Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

Hey friends – it’s the end of the year, so I don’t want to drop any big new ideas here as we’re all in wind-down mode, so I figured a wrap-up of the three biggest newsletters I sent this year would be of help to get you ready for 2023.

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1. I had no idea that ‘MORE THAN PLASTIC’ (from Nov 9) would be a hit (for a newsletter about newsletters), but that’s why we make things and release them into the world, right?

In this newsletter I stressed, “You are more interesting than what you’re selling.”

You aren’t just a bass player, you are a songwriter.
You aren’t just a guitar tech, you’ve got stories.
You aren’t just a writer, you weave stories.
You aren’t just a photographer, you capture timeless moments.

Yes, email campaigns of vinyl mock ups and merch bundles are fine when you’re sending to 5,000+ folks, but if you’re just getting started then do your best in telling your story, selling your journey, and inviting your fans into your process as much as you can.

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2. In October I wrote ‘UNHOOK FROM SOCIAL MEDIA,’ which was me yelling from the rooftops (as usual) about breaking away from the over reliance on social media platforms to reach your fans.

This quote from Cody Cook-Parrott keeps me up at night:

“I have had to completely unhook from the algorithm because I have never had lower social media engagement. I have 80K+ followers and often get 300 likes on a post.”

Do we keep spending hours on Instagram every week to get to 85K followers, all so you can hit 325 likes? Fuck that.

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3. My third most popular post was all about the LINK IN BIO, which I’ve been testing out since early November and seeing solid results.

I refuse to believe our reach / impressions will ever get better than right now. It’s all downhill from here.

Yes, I bring the doom and gloom, but there’s no way you can count on winning the attention roulette game every time you have something to announce on socials.

ANTISOCIAL

A vulgar display of social media hostility.

This isn’t about social media, but “The Fake Artists Problem Is Much Worse Than You Realize” is pretty fucked up, though I don’t think we’ll see any fake bands on the Spotify metal playlist, right? RIGHT?!? (h/t Kallie Marie)

“Piers Morgan’s Twitter account sent out explicit, derogatory tweets to his 8.3 million followers Tuesday,” which is mind boggling. Two-factor your Twitter account, friends.

“Between January 1 and June 30, more than 21 million fake accounts were detected and removed from LinkedIn,” says LINKEDIN.

Hey! I had 74 subscribers on April 1st, 2022.

From April through July of 2022 (four months), I sent only six emails, and one of them was sent as my other newsletter Metal Bandcamp Gift Club by mistake – OOPS.

That was not a good stretch.

• 52 people still subscribed, 37 of them from the Substack network (71%).
• And because I didn’t have anything to push on socials, I only got nine clicks total from Twitter and Instagram.

So that’s how NOT to do it. Why do people keep looking at social media? Because there’s always something new!

And yes – there are DAILY email newsletters, but it’s up to you to find the balance for your readers.

Which I’m still doing!

From August through November of 2022 (the next four months), I ramped up and sent 27 emails, and you can see the difference below.

Going from six emails to 27 emails is a 350% increase.

• I gained 111 new subscribers, 71 of them from the Substack network (64%).
• Twitter + Instagram drove 100 clicks, a 1,000%+ increase from the previous four months. Those 100 clicks led to just 7 sign ups, a 7% conversion rate. Ouch.
• Started using LinkTree around November 1st, and stopped including links in my Twitter posts and IG Stories. That led to 25 visits and 10 sign ups, a 40% conversion rate.

By December 1st, I had 242 subscribers, and hit 250 around December 15th.

This is what worked for me:

1. Substack rolled out Recommendations on April 12th, and I was fortunate to get recommended by Ryan J Downey’s Stream N’ Destroy newsletter. That drove 113 subscriptions this year alone, and counts for nearly half of my 254 subscribers as of Dec 22nd. That happened because I’ve known Ryan for over a decade and we have some mutual friends, and he didn’t have to recommend it! Build relationships over years, write good stuff, and Substack Recommendations can really help.
2. Posting more often let me hone my writing and figure out what “clicked.” This also let me post about it more on social media, part of my Social Media Escape Plan.
3. Speaking of social media – when I would publish something, I would write and schedule a few posts on Twitter, and I had reminders on my phone to post to IG Stories. This helped drive 1,000 clicks to my Substack in four months.
4. Started testing out the “link in bio” strategy in early November, and pushing my social media audience to click on my LinkTree on my profile page, instead of including any links in my posts. I got nine sign ups total from Twitter / Instagram / Facebook in eight months, and 10 from LinkTree in less than two months. I don’t know why that happened, but I’m going to keep it going.
5. I interviewed interesting artists and people in the heavy music space, to show real world examples of people using email to reach their audience. The bonus is they shared the interview with their audience. This wasn’t a HUGE driver of subscribes, but it got the RIGHT people on my list, because it’s people who are curious about the subject of email marketing for music folks.

Your results might vary, but you gotta send some emails to get results, so get going!

The whole point of this HEAVY METAL EMAIL newsletter is to get people on your email list.

That’s because social media will be murder in 2022, and I don’t think any of us want to spend more time on those networks than we have to.

I wrote that a year ago, and come on – social media was murder this year, right? Think it’ll get any easier in 2023? No way.

ANTISOCIAL

A vulgar display of social media hostility.

“ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists’ physical location using their IP addresses,” which is fucking wild. As Job Gruber says, “Chinese-owned internet services should be banned in the United States, and TikTok exemplifies why.”

Just getting worse for TikTok, as legislation passed by the U.S. congress just banned TikTok on government devices, and some universities are banning the service on school devices and WI-FI networks (though students can still use TikTok on their own data plans). Where does that end? Whew.

Twitter now shows everyone how many times a Tweet was viewed, which is probably terrifying for some media outlets. Big time follower count and low view counts (like, less than 5% of an accounts audience) just means you gotta pay up if you want to get seen on Twitter (or pay for Blue).

On a more serious note, Reuters is reporting “Elon Musk orders removal of Twitter suicide prevention feature.” What the fuck?

Linda Bloomfield ran #OpportunityTuesday on Twitter since 2018.
Then she told her 16.5K followers “I’m moving this to a newsletter,” and 1,200 people subscribed.

Tegan and Sara started a newsletter earlier this year, and they promote it to their 544K Twitter followers usually twice a week.

Paid subscriptions on their Substack start at $6/mo, and they have thousands of paying readers.

“A lot of the writing and connection that we crave, it just doesn’t exist on social media anymore,” Tegan says. “Social media has become this super curated, very flat-feeling world for us. So Sara and I were hesitant as we looked into the future with all our projects, like, ‘How do we promote these things without feeling disingenuous?’”

They’re not repurposing the newsletter content for socials. For what? To gain more followers they can’t reach?

No.

They publish a story, they link to it. Subscribers get it delivered to their email inbox.

The same inbox where fans get email receipts from records and concert tickets they buy.

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Look, you command a room, and you command your narrative online.

So lead your fans.

Lead them to your website. Show them your newsletter.

Not all your fans hang out at the food court at the mall anymore, subsisting on a diet of pizza, smoothies, and chicken nugget outrage.

Social media is the food court at the mall, where your posts appear next to sports news and racist tirades, and the landlord keeps raising the rent.

It’s time to leave the food court at the mall.

Your art is your restaurant.

You set the menu and you set the hours. You adjust the lights, the atmosphere and the vibes are up to you.

I can’t get handle the food anymore on social media, so I started Social Media Escape Club, because I can’t live on milkshakes and fries anymore.

Let’s all stop hanging out at the food court at the mall every day and start thinking about our Social Media Escape Plan.

You should be reusing your already-written social media posts for your email newsletter.

The Instagram post (above, left) is from December 15, 2022.
The email newsletter (right) is from December 16, 2022 – the next day.

Church Road Records has 5,587 Instagram followers.
That post got 143 likes, and three comments.
Add those up and divide by the number of followers, and that’s a 2.6% engagement rate.

(Engagement rate means someone did something – liked, shared, left a comment, or clicked a link.)

Now, let’s assume they have 1,000 email subscribers, and let’s pretend only 100 people opened the email (I bet it’s more).
That’s still a 10% open rate.

I’ll take 10% over 2.6%, thanks.

We’re all posting to social media, just trying to get people to our store, buy tickets, and sign up for our email list.

AND MOST OF OUR FOLLOWERS NEVER SEE OUR POSTS.

Think about it; if you “only” have 1,000 email subscribers, and “just” 10% open your email, it’s still more effective than spending hours of social media “engaging” and posting, trying to hit 5,500 followers just so less than 3% of them will interact with your posts.

Like I wrote over a year ago in FIGHT FOR THOSE EMAILS:

You know all those Spotify Wrapped images that were being shared on socials this week? Well, people who don’t follow you on social didn’t see them, so why not send those Wrapped images to your email list?

It’s a great way to bolster your love for your fans, too. Set up a 20% discount for your store and include that with your thanks email and see what happens.

You’re already spending hours every week on social media. Take 15 minutes and reuse that social media content fore your email list, include a clear “call to action” like BUY THIS RECORD, and watch some magic happen.

1. Scroll through your old social media posts. Find something that “did well” (got a bunch of likes or comments), and send it to your email list.
2. Set up your “link in bio” and use it on your social media platforms (I started pushing my “link in bio” in October and it sent almost 50 clicks to this newsletter and has been my 2nd biggest driver of email sign ups).
3. Buy a domain name. Set up a website. Don’t leave your online presence to tech-bro start up platforms that can disappear overnight.
4. Set up a discount / special in your online store to run through the end of the year.

Got a question this week on Twitter, and figured I’d repurpose it for you, my lovely HEAVY METAL EMAIL reader.

Q. What advice would you give to an organization that already has a large traditional email list (10k), but considering shaking things up by switching to Substack? Is there an advantage to Substack over Constant Contact or Mailchimp?

A. The biggest advantage of Substack is the built in community features like comments, likes, threads, recommendations, polls, chat, mentions, collaboration, video, and the heaps of support from Substack and the community itself (check out their weekly Office Hours).

Substack also feels a bit like Etsy, where there’s a built in network, making it easier for other writers and readers to find your newsletter. Services like Mailchimp and Constant Contact are like BigCartel or Shopify, so you’re 100% responsible for driving traffic to your newsletter.

So if community and interaction are important, Substack is worth a lot of consideration.

If e-commerce / automations / segmenting / A/B testing (all the old-school email marketing things) are more important, then Mailchimp / Constant Contact / Klaviyo would be a better fit.

Q. Can you transfer over your existing email list or do people need to re-subscribe?

A. Yes! Export your existing list and upload anywhere – that’s the joy of email marketing, you’re not tied to any platform.

If you haven’t sent to that list in awhile (a year or more), it’s a very good idea to send an initial “warm up” email, with a clear and obvious UNSUBSCRIBE link near the top of your first send. Just to make sure everyone is still on board with getting emails from you.

Contact me with questions: seth@socialmediaescape.club

🏁 METALLICA’S SOCIAL MEDIA NEW ALBUM ZONE

Since December 8th, 2022, Metallica have posted three videos of James Hetfield talking about the meaning of the ‘72 Seasons’ album title, the new song ‘Lux Æterna,’ and “darkness.”

Twitter: 407,000 views
Facebook: 794,000 views
Instagram: 5,500,000 views

The total run time for all three clips is less than three minutes and add up to over 6.7 million views (so far).

ANTI-SOCIAL

My confirmation-bias is pretty blatant.

• “Wolfgang (Van Halen) elaborated on how these changes stemmed from his mental health struggles – which include depression and anxiety, and are often heightened by the backlash he receives on social media,” from Guitar.
• “Facebook, now known as Meta, knew Instagram was pushing girls to dangerous content,” says CBS News.
• “To leave a note, go to the top of your inbox, select the followers you follow back or people on your Close Friends list, and your note will appear at the top of their inbox for 24 hours. Replies to notes will arrive as DMs in your inbox,” – a new feature called Notes is coming to Instagram.
• “Even NASA has expressed concern over Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter takeover,” says MSN.