I keep seeing the Tweets, and the IG stories… “something is coming!”

Maybe it’s a new song.
A new video.
New merch drop.

You got lucky if 5 or 10 or 25% of your audience saw your teaser.

“When you’re ready to release your hot new song, you have to start the attention-roulette game all over again,” from ‘SELL MORE WITH LANDING PAGES,’ which I wrote in November, 2021.

As I laid out in the link above, give your most curious and dedicated fans something to click, like Ithaca did here:

Teaser video clip, click the link, and then you can sign up for their email list.

The people on that email list literally signed up and said, “I want more.”

So when the time comes to release that video, they know they’ll be able to reach 100% of those people because that’s how email works.

The Tweet they send might be seen by 20% of their followers. Yuck.

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🔥 SPOTIFY VS. BANDCAMP: I see a ton of artists complain about Spotify rates, but I don’t see a lot of artists linking to their Bandcamp page.

When you make a sale on Bandcamp, you get actual money to put into your bank account. You also get something worth even more.

An email address.

When you release new music, Bandcamp will let them know. Plus, you can export the emails of people who signed up to be added to your email list, and send them personalized emails filled with even more information.

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Finally, I leave you with this:

This week SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB speaks with artist, musician, and video editor Joan Pope about her weekly email newsletter Week in Review.

Pope’s creative output is epic, and as she explains how a trusty email newsletter keeps her fans in the loop with everything she’s creating on a weekly basis.

How long have you been doing a newsletter, and what sort of reaction or feedback have you gotten from it?

I started the Substack newsletter in January 2021. Its the email version of the blog posts I have on my website. I started doing the “Week in Review” compilation posts in 2017. I still do those posts on my website, but driving traffic to my website is probably harder than to deliver the newsletter right into people’s inboxes.

Why did you pick Substack for your email list, rather than something like Mailchimp?

I went with Substack because its sort of a newsletter-blog hybrid. The monetization feature is great, too.

How long does it take you to put together and send your weekly newsletter? And you do additional posts for paying subscribers, yes? What would you say the total time investment each week?

It takes me about an hour to compile everything for the newsletter.

At this point, I don’t really have any posts behind the paywall besides access to one of my poetry books. I really hate having to put my content behind a paywall, I want to be able to share it with everyone and I know not everyone can afford to pay for access. “Exclusive” content isn’t really my thing.

My approach has been this: pretty much everything is available to anyone, and if you have the means, and you like my work, you can choose to support it by paying for the subscription. Or just enjoy it for free. I leave it up to the fans to decide.

Why even have an email newsletter in 2021?

The fast pace of social media makes it pretty easy for stuff we actually like to get lost in the mix.

I have a pretty intense level of output, I can barely keep track of my own work, I can’t expect other people to be able to keep up, too. So the weekly compilation of all my creative works helps me reflect on my own work each week and it keeps my audience in the loop. It seems like people like it. A lot of people will tell me that they can’t keep up and the newsletter helps them do that.

I haven’t noticed any “subscribe to my email list” type posts on your socials – how do you grow your list? Or is that something that just happens organically from your All My Links page and Bandcamp?

It’s true that I hardly ever make posts like that. I have a link to the signup in my allmylinks link-list thing. I let people find it on their own. However, I usually do at least post the published Substack newsletter on my main Twitter account each week. I usually end up getting a few subscribers each week as new people discover my Twitter account.

So how do we as writers, artists, bands.. how do we stay motivated at one or two sign ups a week?

It might not seem like much, but signups do start to accumulate, and when they do, they start to grow exponentially.

Patience is key.

It’s important to remember that 10 genuine fans who subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.. are much better than 1,000 bots signing up for your newsletter. Bots don’t buy your albums, they dont come to your shows, they don’t care at all about whatever you are doing.

Cultivate the audience you have, regardless of the size.

I try to dissuade people from just shouting “hey, join my newsletter” messaging, which is why I appreciate how you put it on your Substack page: “This email newsletter documents my worship.”

How important is to you to present your work in such a way vs. the standard marketing speak?

I don’t exactly have the vocabulary to frame what I do in the typical marketing terms. However, the social-sharing aspect is as important to my work as the work itself.

I consider every art piece, song, video, etc to be truly complete once I’ve given it to the world. So, getting it out there is all part of the devotion I have to my creative works.

I guess my work is intriguing enough that it makes people want to dig deeper, they end up finding the newsletter, my bandcamp, my website, etc. I get a lot of people comparing this experience following a breadcrumb trail. Its not my style to do too much outright explicit promotion, I have a more subtle approach.

I want to close by saying that growing an audience is really hard work, and for most people, it will take a lot of time and effort to see results. It’s really unlikely that you will amass a huge email list or social media following overnight. However, if you are consistent and keep working at your craft, you will eventually succeed.

It took me over a decade to get to where I am, and the reality is, I’m still a virtually unknown artist. But I keep doing what I do, and I’m not going to stop. If you are just starting out, don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t go the way you hoped on the first day. Set attainable goals, and commit to following through.

What are some of those goals we can set as we’re just starting out, trying to move some of our fans from social media to an email newsletter?

You just have to be realistic, and put in the work to get the word out. I am grateful to have a decent social media following, its made getting subscribers to the newsletter much easier.

I’m pretty passive in my approach… I just post a link on twitter to each week’s newsletter. My way is probably not the best way to get results. If I was going to do it “right” I’d probably add a call to action, asking people to subscribe.

This is how you start, heavy metal friends. As a label, you got information – new releases! Band signings! Deals!

Do this once a week, bare minimum. Two or three times a week preferably.

Stop worrying about coming off as spammy, because if you’re lucky at the most 5% of your followers will see any of your posts anyways.

(more…)

The stories we read, the big press items, the articles that go viral – they’re basically all text, an image, and some more text.

We’re all just moving images and text the internet.

All that to say, your email newsletter doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel.

An image, followed by some text. Just like… Instagram.

Should you use Substack? Mailchimp? CovertKit? TinyLetter?

It doesn’t matter, just fucking start your email newsletter.

Find someone who has an email newsletter you admire and ask them about it. Hell, ask me for some advice, just reply to this email with a question!

Let me help you start your Social Media Escape Plan for 2022. You can do this, I promise.

What’s the alternative?

(more…)

As things wind down this year, I’ll keep this email light. There’s enough to digest seemingly every hour, and I don’t want to overload you.

If you put out a release, wrote a song, sold a print – I celebrate your success. Putting your magic into this world when everything is on fire is no small feat.

This focus here at HEAVY METAL EMAIL is pretty obvious, but if it’s not let me make it clear:

I want to help heavy metal folks start and grow email newsletters in 2022.

Bands, labels, photographers, writers, podcasters, designers – you could all benefit from an email newsletter, and I promise it’s not as hard as it looks.

First, with Substack you could be up and running this evening.

Second, your social media posts could easily be repurposed for your newsletter.

I know being an “email marketing expert” or “newsletter writer” wasn’t another job you wanted heading into a new year, but trust me, someday you’re going to want to move “social media expert” off your job description.

I believe you can siphon your social media audience to a your email list, and then you’ll spend less time being an “online marketing expert,” and more time working on your craft, and I think that’ll be better for everyone in the new year.

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TEXTBOOK LANDING PAGE FLOW

Here’s a timely example of a band with a new video coming out, and using that as a “lead magnet” to get people to subscribe to their email list.

Ithaca posted this with a clear URL and a 17 second preview (it’s got 9K+ views a few days later).

You click that link and it takes you here:

First to know? SIGN ME UP.

And that’s how it works, friends.

Do this for every video, every single, every tour announcement, merch drop, new product – drive people to a sign up page, and turn your social media followers into email subscribers.

There’s a reason why Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, LiveNation, etc. don’t give you the emails of people who support your work; they’re gold.

Reaching your fans on any social media platform is a war.

It will continue to get harder to reach your fans, and the longer you wait to develop your social media escape plan, the further behind you’ll be when you finally decide enough is enough.