people.

Musicians Achieve Your Goals! (Use Your Email)

Click or React

One of the other reasons for only sending out emails that have a single goal or bit of information is that it’s better to send regular emails with minimal info than it is to send the occasional email that’s full of info. Why? Because you want people to act on them. Do they need to click on a link? If yes, then why? What’s in it for them? Here’s another point where you need to get people curious about what lies behind the link. Ultimately, the page they’re sent to needs to convince the person to actually take the action you want them to take. You might also send out a mail that you want your audience to respond to, in which case, you need to end it with a question and make it clear that they can respond by replying to the email.

“Avoid the tired ‘sign up to my mailing list for updates’ calls to action!”

Finding New Members

Building a mailing list doesn’t happen on its own. You need to actively let people know that they can sign up and give them a good reason to hand over their increasingly ‘precious’ email address. Avoid the tired calls to action like ‘Sign up to my mailing list for updates’. What kind of things are you offering in return for an email address? A preview of a new track? Free downloads of brand new releases? Mp3s of a complete album? Maybe a look behind the scenes? A beautiful e-book of all of your lyrics and your bio? The options are endless. From there, you need to actively promote what you’re offering: on your website, on your social media channels, maybe even social media adverts and, of course, in person after gigs or even during online gigs.

There are plenty more mistakes you can make when you start email marketing, but because you’ve read this article, I really hope that you’ll get more out of it than you expected. Email is definitely not an old and outdated tool. Any artist that’s doing well and has a following is already busy building their mailing list and sending out regular updates, so why not you?