This is how you can start a Social Media Escape Plan.

Sign up for Substack, and tell people to sign up. In this case, Pissed Jeans put up this Instagram post, said “link in bio,” and now they have an email list.

Their reasoning sounds legit, too:

Rather than rely on the mercy of the proprietary Meta™ algorithms to let people know when we have a show coming up or new shirt or whatever, directly emailing you, the Pissed Jeans Enthusiast, seemed like it could be fun.

Because it’s TRUE.

If you have 1,000 followers on Twitter, there’s a good chance you’re reaching maybe 5% of your fans (Buffer, who knows a thing or two about social media, reaches about 2% of their audience on Twitter).

If you have an email list of 1,000 subscribers, you’ll probably reach 20-30% of your fans – and without having to stare at your phone six hours a day “making content,” (check out “You Don’t Need More Jobs” for more about that).

Un-opened and un-clicked emails look “bad” to the mysterious inbox servers in the email world, which is why your emails might skip the INBOX and end up in the “promotions” tab in Gmail, or even worse – the spam folder.

If your open rates are dipping down near 10%, it just shows those servers that emails from your domain aren’t engaging, or might not be wanted, so “eh, no need to put it right into someone’s inbox!”

This is sort of like an algorithm in the social media world, but there’s some easy fixes, and it doesn’t involve making videos of you dancing and pointing at words.

BEHOLD, THE WELCOME EMAIL

There’s a few things you can put into your welcome email when someone signs up to your email list, and that’s asking for the subscriber to add your email to their contacts.

“I hate making guarantees about anything in life, but getting your email whitelisted all but ensures you will always end up in a primary tab,” says Thanks for Unsubscribing.

I also like asking for a reply to the welcome email, which is worth a lot in the “staying out of the promotions tab” game.

“It’s amazing for boosting your deliverability and email domain reputation. ISP’s treat responses as the “gold standard” for engagement,” 100 Celsius

I do this for my Metal Bandcamp Gift Club newsletter:

Yes, it’d be nice if this was included in the sign up process, but this is an email list for people who buy music for people they don’t know on their birthdays, so it’s a unique audience!

What could you ask your subscribers when they sign up?

1. Producers: which album is their favorite that you’ve worked on?
2. Photographers: have they ever bought prints before?
3. Band: have you seen us live, and if so, where?
4. Writer: what’s the best review you read this year?
5. Store: what’s the last show you went to?
6. Tattoo artist: tell me about your first tattoo!

Again, these prompts are to get a reply, so keep them aligned with what you’re doing. And reply to these folks! Treat them like DMs on social media. They took the time to reply to your email, so take a minute and send a quick reply. You never know where it may lead (maybe a few more sales, jobs, shows, etc).

“Engagement metrics for welcome emails are eye-popping. On average, marketers enjoy 4x the open rate and 5x the click rate when using automated welcome emails over standard marketing emails. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, they expect to receive a welcome newsletter immediately. They’ll even visit their inboxes just to find it,” MailerLite

Consider using your Welcome Email to point your subscribers to the stuff you want them to see:

1. A link to your store, maybe with a discount code
2. Your website, or the tour dates section
3. Your Patreon – some of your biggest fans might not even know you have one!
4. Your Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music pages
5. Your latest video on YouTube

That click tells the “space cloud email algorithms” that your subscribers are engaged with your emails, helping you land each email in their inbox every time.

And honestly – not all your fans know about your store, your upcoming tour, your Bandcamp page. There’s nothing wrong with simple text links, casually letting people know all the stuff you got going on.

IT’S PROBABLY NOT YOU

You can do everything “right,” and emails still aren’t getting opened.

Relax.

Inflation, war, unrest, climate change – everything is happening all the time, and not every email will get opened, not every pre-order campaign will be a hit. Don’t take it personally. Adjust and tweak, and send another email next week.

My birthday just passed (I turned 46 this year, thank you), and because of the joys of email marketing I got a few celebratory emails from some brands I subscribe to.

In fairness, I won’t show off the birthday email from a client, but here’s an email from another label in the same genre:

Nothing fancy, but it works. Direct, simple, the colors are on brand – bravo!

Compare that with birthday email from my bank. They’re in the business of literally HOLDING ONTO EVERYONE’S MONEY, and I get dumb stock image:

If ANYONE should know what my interests are, it’s the one business who sees every damn penny I spend month after month. Instead I get no direct benefit – no discount, no exclusive offer, nothing.

All of this to say – if you have permission to send someone email marketing messages (very important), and you have their birthday info, sending someone an email on their special day can do two things: make the person feel good (it’s their birthday), and make a sale.

Yes, of course the second one is self-serving, but we all got rent to pay. And if they’re subscribed to your email updates in the first place, it’s not like it’s some egregious affront to their inbox.

Things you could send your fans on their birthday:

• Discounts on shirts, music, or other goodies
• Free shipping on select items, or at a lower than usual price point
• Special video performance, or message – make a new one every year
• Discount codes or guest list for upcoming shows

Hey – they’re your fans, you know what would resonate with them better than I would! Reply to this email and I’ll bounce some ideas around with you.

As part of my ongoing research in the world of heavy metal email, I buy albums from various record labels, (edit – and opt-in for future emails), just to see their email flow after I put in that order.

A handful send me a receipt for my order. That’s expected.
Then they never send me another email. That makes me sad.

The person most likely to buy from you is someone who bought from you before.

And if you know who bought a [THRASH ALBUM] then you know who to send an email to when you have a new [THRASH ALBUM] coming out in two months.

You own the store. You see the people who buy cassettes. Or shirts. You see it all, just like Amazon, but without being too creepy.

Make an email that features the things you sell, send them to people who buy those things, and make some money.

It sure is tempting to keep shoveling coal on the social media fire, then burn some more dollars to promote those posts in hopes that your followers actually see them.

Or, you could send an email to the 10,000 people you have on your email list every Friday and sell a bunch of records every month.

Yes – if you JUST make it BUY BUY BUY, that’‘ll get old. Everyone does that.

But chances are your bands posted videos this week. And songs. And got some cool playlist adds. Cool press.

The same stuff that you’re Tweeting that 70% of your followers aren’t even seeing.

Put it in an email every week.

Yes – EVERY. WEEK.

Try it.

Will a few people un-subsribe? Oh, you bet they will.

But the 98% of people who don’t? What about them? Those are YOUR PEOPLE.

I’ve said this for years – people actually watch shows like STORAGE WARS, which is people bidding on junk and then seeing who “wins” at the end.

You’re a record label, a band, a photographer, a designer, a podcaster – you’ve got stories to tell and much better products to sell.

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I mean, these emails write themselves:

Social media algorithms limit who sees your new album pre-order, single, merch drop, ticket sale, or whatever else you’re trying to promote. Send emails to people who sign up and they’ll see your stuff.

No band signs up for social media and says, “eh, I’ll Tweet once a month, I don’t want to be too spammy.”

Then eight times a day they’ll post tour posters, YouTube links, and whatever else that capture on their smart phone.

Okay, you might not want to send eight emails a day to your fans, but you should probably send more than once a month.

See, the problem is we all get 14 emails everyday from companies and we get mad.

Don’t do that and you’re gold. It’s a low bar, but you can manage that.

But if you send BUY BUY BUY to your fans once a week that’s gonna get old real quick.

If you send a weekly email of the photos that usually post on Instagram (that most of your fans don’t see), or the song snippets you post on Twitter (that most of your fans don’t see), or the tour posters on Facebook (THAT MOST OF YOUR FANS DON’T SEE), then you’re not just coming off as a desperate retailer, or a needy politician.

You’re sharing what you do with people who probably don’t see your stuff anyways! There’s nothing spammy about that at all.

“Do the dance on socials, drive people to your email list, then regularly connect with your fans with stories, photos, exclusive looks, and the occasional link to a record or photo print,” from my post SELL YOUR DAMN JOURNEY

Pop star Olivia Rodrigo included this photo in her recent email (with a hand written note):

I mean, that’s an Instagram photo basically, right? And with algorithms, maybe 20% of her fans would see it anyways.

And not all of her fans follow on Instagram.

And someday she might get randomly locked out of her account, because that’s what Instagram does!

Start an email list. Yes, in 2022.

It’s your most direct connection to your fans. Your supporters. Your customers.

Building your entire brand on social media is like building a house on quicksand – someday it’s all gonna fall down.

HASHTAGS = SHIT*

Good thread. I’ve about had it with social media these days (if you couldn’t tell), and it’s why I’m so adamant about moving your social media audience to your email list as fast as you can.

* All hail Slipknot

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“I’m not supporting myself entirely with Substack by any means, but it earns plenty for me to feel great about investing so much time into it.”

If you missed it last week, I interviewed Ryan J. Downey of the Stream N’ Destroy newsletter, which is in the top 20 music newsletters on Substack.

Other interviews I’ve done:

”A lot of people will tell me that they can’t keep up, and the newsletter helps them do that,” from my talk with artist / musician Joan Pope.

“The whole time I’m doing that, I’m back to thinking ‘what will our fans like?’ Which is exactly the head space I want to be in,” says Professor Pizza of Axe Slasher, on writing newsletters for his fans. Read it here.

“Email list is good for the real diehards, especially when it comes to new releases and big announcements like shows,” said Jeff Gretz of Zao.

RIP, TAYLOR HAWKINS

Absolutely horrible news to wake up to on a Saturday. Hug your friends, support the bands you love, turn up the music this weekend