Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

Hello! In this email I’m answering a question from reader LT, and hoping it’s helpful for everyone, too. If you ever have a question, just reply to any email, or email me at seth@socialmediaescape.club

Q. Best ways to get people to sign up, besides orders?

A. Send a newsletter people want to sign up for!

Figure out why someone should sign up for your email list.

This is your “lead magnet,” which is a horrible term used in the email marketing world, but it works.

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.

As I recently wrote, “consider starting a newsletter for something adjacent (and more popular) to what you’re doing, and then you’re able to promote your main project just by association.”

If you’re a guitar player, and you nerd out with effects pedals, start a newsletter talking about your favorite gear. Your current set up. Talk to other guitarists (from other bands) about their effects pedals.

If you’re an artist, highlight some of your favorite album covers, or show posters. Swap emails with other artists and present them as interviews.

Think about everything surrounding what you do and consider using that as the focus of your newsletter. That’s your lead magnet for your email list.

Even the stuff you’re already posting on social media can be your lead magnet. As I wrote in 2018, from ‘What Would I Even Put in an Email Newsletter?’

For years you’ve been providing social media networks with your content for free, willy-nilly. You, and 324328 other bands and labels and distros and brands. All those behind the scenes photos, updates from the road, show reports, new product announcements.

Yeah, that’s the stuff you put into a newsletter. Then you start “sharing” less of that on social media.

What gets you the most engagement on social media? Use that. Keep posting a few of those things, and sneak in something like, “hey, sign up for my newsletter for more.”

Hey, friends – time for another three emails that I rip open and examine for your benefit. This week I try to offer some ideas you can steal and use for yourself.

SUBJECT LINE: ‘Asking Alexandria, Slipknot, Scorpions’ from Stream N’ Destroy

CLINICAL SUMMARY: This newsletter from Ryan Downey covers a lot of data in the heavy music world – stream and video plays, sales #s; lots of “insider baseball” stuff.

HEAVY METAL EMAIL RECOMMENDS: I’m featuring this email for all you writers out there. If anyone could just link to a bunch of interviews and articles they’ve written, it’d be Ryan. But he had something else to offer – insider knowledge, insight, patience (he’s been doing it for years), and friends in the business who’d appreciate an informative email like this.

YOU have insider knowledge and insight, too! You don’t just write posts and interview bands, you are on the cutting edge of culture, and I’m not just saying that to be dramatic – music industry careers have started in mosh pits and VFW halls.

The shows you attend, the access you already have – it’s easy to take that for granted, but there’s a lot of people who won’t ever go “backstage,” or be on a tour bus. Share that experience with them.

ALSO:

• ‘125 Newsletter Ideas That’ll Impress Your Readers For Sure’ from Send In Blue – obviously not the most metal site around, but some good ideas in here.
• ‘27 Newsletter Ideas You Can Use to Engage Your Readers’ from Active Campaign

SUBJECT LINE: 🔵 Only one week until Things Take Time, Take Time 🔵 from Courtney Barnett

CLINICAL SUMMARY: While Courntney Barnett may be a heavy metal icon, but it’s very metal to credit everyone involved (see the links to the poster designer and photographer)! It takes a team – which got me thinking…

HEAVY METAL EMAIL RECOMMENDS: Consider doing a collaborative newsletter – not everything needs to be a solo endeavor.

Maybe you’re friends with an artist, and you’re a writer, and neither of you want to start a newsletter on your own. You could start a newsletter about album art. If a videographer and a photographer started a newsletter about music videos? Hell yes, sign me up.

And hey, most podcasts are started by two people – why not a newsletter?

The cool thing is it doesn’t have to be directly about your main project. It’s easier to get people to sign up for a newsletter about horror movies or baseball than it is… your band. Lots of metal fans already love horror movies, but they don’t know about your band (not yet).

Consider starting a newsletter for something adjacent (and more popular) to what you’re doing, and then you’re able to promote your main project just by association.

SUBJECT LINE: THE DOWNBEAT: Live in London TICKETS from The Downbeat, which is Stray from the Path drummer Craig Reynolds and his (award winning) podcast and clothing brand.

CLINICAL SUMMARY: All three links here go to the same thing – the ticket site. That’s how you do a call to action.

HEAVY METAL EMAIL RECOMMENDS: You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. In a basic sense, the above example could be a post on social media – image, text, link.

SEE ALSO:

• ‘Event Reminder Emails: 5 Effective Strategies’ from Beefree
• ‘Events Newsletter Design Gallery and Examples’ from MailerLite

No one signs up for a social media account and says, “don’t worry, I’ll only post once a month, I don’t wanna be too spammy!”

So why do we act like that with email newsletters?

Maybe because when you donate to a political campaign they start emailing you twice a day?

Or when you buy from an online retailer they bombard you with emails a few times a week?

Well, you’re not them.

The stuff you post on socials – the photos from shows, the work-in-progress videos, the rants, the albums that you love – could all go into an email.

Remember these two facts:

1. Not everyone follows you on social media.
2. Even if they do, algorithms will prevent them from seeing your posts.

So your live-action shots and clips from the studio go unseen – mostly (probably) by your biggest fans.

The ones who buy your albums, your prints, you shirts, your art.

Yes, if you email once a week with just PURCHASE NOW or BUY TICKETS messages, people are going to unsubscribe.

So don’t do that.

Your fans subscribed because they love you, and want more of you. Give them more of you.

You can literally scroll back through your socials from each week, see what resonated, and copy and paste that into your email.

Write more about some of your thoughts from the week.

Post some photos from your art opening on your site, then mention them in your newsletter. “Hey, click here to see more.”

That’s not a hard sell. That’s not trying to get anyone to pull out their wallet when they’re in line at Dunkin Donuts.

It’s a passive ask, friend to friend:
Here’s the lyrics to our next single.
Sneak peek at our next shirt design.
This is the inspiration for our next album.

Yes, include your album art and a pre-order link. Below the fold. Think of it like an ad in a magazine. You read the interview, then notice the full page ad on the next page.

Your fans aren’t ATMs, they’re your friends, followers, people who gave you their email address and said, “yes, I want more from you.”

Give more of you.

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Some resources for your own study:

“Never treat people like units of data, create buyer personas complete with photos for each segment to maximize results. This will help you create and send not just the right content, but also define the perfect email frequency. Additionally, conduct your own experiments to test email frequency for every segment,” from Snov Labs.

“Our data suggests every two weeks is the “sweet spot” for getting the most people to see your emails without burning out your subscriber list. Though of course, you should always test to see what works best for you,” says Campaign Monitor.

“Once you’ve established an email cadence you’re comfortable with (and that you think your subscribers will enjoy), your main focus should be on providing quality, relevant content. If it’s something your subscribers will enjoy, they’ll look forward to every email you send,” says AWeber.

“You should err on the side of more, not fewer, emails,” says Jilt, with lots of data behind it.

Artist Joan Pope sends out a weekly email, serving as “an overview of my creative works made in the past week.” Read it here.

Another week, another few emails to dissect! This week we got emails from Gus G, She Shreds, and Mastodon. I’m digging through real emails, from real artists and outlets, so you can see how it’s done, and maybe you can take some ideas and apply them to your email efforts.

If you have questions, hit reply or leave a comment. And if you dig these emails, please consider subscribing so you don’t miss anything.

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SUBJECT LINE: Gus G Newsletter: Please Confirm Subscription from Gus G.

CLINICAL SUMMARY: This email from Gus G takes the idea of a standard (and boring) confirmation email and adds a free song download. Love this.

HEAVY METAL EMAIL RECOMMENDS: Every interaction with a fan on the internet could be the last – so do what you can to make it memorable. Use your “thanks for signing up” page to drive fans to your latest single or video, your upcoming tour dates, or offer a discount to your online store.

“The first (and simplest) step to attracting more subscribers is to optimize your email signup form,” from Campaign Monitor.

“Promising high-value content that they want, providing social proof that your newsletter is valuable, holding giveaways or contests, and being transparent about what they can expect signing up are all ways to provide the incentive,” says HubSpot in ‘How to Increase Email Sign Ups With Better Forms.’

SUBJECT LINE: 🌎 GET THIS SOUND 🌏 from She Shreds

CLINICAL SUMMARY: This is a section from a recent newsletter from She Shreds promoting articles in their archive. Solid branding, conscise copy, simple call to action.

HEAVY METAL EMAIL RECOMMENDS: Like @bigsto says, set up a press page on your website, then post the interviews and reviews you get from various outlets.

Once set up, you send a newsletter with a link to your press page, instead of driving traffic to YouTube or Spotify.

This is a solid way to avoid coming off “pushy” about your latest project or promotion. Just link to a cool interview you did (that half your fans probably don’t know about), and then fans will go to your website where they will probably see your most recent project.

SUBJECT LINE: ‘Hushed And Grim’ OUT NOW from Mastodon

CLINICAL SUMMARY: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This is a pretty standard release-day email, with the bit of personal intro text to spice things up. The “LISTEN UP” link goes to the standard lnk.to page, which includes links to the various DSPs and their official merch store.

HEAVY METAL EMAIL RECOMMENDS:

Try planning some emails using the “inverted pyramid model.” What the heck is that?

“It’s essentially a framework for structuring the elements of your email campaigns (headers, imagery, buttons, etc.) so that they work together to draw people in, deliver the key messages of your campaign, and get them to click through,” says Campaign Monitor.

“A study indicates that nearly 54% of emails are now accessed on smartphones. When most users view your emails on-the-go, fast-loading, and well-rendered designs with the ease of navigation are the needs of the hour,” via Uplers

Remember – we’re learning together here! Let’s get you going with an email newsletter in 2022! Hit reply with your questions, or leave a comment.

This week we welcome Professor Pizza of Axeslasher, a thrash-tastic band from Denver, Colorado that leans heavy into horror, gore, and other delicious death-metal themes.

But we’re not talking about any of that. Oh no, we’re talking about email marketing! Social media! Bandcamp!

Yes, we’re talking about how the heavy metal sausage gets made on the internet here in 2021, which helps get people to come to your shows, to buy your shirts, and listen to your new music. This is what you signed up for!

Oh, you’re reading this on the web, and you’re not signed up? Subscribe today so you don’t miss out on the next email I send out!

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You told me a bit ago, “I’ve been testing every avenue we’ve used for the last 10 years. Guess which one generates the most traffic and revenue,” with the answer being email. Can you speak a bit to how much WORK goes into email campaigns?

I’d start by saying we’re not particularly adept at email marketing. I always kind of considered it old-fashioned but knew we should be doing some form of it. Axeslasher rode the wave of social media really well until recently. Back in the days of chronological sorting we were able to find an audience quickly, especially on Instagram. I’m a super visual person and focusing on creating killer images really appealed to me, and when it was actually getting shown to our audience we caught lots of traction. 

Additionally, we were able to really take advantage of paid marketing1 on social media to increase our reach. There was a time where I could consistently count on a 2:1 return on marketing dollars spent to revenue made. 

But, that’s not the case any more.

Algorithmic sorting and the sheer amount of people paying for ads now has caused that reliability to plummet. Creating on those platforms feels an awful lot like working for Facebook and not myself. The mental math equation went from “What do I think our fans would like?” to “What do I think will break through the algo that our fans will tolerate?”

“The short answer is you have to start looking at and leveraging trends, which by-in-large, are fucking lame.”

We’re a thrash band comprised of ghosts of vengeance. We shouldn’t be doing funny hand dances, or the running man.

All that pre-amble is leading somewhere, I promise.

In regards to how much effort it takes to create an email campaign, I’d say it’s slightly more. I’m not a great writer so it takes me a little longer to craft longer-form messaging to make a marketing email worth reading. However, 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. 

How long have you been managing an email list, and how do you get new people onto your email list in this digital and social media age?

We’ve been tepidly maintaining an email list since 2012. I say tepidly because we’ve really only been sending three to six emails a year. However, over time, that list has grown to about 1,200 subscribers. It’s not the world’s biggest list, but the way we’ve built it has made it extremely valuable and effective. 

The main source of email subscriptions is through online sales. On Bandcamp and merch.axeslasher.com folks who buy our merch have the option to opt-in to our email list.

The key here is that they’ve already shown major interest in the band by putting their hard-earned dollars into the equation. By opting-in at purchase, the audience on that list is much more engaged and more likely to be interested in things we do in the future.  

I got your recent October Horror Marathon email on October 1st. The last email was from July 31st. Is there any set schedule you stick to with these things?

Nope, and I feel like that’s something we need to be better at. Until recently I’ve always looked at email as an additional boost for announcements. New merch, new music, festival appearances. Things like that. 

Lastly, you use Mailchimp, which I recommend to a lot of folks. Do you have any one little secret tip or “hack” you picked up over the years with using it?

I love Mailchimp. The UX of creating, sending, and measuring campaigns is top-notch.

If I had one hack, it’d be to connect it to your online store6. You can start to see things like how much sales revenue your campaigns generate, as well as let you segment your list by amount spent. You can basically make a segment of your folks who are most invested, literally, and hit them with special offers or poll their opinion on what merch to make next. They’re the ones spending their own money on your dream — give them what they want!