As things wind down this year, I’ll keep this email light. There’s enough to digest seemingly every hour, and I don’t want to overload you.

If you put out a release, wrote a song, sold a print – I celebrate your success. Putting your magic into this world when everything is on fire is no small feat.

This focus here at HEAVY METAL EMAIL is pretty obvious, but if it’s not let me make it clear:

I want to help heavy metal folks start and grow email newsletters in 2022.

Bands, labels, photographers, writers, podcasters, designers – you could all benefit from an email newsletter, and I promise it’s not as hard as it looks.

First, with Substack you could be up and running this evening.

Second, your social media posts could easily be repurposed for your newsletter.

I know being an “email marketing expert” or “newsletter writer” wasn’t another job you wanted heading into a new year, but trust me, someday you’re going to want to move “social media expert” off your job description.

I believe you can siphon your social media audience to a your email list, and then you’ll spend less time being an “online marketing expert,” and more time working on your craft, and I think that’ll be better for everyone in the new year.

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Here’s a timely example of a band with a new video coming out, and using that as a “lead magnet” to get people to subscribe to their email list.

Ithaca posted this with a clear URL and a 17 second preview (it’s got 9K+ views a few days later).

You click that link and it takes you here:

First to know? SIGN ME UP.

And that’s how it works, friends.

Do this for every video, every single, every tour announcement, merch drop, new product – drive people to a sign up page, and turn your social media followers into email subscribers.

There’s a reason why Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, LiveNation, etc. don’t give you the emails of people who support your work; they’re gold.

Reaching your fans on any social media platform is a war.

It will continue to get harder to reach your fans, and the longer you wait to develop your social media escape plan, the further behind you’ll be when you finally decide enough is enough.

If you wait to network when you’re out of a job, you’re fucked.

If you wait to engage with your fans until you’ve got an album to sell, you’re fucked, too.

YOU’RE PAYING RENT TO SOCIAL MEDIA, and if you’re phoning it in, those checks will bounce.

I tell this to a lot of musical folks; your talent lies in making music, not being an online marketing expert.

So it’s okay you don’t know every strategy, tactic, and trend. But that doesn’t mean spend six hours a day tending a garden you don’t own.

Let us not forget that you’re in the magic business.

Some folks would sell their soul for that magic of being able to sing, play guitar, paint, design an album layout, tour with a band, and / or take photographs.

Deliver fucking magic in everything you do, because fandom is fucking real.

Fans cry, fans tattoo band names on their arms, fans dance to your songs at weddings.

Maybe you’re not there yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start now.

Every day, reply to your fans instead of just photocopying the nice things they said about you and showing it to people who are already fans.

Then, on occasion, ask those fans to subscribe to your email list. And make sure you have a good “lead magnet.”

“Don’t just say, ‘sign up for tour dates,’ say, ‘sign up to see photos from our last tour,’ which then gets people to subscribe. Then you eventually send them your new tour dates,” from my BEST WAYS TO GET PEOPLE TO SIGN UP post.

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.

Set up an email list, get your fans from social media to subscribe, and send them an email once a week.

As you grow your email list, it’ll start to be more effective.

You’ll spend less time preparing and sending an email than you do on social media, and it’ll sell more albums, more tickets, more shirts.

Take back your time in 2022, baby. Start your email list today.

When you lose access to your social media account, then what?

I’ve been seeing a handful of posts like this across Twitter and Instagram.

Years of connections, messages, and content gone.

How many hours have we lost to tending an online garden that we don’t own?

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No one skips through all the episodes of reality TV shows to get to the final episode just to see who wins.

The dating shows, new movie releases, the latest books; while you could save a lot of time and skip to the end, why even bother?

We’re all in it for the journey. The story. And you should treat your project the same way.

Yes, it’s tempting to just Tweet “something in the works,” two weeks before you head into the studio. And then again the week before the release date, when you post some boring “hey, pre-order now” link.

Where’s the journey in that?

That’s like a dating show where you meet all the contestants in the first 20 minutes, then after the last commercial break they come back and they’re like, “well, congrats Joe and Sarah!”

No journey. No story. So sub-plots. No drama.

And there are syndicated TV shows that revolve around people baking cakes, and cleaning out storage lockers, sponsored by major brands that sell sugar water.

Mundane shows, sponsored by commodity items, and they’re all doing a better job at marketing themselves than 95% of the music world.

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.

You can do this.

FOR YOUR NEXT NEWSLETTER:

Screen shot some recent press, or nice things that people have said and put them in your next email – like this:

Lisa and I work in music, and have followed each other on Twitter for many years. Then finally in 2021 it happened – I started working with her company Holdtight, and her wonderful team, doing email marketing for a few of their clients, and it has been am absolute delight!

See? Now you know a little bit more about me, and what I do, and the good folks I work with!

Remember those Spotify Wrapped graphics? You posted ‘em on socials and thanked your fans, but what about your email subscribers? They’re fans, too! Try adding a nice call to action to your Bandcamp, encouraging your fans to support you by buying a shirt or album (and I bet you’ll sell a few albums).

Oooh, behind the scenes photos! A perfect “lead magnet” to use for capturing emails. Think of using photos from your next show, video shoot, or recording session like this, and saying something like, “to see more photos like this, join our email list.”

Feeling lost but you know you need to get your email list going for 2022?

In the war against social media algorithms, you’re going to have to engage in some hand to hand combat, as perfectly illustrated here by @Breezyb215:

If you’ve fighting and clawing your way for every listen and fan, do things that don’t scale – take Brianna’s advice and reach out.

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