Category: MarketingCategory: Marketing

Here’s the slowest, least-scalable way to grow your email list – “just ask, man.”

Want to reach a new audience that could help grow your fanbase?

Ask to be on a podcast.

Offer to write a cool feature for someone’s site that you like.

Did you make friends on a Discord? Don’t be a jerk, but maybe ask for someone to check out your newsletter on occasion.

Meet someone in real life and hit it off by talking about your art, your business, your offering? “Hey, I write about this stuff all the time, here’s the link to sign up for my newsletter.”

Have a cool back-and-forth on social media in the comments. DM them and ask them to subscribe.

Have a QR code on your merch table – people who sign up for your email list get 10% of their purchase, or a free sticker.

Neil Mason (LinkedIn) spent $3,000 on a photo booth to set up at shows. It runs on an iPad and captures people’s email addresses:

Since purchasing the photo booth, we’ve averaged 80 emails captured per show.

We’ve played 63 shows in 2023, with 62 to go.

80 x 63 = 5040 emails

I know not everyone reading this is in a band, or if you are, maybe you’re not interested in setting up a freaking PHOTOBOOTH, BUT… take these ideas and run with them.

Do interesting things, meet interesting people, and, on occasion ask them to check out your stuff.

I’ve been at this for 20+ years, first on the editorial side running music blogs like Buzzgrinder and Noisecreep, then on the PR / label side of things.

Every day, a hundred bands have a new music video to promote, but these creative, gifted, genius artists only seem to know one way to announce their new creative vision to the world:

NEW VIDEO [link]

Hours of planning, hiring a director, gathering equipment, location scouting, lighting, permits, and a long ass day playing in the woods or in an abandoned warehouse, and when it’s time to announce it to the world – the creative well is empty.

Now obviously the videos below don’t need my help.

Let these serve as a imaginative starting point for your own creative projects – videos, new songs, new products, whatever you’re offering to the world.

Imagine each of these examples below as an email subject line, or a social media post, with a still shot from the video, and the short blurb as the caption.

1. We just shot a video at Giants Stadium in NJ!
2. Recognize the NYC music stores we hit while filming this video?
3. Hey you! Stop making out in the pit and watch us perform!

1. Boiling heat, summer stench – our new music video has it all
2. Baby goats, a dead bee keeper, lizard ladies and more
3. Put another Barbie on the grill!

1. How many Dave Mustaine’s can you count in our latest video?
2. Mankind has got to know… his limitations.
3. Zero human brains were injured in our new video

1. Most everything on the set for our latest video is from Rob’s house
2. See what it’s like to jump around in our singers house in our new video
3. We paid our friend $50 to walk around LA in a robot suit

These are tongue in cheek, of course, but you have to find the style and vibe and tone for your own work.

Make your announcements as creative as the work you’re promoting.

If you don’t think you have anything interesting to send an email once a week to your fans, tell me: what are you posting multiple times per day across several social media platforms?

It’s more mullet marketing.

Party in the back: social media is fun and loose!
Business in the front: email is for transactions! Sales!

All that stuff you share on social media (that a fraction of your audience even sees) are all things your fans enjoy and read and share.

You know this by the likes and comments.

And how many times have we seen metal blogs make an entire story about a band member’s social media post?

And who doesn’t love peteY? Business in the email (LOGO, TEXT, BUTTONS), party on the socials:

Yes, I know peteY’s whimsical videos on socials are the marketing for his real-life music which seems to be doing very well (this email was sent via UMG), but… as a fan which feels more familiar? This adorable face on the screen, or… big pre-save buttons?

And while Stray From The Path probably won’t send out an email of Craig’s rants (but shit, I’d subscribe), well… there’s no email list to subscribe to on their website anyways, so what’s any of this even matter?! Hah!

GET TO THE POINT, SETH.

What I mean is this: the audience you’re reaching on social media seems to enjoy your photos and writing and videos and commentary.

Why not share some of that with your email list audience?

I’ve heard the mullet described as, “business in the front, party in the back.”

Usually, an artist’s social media feeds is the party.

Loose and free, filled with witty rants, spontaneous photos, and lengthy captions.

The likes pour in, the replies, the engagement.

That’s the “party in the back.”

But then you subscribe to an artist’s email newsletter and get their “email blast.”

Some images, text, a button that says “BUY NOW.”

No lively text. No attitude. No swagger.

That’s “business in the front.”

Please, go ahead and break my inbox and my heart with your sad tales from the road. I can take it.

Show up in my inbox like you do on my social media feeds.

Make me laugh with your snarky videos, and your dry humor.

Include some photos from tour, the studio, and your practice space.

Instead of giving Zuck & Musk your best material for them to monetize, pour your magic into the emails that you send to your fans.

➡️ Here’s Dave Karpf (an Internet politics professor at GWU) talking about reach on Twitter. It’s going down, friends!

When I tweet something, it isn’t actually viewed by 42,000 individuals. It’s seen by the subset of those 42,000 people.

…

I didn’t reach 42,000 people by tweeting my article. I reached less than 3,000 people. And that has been pretty consistent. Unless I write something spicy that gets a lot of retweets, the view-counter tells me I’m reaching 2,000-3,000 people.

That means he’s reaching about 7% of his Twitter Audience.

Go look at the big music media outlets and bands and run those numbers. Or maybe don’t. Yikes.

➡️ Wondering why your Instagram posts aren’t clicking? Maybe because the algorithm likes promoting hate instead!

White Christian nationalist “groypers” are thriving on Instagram, posting memes with racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic tropes while others pose as clean-cut conservatives to lure in new, college-aged recruits. 

➡️ Heads up – your tour announcements and product drops on Facebook might have to compete with Donald Trump once again – fun!

President Donald Trump will soon regain access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. Meta, the parent company of the two platforms, claims that “new guardrails” are in place to keep the former president in line.

➡️ Oh look, Elon Musk continues being bad at being a “free speech absolutist”:

Twitter has censored links to a BBC documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the request of the Indian government, despite CEO Elon Musk’s previously stated commitments to free speech on the platform.

YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE PLAN

Okay, some more “glass is half-full” pieces to provide some hope in getting your fans from social media to your website / email list / store.

This from Louise Stigell from Confessions Of A Terrified Creative, in her post ‘How do I market my art without social media?’

Social media is the “shotgun” approach to marketing and selling art. We put our art out there and hope and pray that someone will stumble over it and will want to hire us or buy art from us. This approach might have worked back in the day, for some. But even then, many successful artists I’ve read about have said that a miniscule amount of their sales or leads have come from social media.

Stigell is writing from an artist’s perspective, but I think it’s still a good read for any creative person out there.

So think less shotgun, and more direct.

Export your Bandcamp sales emails, and send a for-real newsletter to your fans (be sure to provide an opt-out if some of those emails are a year old or more).

Make quick videos of you replying to comments from social media, and upload directly in the replies for that ONE PERSON. Wow your fans.

Start working with other folks – collaborate on a project together. Make cool stuff that you want to show your friends. Make videos. Make a zine. Make a shirt. Release a mini-movie on a site with your talented friends. Document a skate trip or hike.

You’re more exciting than a show about storage lockers – put that out into the world.

And of course, make sure your fans actually see it. Don’t just scream about it over and over again on social media platforms that “let you” reach less than 10% of your fans.

➡️ Get in touch: seth@socialmediaescape.club