Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

Here’s the slowest, least-scalable way to grow your email list – “just ask, man.”

Want to reach a new audience that could help grow your fanbase?

Ask to be on a podcast.

Offer to write a cool feature for someone’s site that you like.

Did you make friends on a Discord? Don’t be a jerk, but maybe ask for someone to check out your newsletter on occasion.

Meet someone in real life and hit it off by talking about your art, your business, your offering? “Hey, I write about this stuff all the time, here’s the link to sign up for my newsletter.”

Have a cool back-and-forth on social media in the comments. DM them and ask them to subscribe.

Have a QR code on your merch table – people who sign up for your email list get 10% of their purchase, or a free sticker.

Neil Mason (LinkedIn) spent $3,000 on a photo booth to set up at shows. It runs on an iPad and captures people’s email addresses:

Since purchasing the photo booth, we’ve averaged 80 emails captured per show.

We’ve played 63 shows in 2023, with 62 to go.

80 x 63 = 5040 emails

I know not everyone reading this is in a band, or if you are, maybe you’re not interested in setting up a freaking PHOTOBOOTH, BUT… take these ideas and run with them.

Do interesting things, meet interesting people, and, on occasion ask them to check out your stuff.

Earlier this week The Armed sent out an email newsletter (above, right). As you can see, it’s similar in layout to an Instagram post (above, left).

The rest of the email is the same; photo, text, image, text.

White background. Dark text. Like an Instagram post, or a book, a newspaper.

• Make sure your text isn’t too tiny
• Don’t use eye-searing background colors
• Make your link colors stand out – they’re important!
• Make photos full-width
• Don’t use columns (yeah, I said it)

Make the bulk of your email a reflection of your authentic self, as The Armed did here:

“Well that’s it for right now…we’re in North Carolina and it’s 96 degrees. We play at 6:30 pm outdoors and there is no shade anywhere. So uh..I guess if we die, please remember LIAR 2 as our final, irrevocable mathcore legacy.”

An intern (or AI) didn’t write that, that came from the band.

That’s the opposite of mullet marketing.

Your social media feeds are the party. Loose and free, filled with witty rants, spontaneous photos, lengthy captions.

The likes pour in, and the replies.

Party in the back.

Then you subscribe to a band’s newsletter and get their “email blast,” which is just a few vinyl mock-ups of their album, some text, a button.

No lively text. No attitude. No swagger.

Business in the front.

Remember, the bulk of your social media followers don’t see your posts, so copy, paste, and elaborate on the wonderfully long captions you’ve already written.

“Engagement is the thing. The main thing. The only thing. Do I still open your newsletter?”

Adding more people to your list ain’t the fix for your 10% open rate.

This is an excerpt from ‘Do Open‘ from David Hieatt. Great read.

Digital Marketing Director (and someone I work with!) Kyle Frey at MNRK Music Group, on the Break the Gate Podcast:

There’s so much power in email marketing today. That’s definitely one of the most slept on areas, especially if you’re developing your own audience or fan base, bands should definitely get more on board with collecting that data, getting those emails. It’s your direct line of communication.

Email marketing is so strong for everything like, single rollouts, just basic communication, album presale, and just having that (first party) data is very important.

Bands, organic soap makers, photographers, any other creative souls – you need a direct line of communication with your fans.

Social media gives you the illusion of reaching your fans, but your posts never reach all your fans. Some of the bigger accounts on socials that are getting results – well, they probably got PAID, FULL TIME PEOPLE doing that work, or some other kind of help.

That’s what I meant when I wrote ‘PART TIME SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORT GETS YOU PART TIME RESULTS’ – you can only do so much an an independent artist. 

And I mean this with all my heart; as a creative person, the hard part is already done.

You write songs, take photographs, win races, teach courses, sell merch – whatever it is that you do – you’re doing it! That’s the hard part.

Setting up and sending out a newsletter? Come on, you can do this. You can figure it out.

You figured out how to do that stupid SWIPE UP thing with Instagram stories, right?

Ask a friend. Watch some YouTube videos. Send me an email (seth@closemondays.com) with some questions, or just book an hour call with me and we’ll this rolling.

We all figured out “hashtags” and vertical video.

Let’s figure out how to send an email to your fans.

Jon Davis of Conan wrote a great piece on LinkedIn, talking about how bands (or any creative project) can sustain themselves by selling directly to their fans.

Aside from social media, boosting posts, and making a quality product, he also spoke of my favorite thing:

Use email marketing. This is incredibly powerful. Yesterday, after some exporting data from Big Cartel and into EmailOctopus, I wrote to every single person who has ordered merch through the Conan UK page (approx 4700 people) and every single person who has ordered merch through our USA store (approx 3200 people). I was raising awareness of one of my releases. I sent the mail at 15:00 Friday afternoon, and since then (it’s 10:10am the next day now) have sold almost £1500 worth of items.

He sent an email to just under 8,000 former customers, and made £1500 ($1,923) in not even 24 hours.

Can you email everyone that bought your recent thing?
If you can, that’s big business.

From Shopify – “Repeat customers have a higher (customer lifetime value): The more repeat customers trust you, the less they hesitate to buy from you. That’s why promoting new products to repeat buyers takes less effort than promoting the products to new customers.”

From HubSpot – “Acquiring new customers costs 5 to 10 times more than selling to a current customer.” Think about it – make five more REELS, or just email a former customer – which is gonna make you a dollar faster?

From Mailchimp – “The success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is anywhere from 5 to 20%.”

From Paychex – “Little to no additional marketing is generally required to attract a repeat customer back, as opposed to starting from scratch with people who know nothing about your company.”

The allure of the NEW FAN / NEW FOLLOWER / NEW CUSTOMER is exciting, sure, but don’t neglect the customers you’ve already had over the years.

Like Jon Davis of Conan demonstrated above, he sent one email and made about $2,000.

That’s a lot easier than making a bunch of vertical videos and carousel posts and hoping 30% of your audience will even see them.

And don’t be afraid to sell. Give your fans a chance to give you money. Let them exchange currency for something you make, or offer, or do.

Linking to Spotify is fun, and all the “engagement” of likes and comments are cool, and it’s part of the game, but putting for-real dollars into your bank account is nice, too.