For an email campaign to work, it’s gotta get opened – hello, subject lines.

The subject line is what your fan sees in their inbox, along with all the other subject lines from everything else they get everyday.

There’s two good ways to figure out if your subject lines are working:

1. A/B testing, which means sending two versions of the same email to a subset of your email list with different subject lines, then measuring the performance of each. You can do this with services like Mailchimp, but not Substack.
2. Check older emails and see which ones got opened more.

If you only send three emails a year, though, this won’t work.

It’d be like playing three songs at a show every night. Gonna be hard to nail down what’s actually landing with your audience.

But, really?

Regardless of subject line, the best opened email is one that people expect and really want.

Take for instance 

Stream N’ Destroy from our friend Ryan J. Downey:

If you’re not familiar with Stream N’ Destroy, ehh.. those subject lines aren’t too thrilling, right?

But guess what?

It doesn’t matter, because people who subscribe (music industry folks in the metal and hard rock world) know what they’re getting when Stream N’ Destroy shows up in their inbox.

These are some recent emails from Trivium:

Notice they don’t just say “tour news,” or “updates!” These are clear and concise, and I bet they have a great open rate.

Basically, if no one is opening your email, take a step back and think – are you sending anything that’s really exciting?

Start with the subject line. Does it sing?

From there, would your fans sneak off the job to read your email in the bathroom?

If not, how do you get there?

That’s how to get people opening your emails.

Understand that you’re not just what you’re selling (an album, artwork, photography, attendance figures), you’re a fucking star.

Coca Cola commercials are more interesting than a 2L bottle of sugar water.
A live show is more interesting than a CD mock up.
Your Twitch stream is more interesting than a shirt.

There is no shortage of vinyl records or songs to stream on Spotify or podcasts to listen to.

But there’s only one of you.

Give yourself a break; you’re just one person.

From ‘Publishers move past seeing social media platforms as traffic drivers,’ over at Digiday:

“The Washington Post has about 16 people on its social team, which is split into two sub teams: its Instagram team and its ‘core social’ team, which focuses on all the other platforms.”

Maybe you don’t need 16 people, but you could probably use one full time person doing your socials, right?

This morning Embedded sent out ‘Promotional labor,’ which is well worth the read.

Over the past five years, social media platforms have demanded more and more work from their users in order fulfill the promise of keeping connected. If you want your followers to see you on Instagram, you can’t just post a picture, you have to make a video. And if you want them to see the video, you need to produce, shoot, and edit it with some level of skill. And even then, if you’re not catering to a specific trend, the video still might flop—so you try again, and add “comment five times, go live for five minutes” to your growing list of unpaid tasks required for the basic privilege of being seen. 

More work for the chance of reaching your audience sounds horrible, and not a great investment.

Get your social media audience on your email list while you still can. Here’s a very basic plan on how to do that.

Go easy on yourself. You’re just one person, and your magic is probably mostly wrapped up in the main thing you do, like making art, playing bass, or releasing records.

That’s why you have a fanbase in the first place.

Hey, so it’s been 500 days since I launched HEAVY METAL EMAIL, and here’s some things I learned along the way about running a very niche email newsletter.

➡️ I got more sign ups from Substack than all of the social media networks put together. Lots of people subscribe to various newsletters on Substack, which makes it easy for them to subscribe.

➡️ I mostly stopped promoting HEAVY METAL EMAIL on social media months ago, and stopped the LINKINBIO dance.

Now I use the extra time to write better newsletters – take care of the people in front of you, and stop chasing MORE subscribers / fans.

Hone you craft, learn new skills, build better.

➡️ One of my most popular posts was my interview with Matt DeBenedictis, Manager of Compliance at Mailchimp.

Think of all the different people you could collaborate with in your orbit.

Not just because they’ll share it with all their social followers (and reach like 5% of their audience, bah!) – but because you’re making something awesome together, and that good energy flows in places that aren’t controlled by algorithms.

I hit 250 subscribers around December 24th, 2022 (and wrote about it here), so in the last 74 days I grew HEAVY METAL EMAIL by 58 subscribers, mostly without social media.

I get it – the allure of social media is real. But here in 2023 we’re all spending multiple hours a day on these platforms already.

What’s next? More hours?

That’s the only thing these platforms are interested in – keeping you hooked on what they offer so they can mine your data and show you more ads.

I’ve been saying it for years – it will never get easier to reach your fans on social media. It was hard last year, it’ll be harder this year. Best of luck in 2024.

Get a website, build an email list, and develop a real connection with your fans.

I was sick last week, so it’s taking me a minute to get back into the swing of things around here.

From ‘Leaving Social Media?’ by Lachrista Greco:

“My lit agent advises I keep the account active and I understand why. But I also know there was a time before social media. There was a time when none of us relied on this shit. There was a time before the tornado of “content creation” and “influencers” and “doomscrolling.”

Yes, “there was a time when none of us relied on this shit.”

I started my first music blog in 2001, five years before Twitter showed up (it was called Twttr back then).

Dillinger Escape Plan didn’t go viral on a social media platform, they just put on such an insane show that people had to talk about them. The old-school viral, I guess.

Music blogs, record stores, local venues, groups of friends, email lists – those things worked, and they still do.

It’s getting harder to say the same about social media.

Social media accounts are easy to make, which then makes it easy to impersonate official accounts and rip people off.

Big time jerks are pretending to work for Rolling Stone and taking money from artists in exchange for coverage.

We know this not just because someone from Rolling Stone Tweeted about it (could that be a fake account maybe?!?), but because it’s on the Rolling Stone website. And apparently it’s happening to Billboard reporters, too.

Metallica had to issue a statement back in December because scammers were streaming on, “fake YouTube channels posing to be ours and all pointing to websites that we do not run. Please remember — all of our official social media channels are verified.”

Then this weekend Avenged Sevenfold announced some festival appearance cancellations:

Metal Injection published it as a news piece, which makes sense, since the news came from the band’s official social media accounts.

But oops – it wasn’t true, at least according to the two festivals involved.

Bummer for the Welcome To Rockville and Sonic Temple social media teams to have to handle something like this on a Sunday afternoon, but hey – social media sure keeps you on your toes, right?

The posts on the A7x social media platforms have been removed, but as of writing this post (Feb 27, 2023 around 11am ET) no official explanation has been posted either on the band’s social media nor their official site.

Be sure to review all online security procedures, friends. And make sure you have an official website where you can publish announcements when shit like this happens, so your fans aren’t left in the dark!

I don’t care what sort of team you got, what gear you roll onto stage, or who took your band photo – you still gotta write a good song.

Same goes for this email marketing thing – your 10,000 subscribers don’t count for much when no one is opening them.

Write better songs.
Send better emails.

Check your social media feeds – what gets more likes? The most comments?

Make a social media post the start of your next email, like Church Road Records did back in December:

Make sure your writing and imagery are a reflection of your creative spirit:

We can see this in the heavy metal world in terms of sameness – same looking websites and social media feeds.

For a genre with such imaginative artwork, tour posters, and shirt designs, we can be pretty bland when it comes to actually promoting these things in creative ways.

Putting it all together into an email shouldn’t be difficult, as you’ve got an archive of material to work with, content you posted on social media over the years.

Remember, not everyone who follows you on social media will see every post. Hell, people who subscribe to your email newsletter won’t open every email, either.

Re-purposing the content you’ve already posted means less time thinking about your next email newsletter, and gives you a jump on the creative process.

Work on writing great songs, and turn your best social media content into an email newsletter that people look forward to and want to open.

Are (email newsletters) a temporary solution? An early bird gets the worm type scenario?

If I subscribed to an email list for every band that I would want to see on tour / buy a record from, then I would be getting TOO MANY NEWSLETTERS.

It’s a full time job to keep up with all the new songs, videos, and tour announcements from bands everyday. I ran Noisecreep for a few years, I know.

There was too much in 2009, there’s too much today. It’s impossible to keep up.

You also got newsletters from TV streaming services, clothing stores, Spotify, and Bandcamp when a band uploads a patch or sticker.

But you still announce your upcoming tour, even when Guns N’ Roses announces a bigger tour.

You still announce your tour, even though Furnace Fest just announced their line-up and everyone will be talking about it today.

When we post something on IG, send a press release, or upload to a DPS or YouTube, it’s lost in the shuffle the second it’s live.

So write a good subject line for your next email, use a good photo, and send it out.

And though I can’t promise anything, I can promise this; your first newsletter is gonna suck.

Garbage.

Just like the first song you ever wrote, the first show you ever played, the first tour you ever booked.

But the second one is slightly better, and the 10th one is okay, and by the 100th you’re a fucking pro.

So start today, while you can still reach some of your fans on social media, and tell them to sign up for your email list.

Our minds are twisted because we’re all “social media pros,” all because we’ve been on these platforms like Twitter since 2009. That’s 14 years (I’m one of the first 3000 people to sign up back in 2006).

But when Twitter goes away (and someday it will), kiss all those followers goodbye. They’re gone.

And if you’d been running an email newsletter for 14 years, and “only” signed up 1,000 people a year, you’d be able to reach 14,000 people the day Twitter goes offline.

I started my “Social Media Escape Plan” with this newsletter back in 2021.

I write about the nerdiest, most niche thing ever, but today I’ve got over 300 subscribers. If Twitter disappears tomorrow, I can still reach those 300 wonderful readers.

Social media is sexy, absolutely, but email is the long game.

If you haven’t heard by now, Twitter will be shutting off SMS two-factor authentication for free users. It’s the least secure version of the 2FA options (the more secure options are authenticator apps and security keys), but still, it’s confusing as hell to general Twitter users.

“Any users who do not subscribe to Twitter Blue, and still have the two-factor authentication by text enabled, will lose access to the service on March 20 if they do not opt out on their own.”

Don’t wait till you get hacked or lose access – figure out your social media lock out plan today!

Not to be outdone, Meta is joining the shit show by offering (gasp) customer support for your personal Facebook and Instagram accounts for $12/month:

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that a “Meta Verified” account will grant users a verified badge, increased visibility on the platforms, prioritized customer support, and more.

Pay $12/month for “increased visibility” on Facebook and Instagram.

Then pay $7/mo+ for Twitter Blue, which says “Tweets from verified users will be prioritized,” though that’s a feature that’s “coming soon.”

Get ready to shell out $20/mo to reach maybe 15% of your audience!