Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

This could be on your shop window or merch table. A simple way for people to scan a code, enter their info, and be added to your email list (good to have a backup pen and paper list, too).

I recently did an email marketing “tune-up” for a record label and got this email soon after:

If you run a small business and want to make a few more bucks every month, you should schedule a time with me to discuss working together.

DON’T LINK TO SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

I will die on this hill – kill all links to places like Spotify and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter – platforms where you can’t reliably reach your own audience.

A higher percentage of your fans will open and read your emails, so link to your website (with Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube embeds).

START USING SEGMENTS

You can build granular segments with Klaviyo and Flodesk and Mailchimp (like sending to people in a particular zip code or region), but Substack is pretty limited.

Personally, I’d say focus on two segments here – free and paid.

I’m not saying paywall everything, but you can post things on Substack (or your website), and then send an email to just your paid subscribers as a way of making it exclusive. Or maybe it’s an early pre-order link, or to RSVP for an upcoming Zoom call.

From Substack: How do I send an email to one or a select group of subscribers on Substack?

MIND YOUR DESIGN AND LAYOUT

I don’t want to get too deep with this – to each their own, but I feel every email campaign should have your most compelling image at the top. It’s how newspapers, website articles, blog posts, and Instagram work, so it can work for your newsletter.

And please, use your own photos. Stock photos are great for content farms and SEO clickbait articles, but if you’re reading this you’re a smart and creative individual with a phone filled with 100 photos you took last week. Use one of those.

STOP SENDING TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE

I will die on this hill.

If you’re emailing your fans to let them know about your new video, embed it on your own site and link to it there.

Embed it on the product page of the thing you’re selling.

Embed it on the sign-up page for the course you’re booking.

Embed it on the page of tour dates where people can buy tickets.

When you send people to YouTube, you’re dropping them off in the middle of the busy food court at the mall, and expecting them to not get distracted by all the recommended videos and assorted noise of the YouTube platform.

▪️ Google blows. Give Fastmail a try (affiliate link)

I got a few questions from CansaFis Foote via Substack Notes, and figured I’d share my answers with everyone. Enjoy.

Q. What made you choose this platform above all others?

Honestly, I started all of this using Circle, under the name HEAVY METAL EMAIL.

I wanted an online space for musicians to come together and talk about reaching their fans with an old-fashioned email newsletter. This was back in mid-2021 or so. I Tweeted about this little project and got about 19 people to click and sign up.

But things felt off.

I wasn’t using a newsletter to talk about newsletters, so I started looking for at Ghost, Beehiv, and of course Substack.

I picked Substack because I didn’t want to mess with designs and themes and settings, I just wanted to import my subscriber list of 19 people and send them an email.

Oh, and it was free.

With any new platform, the “Is this tool for me?” phase can get cloudy with just a 30-day trial to determine whether it’s a proper fit.

But then Substack rolled out Recommendations, which led to 2,000 new subscribers (remember, I started with 19).

Substack rolled out Notes, which feels like the early Twitter days. That’s led to making friends, paid clients, and plenty of fun interactions. It feels like I’m not just shoveling my “content” into a social media platform and hoping for a click.

Substack has let you upload video for the last few years, embed audio, and set up paid subscriptions, all for just a 10% cut.

For me, Substack is the place to be right now, and it’s built around the concept of having an email list. Call it social media if you want, but my email list will serve me for the next several years, even if this place goes out of business.

Q. Are there any other web spaces you recommend for creators?

This question always leads me to its deeper meaning, which sounds something like, “Where are some good places I can set up where MORE PEOPLE can see my stuff?”

Being “a regular” at 10 different coffee shops in town takes a lot of time and energy, so I’m always wary of going on that journey.

I recommend focusing on one or two places at most, intentionally driving the interest and clicks back to a place (Substack or your website) where people who want to become bigger fans of your work can subscribe to an email list.

When you spend all your time on social media platforms, you’re building an audience you can’t reach.

The long game is building an email list to reach people who want to hear from you.

Q. Would you recommend Substack over a personal webpage or is this better?

Substack is a platform like any other, and it can disappear tomorrow (that’s a reminder to export your email list).

Right now (9/24/2024), I recommend setting up Substack to give people an easy way to subscribe to your email list and to read your work online.

That said, I will always recommend you set up a website/blog to have a running archive of your work, a space on the internet that is wholly yours, where you control the branding, the vibes, the images, the typeface – everything.

I have a blog I’ve been updating since 2018 (sethw.xyz), and I’ve been adding and archiving my work from all over the internet, which dates back to 2004.

Austin is also on Tumblr, too (thanks Sarah Shotts for the heads up). I haven’t seen a post that links back to his work, but as you can see, right below his name, he links back to his site with three links, and his Substack.

Final thoughts:

Don’t leave your fans and readers to bounce around between different platforms like a pinball machine.

Have a website, provide a way for people to sign up for a newsletter, and then send them a damn good newsletter on occasion, telling them about the cool things you’re doing.

Then we get back to work.

I’m officially in “Not My Business” Season, for which I owe a debt of thanks to Olivia Rafferty for describing how I’ve been feeling most of this year.

This isn’t just for Substack authors- it’s for every creative person.

Social media made us believe we must become graphic designers, video editors, sound engineers, interview hosts, SEO experts, copywriters, and about a dozen other things in addition to the thing we do.

Experts will have you believe that if you tweak your About page a little bit more, focus on SEO, or make better thumbnails, then success is just around the corner!

Not my business.

Sure, there are some “best practices,” but the bar is low (ahem, a website and an email list). We’re not here to chase lowest common denominator tactics, we’re here to shift culture and change the world, right?

• Imagine spending more time on things that rejuvenate your soul instead of cosplaying as an overworked social media manager.
• Instead of learning how to navigate all the new features that Meta has set up on Instagram, imagine becoming a better musician, photographer, or artist.
• Spend most of our non-day job hours honing our craft rather than becoming part-time “content creators” while expecting full-time results.
• There’s a screen time app, but where’s the guitar time app, or painting time app? Imagine if we tracked our creative practice and saw that we spent three hours a day writing. We’d celebrate that, wouldn’t we?

We don’t need more subscribers; we need more heartbreak, laughter, and / or deep metaphysical talks about the afterlife in cemeteries on rainy evenings.

That’s the business I want.

Let’s stop worrying about growing our audience. Open your contacts app and reconnect with the people who came into your life but you stopped talking to because you felt just posting on social media was enough.

Get in the business of building connections instead of shouting.

We’re talking about art here, people. We’re not selling USB cables or homeowner insurance, we’re channeling the divine, spending time in the fog, smelling the flowers, jumping in puddles, and walking around museums.

That’s our business.

In a recent newsletter titled “Backstage” (which went out to 10,000+ email subscribers) Tegan from Tegan and Sara wrote about putting out a live album. Maybe release it on vinyl, CD, and cassette, “with a booklet with photos from the tour.”

Then goes on to say:

“Maybe we should hold some stuff back, I suggested, and keep the stories and recordings and photos for that. It would be nice to have images and videos that no one has seen. For social media, for the booklet. Right? Or maybe it doesn’t matter; we share so much content (we = everyone) at this point, who even remembers what’s been posted and hasn’t?”

As I’ve been saying for years, re-use photos from social media in your newsletter because most of your followers never saw them.

The Tegan and Sara Instagram has 470,000 followers, and the last nine posts got an average of 3,444 likes, meaning 0.7% of their fans liked any one of those images.

Two of those posts have over 100 comments. That’s 0.213% of their fans that left a comment, and that’s on a good day.

Mind you, Tegan and Sara are a Grammy-nominated indie pop duo who’ve been making music for over 25 years.

I’m not saying don’t be on social media (well, maybe I am); just lower your expectations of actually ever reaching 10% of your followers.

Understand that posting an IG Reel to your 3,500 Instagram followers will probably be seen by just 250 people, and if 1% click a link, well, that’s a solid two people that might see your offering.

A friend of mine deleted his social media accounts in 2017 or so. He’s played drums for 30+ years; that’s all he wants to do, be a musician.

He joined some bands he found on Craigslist, did some recording gigs with friends on the internet, played a lot of local shows, learned a lot of covers, and made a few bucks.

He just wanted to play drums, you know?

We talked on the phone recently, and he told me of a “secret” group he’s in, with a bunch of other local musicians. They meet once a week and jam and hang out.

This didn’t happen overnight, but now my friend is in multiple local bands, and playing drums all the time with great people. He’s never been happier.

All without a Twitter account or posting crowd shots on Instagram stories.

This is what I meant when I wrote, ‘Social media loses power when we build community in other places.’

Tegan and Sara were here before social media, they’ll be here when it’s gone.
The creator economy existed long before Zuck and Musk showed up.
There was a time when we didn’t speak of our work as “content.”

“Make cool stuff, show it to your friends,” says Rick Rubin. Friends, family, fans. You get the idea.

But if a platform doesn’t let you show your cool stuff to your friends, ask if it serves you anymore. If not, it might be time to rethink things.