Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

Artist Louise Stigell says, “just because other businesses (are super annoying, and sales-y, and in people’s face, and really eager) in your inbox does not mean that you have to behave that way.”

Many creative folks send boring emails.

It’s mullet marketing, and you have my permission to do way better.

“You can totally do email marketing in a way that is authentic to you, that feels genuine,” says Louise, “that doesn’t feel pushy. Or sleazy.

You can have your entire personality and your integrity intact and you can still make a living doing what you love – because that’s the point.”

We started creating art to break away from the norm. Yet, when trying to get the word out, we conform to what everybody else is doing.

The technology of algorithms, the labels, the gatekeepers, the publishers, the media – none of them can stop you from connecting directly with a fan today via a simple email.

Show up fully in your email marketing.

Make your website as wonderful and impactful as your art.

The opposite of boring and safe isn’t “sign up for TikTok and make dance videos.”

It’s showing up 100% as your true self, and giving fully who you are as an artist.

If you’re an artist that’s still trying to grow a following, you can’t just imitate what the big guns are doing and expect the same results.

A band like Beartooth can do this because they’ve been around for over 10 years, sell out venues in Australia on co-headline tours, and probably have 25,000 people on their email list (probably more).

Another approach is what Teenage Wrist did with their recent newsletter, writing 300 words before even getting to their upcoming tour dates (which are all linked, btw).

“i’m coming at you from the floor of soda bar in san diego, waiting patiently for my generic charger to bring my phone back to full juice.  spiritual cramp is sound checking, and boy do those guys have some shit to say that i can relate to.  deeply poetic verses like, “wake up in the morning and i think i’m gonna die”, “i’m sick of looking at my phone” and “i wanna smash my phone”.  seriously… i’ve spent countless hours over the past four weeks in the back of the van opening and closing my instagram account, refreshing my email, waiting for the fleeting dopamine hit.  it has officially stopped coming.  i need to find a new vein.  i wanna smash my phone.”

You share feelings and emotions and stories through your art, so try doing the same thing when you send an email to your fans.

Neil Mason talks about this in his Artist Development Newsletter:

“Be the artist continually creating a great escape, and you’ll be the artist that people turn to whenever they need one.

And we all need one.

The trick here is to connect the narrative from your music to your social media, your concerts, your merchandise, and on and on.

The best escape artists meet their audience in their emotions by showing they have been there too and they understand.

Then, take your audience on a journey to escape their troubles, and as a by-product, you will escape yours by creating the audience you once wished you had and making the money you once wished you made.

Don’t compete on the final product – a zillion songs are uploaded to Spotify every day, and trying to set yourself apart from that noise is tough.

Like, look at what I do; there are 1,000 other people writing about email marketing for bands and artists on the internet.

But I’m also trying to help you get away from social media, while most of those marketing professionals are telling you how to optimize your TikTok account.

That’s not me, and that’s hopefully why you’re reading this.

What happens when you cold-email a bunch of radio contacts about your blackened death metal band?

In the case of Úzkost, vocalist Josh Thieler explains how it led to a memorable house show (and so much more).

Click play, it’s a wild story.

Josh explains how the magic has continued over the years:

“My understanding is, so the college radio stations started playing us and then one of these kids have like, graduated college and then started their own web radio stations. And so then they’re playing us on those, and then other people hear about it, and they’re playing us on their stations. And then some like real legitimate, like the one local radio station here, the Big Rock one has played us multiple times on it, which makes no sense to me.”

The band has gone from 200 Spotify followers to 2,800 as result.

As most of us know, it’s not just about unit sales and DSP playlisting:

“The last show that we played here, a mom brought her 13 year old trans daughter, and it was her first show she had ever been to,” says Josh. “And she’s like, I love you guys so much. And she’s like, bought each shirt, bought every record that we had. And she’s like, I want to play metal someday. And I’m just like, how did this happen?”

During our chat, Alex asked “what would you say would be an actionable tip from this experience that you would pass on to other people?”

“I’m learning that I know less than I did the day before. So try as much as you have energy for, don’t discount the things, you know, Seth pushes emailing lists and stuff. Do that. It’s easy to set up.”

Josh also dishes the age old wisdom for any creative person – networking is vital, but in an honest, organic, kind way.

“Just talk to people in bands. Talk to fans on the internet when you can, when you have the energy for it. Talk to people that write for different sites. Then, like I said, don’t discount any of the things that we look at as dead from the past, like mailing lists, radio.”

That’s the thing – you gotta start somewhere, but you gotta do it at your own pace.

“It’s obnoxious to like start this whole thing by yourself out of nowhere and just be like, okay, here’s everything. Let me start trying to do everything at once and collect all these different contacts and everything. Start somewhere, and you just keep doing it. Once you gather those contacts, it’s super low effort to just send a press release, you know, and you can use the same press release for your emailing list, you know, of fans that you send to your PR contacts and that includes all the radio people that you can find.”

None of this is a magic fix. Emailing your local college radio station this week might not be the answer – you just never know!

And if you’re not in a band, take this concept and run with it.

Maybe it’s not hitting up college radio, but maybe there’s a local print weekly, a flea market, a record store, a DJ night.

This is all built on people, on relationships. Build those up, and see where it goes.

Listen to Úzkost on Bandcamp.

Seven things your band could send to your email list after a big show:

1. Photos of setting up, playing, and hanging out afterwards.

2. A handful of the photos you took with fans, and the super cool people you met backstage, like that guy that wears yellow glasses and writes about heavy metal email newsletters (hey, that’s me!)

3. Talk about some of your favorite bands that played

4. Explain how you picked your set list (include a photo)

5. Send a store discount, and the code word is the second song title from your set

6. Ask people who saw you at the event to reply to your email with photos they took, or their favorite song of the night (this can be helpful for building segments)

7. Share a funny / weird / dangerous / scary story that happened

After all this, it’s a perfect time to mention your upcoming tour, or that EP you just released.

Not in a band? Talk about your upcoming photo shoots, upcoming designs you’re working on, courses you’re teaching, bicycles you’re building – whatever!

Had a conversation this weekend at Furnace Fest, about waiting to start sending a newsletter to a small list (about 10 people), which reminded me of this story:

Learn from Chris Spencer of Unsane, from an interview with Echoes and Dust:

“We played a show at CBGBs, we got offered a show with Sonic Youth and we got there to find out that we were playing the graveyard shift, which was actually after Sonic Youth … we had to go out and the place cleared out and we went on to like twelve people!”

Got ten people on your list? That’s enough.

Don’t wait for more people – level the room. Impress the people in front of you. Serve the people who signed up.

“Fortunately for us, Gerard Cosmos from Matador Records happened to still be there and offered us a record deal after that, so it actually really worked out.”

You never know who might be reading your newsletter, so don’t hold back.

Why else should you send to a smaller list?

Because you can make your mistakes now, and learn from them, with a much smaller impact.

If you mess up a link to 25 people, fix the link and send it again. Learn to double check that sort of stuff now, before you fuck up with 2,500 people.