Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

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

A few years back I sent out a company-wide email for a client. After I hit send, a few emails came in.

I spelled the company’s name wrong in the FROM field.

I didn’t get fired, chewed out, no one unsubscribed. Life went on.

Was I bummed? Absolutely.

But it’s a learning experience. Every show you play, ever release you put out, and every email you send – each time there’s the possibility of royally fucking up.

And fucking up is how we get better.

If you’re a photographer, you tried some different settings, then learned what to use under different conditions.

If you’re a designer, you might be more happy with your recent work than the first few pieces you delivered.

Tattoo artists, producers, guitarists, song writers, editors – we are all where we’re at right now by learning from our earlier work and the mistakes we made.

I bring this up because I keep hearing about this fear of UNSUBSCRIBES.

Unless you’re losing DOZENS of subscribers per email, don’t sweat it.

Stop fretting over the eight people that unsubscribed, and pay attention to the 100+ that clicked a link to your new offering.

“Unsubscribes are not personal, but they’re beneficial to both the subscriber and you. If someone doesn’t want to be on your email list, you don’t want them there. Having people on your list who don’t actually want to be there is guaranteed to damage your deliverability, ultimately hurting your ability to reach those people who do want to be on your list,” says Alyssa Dulin at ConvertKit.

If people ain’t opening your email, that can damage your “deliverability.” Enough damage, and your emails might end up in SPAM folders, or the Promotions tab in GMail.

Don’t worry about unsubscribes. Let ‘em go.

Don’t worry about unfollows on Twitter or Facebook.

Don’t figure out – find out what works for you and your fans.

It’s a never-ending discovery, and you’ll get there quicker if you just keep your head down and keep in touch with your fans directly via you email list.

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YOU STILL DON’T HAVE AN EMAIL LIST?

Algorithms limit your reach. Platforms can suspend your account at any time. Make sure you’re able to reach your fans directly with an email list!

Your 2022 is going to be a bloodbath if you rely 100% on socials to keep in touch with your fans. Especially if you lose access to any of your social accounts.

It pains me that so many bands, brands, artists, and creative individuals are losing touch with their audience. If you’re lucky you’re reaching 5% of your fans.

The subject line of your next email campaign competes with the subject lines of everyone else in your subscribers inbox – so it’s worth taking a minute (or 30) and getting it right.

I always recommend sending weekly emails (“your fans subscribed because they love you, and want more of you”) so you can find out what “works” much faster than sending a once a month email, but if you’re still wary, you should at least be A/B testing your subject lines.

That just means sending your email with two different subject lines to a small section of your subscribers (Mailchimp and Klaviyo make this super easy).

After a few hours, the one that was opened the most is the “winner,” and the email gets sent to the rest of your subscribers with that subject line.

Sending with just one subject line might get you 11% opens. Or 20%! Sure.

But by testing two different subject lines with your audience, you might learn they like things short and sweet. Maybe they like super long, descriptive subject lines.

You won’t know until you try.

Let’s say you have a new video that just went live, and you want to let your fans know about it. You could write a subject line like this:

Subject line: NEW VIDEO!

Then maybe that gets a 24% open rate.

Or you could try A/B testing your subject lines, and try something like this:

Subject line A: NEW VIDEO!
Subject line B: Three cats, a car chase, and a surprise guest – check out our new video!

Subject A might get a 22% open rate, but Subject B might get a 34% open rate – that’s a lot more people opening your email by just testing out a different subject line style.

“On a list of 10,000 people, an open rate of 20% gets you 2,000 readers. If you can bump that up to 25%—which is totally possible with a great email subject line—you’ve earned another 500 readers.

Even at a meager 1% conversion rate, that’s 5 new customers,” from Active Campaign.

Think about that, too – you don’t need EVERYONE to place an order (though that’d be great). Increasing opens, or clicks, or conversions by 1% can add up when you do that week after week for a full year.

“Next time you’re writing the subject line for your email campaign, consider testing the order of the words to see if front-loading the benefit can help improve your open rates,” Campaign Monitor

Free shipping, a 10% discount, low stock – consider testing where you put that in your next subject line, as it could affect how many people open your next email.

Remember – you’re competing with maybe 100s of emails in someone’s inbox. There’s nothing wrong with writing 10, 20, even 50 different variations of a subject line, just to practice the craft. That could take you 15 minutes or more, yes, but it could also lead to 10 more orders.

“Email is one of the few direct to consumer channels, and the more data you have about your audience, the better you can share your music with them,” Berklee Online

“Try out different subject lines, images, layouts, and send times to see what’s working best,” from Mailchimp

Think about it – you could try different band photos, album art styles, or sending at different times, and increase the number of clicks from an email. That could mean more selling more records, or tickets for your next tour.

Someone just signed up for your email list.

Make sure you’re including links to “old content” in every email.

Promote your hot new thing, of course, but remember: not everyone opens every email.

Your most die-hard fans are busy, and missed your last two (or three) emails.

• If you’re a label, include some of your older releases (or low stock items).
• If you’re a podcast, include the most listened episodes in the last six months.
• If you’re a band, include links to your old videos.

I’m not saying pack each email full of links, but treat your fans like friends in this case; “oh hey, remember that video we made a year ago? Here’s a photo from when we did that.”

People still buy Metallica’s “Black Album,” because every day someone discovers that album for the first time.

You’re not Metallica, so keep talking about the stuff you’re proud of.

BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

“Creators know a long-term career can’t come from rented platforms, for example, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. These are all platforms you don’t own, which means you lose control over the percentage of your audience that sees your content. Growing to 100,000 followers stings when only 5% of your audience saw your latest Reel.”

From ‘How to use TikTok to grow your email list’ from CovertKit. Also this ‘TikTok For Musicians Masterclass’ from Amber Horsburgh is almost an hour and a half long and loaded with good ideas and insight.

“It hurt to face the thing I’d always feared – that we were a one-trick pony, sales wise. I always knew we needed another strong sales channel, but we came up during the Instagram storm and stayed in that space because it had always worked for us – it was where our customers lived digitally.”

From ‘Five things you learn when your social accounts are hacked’ from Courier. Check out ‘What’s Your Social Media Lock Out Plan?’ that I wrote back in December, too.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN

So what’s stopping you from sending an email on Monday? What do you need help with? Are you still picking between Mailchimp or Substack? Design? Reply to this email how you’re stuck and maybe I can help you out.

TO: folks that still haven’t started their email list, or are bummed at their “low” subscriber count:
SUBJECT: What’s the best way to learn how to not lose $1,000?

Lose $1,000.

In 2010, before I left NYC with just my bike and the stuff I carried in my messenger bag, I read a lot of “how to be a minimalist” articles and watched a lot of videos.

But I eventually had to put my bed frame on the sidewalk, lock the door behind me, and ride from Williamsburg in Brooklyn to East Rutherford, NJ by way of the George Washington Bridge on a single speed bike with directions written on folded paper.

You gotta lock the door behind you and just do the thing.

There’s always another YouTube video to watch. Another article. But eventually you’ve got to take the first step.

Jump and pray, like my friend Jocelyn says.

Because locking the door behind you is the easy part.

Buying the cool notebook is the easy part.
Signing up for TikTok.
Starting a SquareSpace site.
Going to the gym once.

That’s easy shit.

Now the hard part. The resistance. The pain. The uphill struggle.

Just remember – you’re spending HOURS a day on social media. Week in, and week out. Of course that’s why you have a few thousand followers.

So don’t expect to send one email per month and get a hundred subscribers in a day. Growing your list is hard, which is why I recommend you send something every single week.

The faster you learn what works for your fans, the faster you lean into that.

Last week I gave you a pretty solid strategy on what to actually put in your emails:

Even if your fans do follow you on Twitter, chances are 70% of them won’t see your post because of ALGORITHMS.

Summary: sure, keep posting on socials. Then take what “works,” the stuff that resonates, and gets your followers engaged, start putting some of that into your email list.

Even if you post just once a week on one of the social media channels, you should send that to your email list, too. Build trust. Build community.

Don’t just email when you got something for sale.

Tell some stories, spill your guts, go on a rant, include a playlist – whatever.

Or… just keep shoveling all your “content” into the constantly running social media wood chipper and (hopefully) increase your chances of any of it being seen by your fans.

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TO: folks who already have an e-commerce store
SUBJECT: Automations will make you money while you sleep (or watch Netflix)

From Mailchimp: “We’ve found that product follow-up emails get 5 times more orders than bulk emails.”

Think about that – you spend the day crafting the perfect email campaign, hyping your latest drop, and an automated email sent two days later might lead to more orders.

Klaviyo has nice “Browse and cart abandonment” and “Back in stock” automations (among others), which integrate super well with Shopify.

The point here being that sending a gentle nudge to a potential customer can put more money in your bank account. That person looking at your deluxe edition bundle? You can automate and send an email to them a few days later if they don’t order right away.

IT’S OKAY TO NUDGE.

Will some people unsubscribe? Sure. Will more people order something? Probably. But you won’t know until you start trying it out for yourself. Don’t write off automations like this just because you don’t like them. They exist because they work!