This is how you start, heavy metal friends. As a label, you got information – new releases! Band signings! Deals!

Do this once a week, bare minimum. Two or three times a week preferably.

Stop worrying about coming off as spammy, because if you’re lucky at the most 5% of your followers will see any of your posts anyways.

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The stories we read, the big press items, the articles that go viral – they’re basically all text, an image, and some more text.

We’re all just moving images and text the internet.

All that to say, your email newsletter doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel.

An image, followed by some text. Just like… Instagram.

Should you use Substack? Mailchimp? CovertKit? TinyLetter?

It doesn’t matter, just fucking start your email newsletter.

Find someone who has an email newsletter you admire and ask them about it. Hell, ask me for some advice, just reply to this email with a question!

Let me help you start your Social Media Escape Plan for 2022. You can do this, I promise.

What’s the alternative?

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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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TEXTBOOK LANDING PAGE FLOW

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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It will get harder to reach your fans on social media in 2022.

The best time to start an email list was 10 years or 10 months ago. The second best time is right now. Today.

Buckle up.

In the world of email marketing, there’s something called a “lead magnet.” It’s a freebie, like a digital download (PDF, video, etc) that people use to get people on their email list.

People will say, “sign up and get my free guide on how to gain 1,000 Twitter followers in 10 days.”

Why do this?

EMAILS ARE VALUABLE

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.

So how do you get people to sign up for your email list?

Use your own lead magnet; offer something your fans want, and give them a way to get it in exchange for an email address.

For instance, we’ve all seen this sort of post on social media.

Not even 50% of your fans will see a post like that. And when you’re ready to release your hot new song, you have to start the attention-roulette game all over again.

Instead, let people sign up to be reminded when your hot new song is available.

Run those posts for a week or two, in between all your other posts.

Now that you have their email address, when your new song is ready you can email those fans directly, without worrying about social media algorithms.

This isn’t easy, though. It takes some planning. Much more planning than tossing up a social media post on a whim (and then wondering why it didn’t do much).

COLLECT THE EMAILS

In the example above, I used Tally to gather emails (I just used it for my Black Friday give-away, too). For my day job we’ve used TypeForm to collect emails for new project campaigns. You can get fancy with Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Elementor, Carrd, or even Substack, or Revue (which ties in super well with Twitter).

SEND THE EMAILS

Once you’ve collected the emails from your fans, don’t you dare send them to a BCC list in Gmail. Sign up for a Mailchimp account at the very least. You could also use Substack or Revue from above, though, though they offer less design options.

All that to say – when you’re ready to go live with your new song, video, or whatever, you send an email to your email list audience first. These are people who said “hell yes, let me know,” so treat them like the royalty that they are.

Statistically speaking more of your fans will see the email and click it than social media.

Example:
100 email subscribers, 29 people opened it: 29% SAW IT
1000 followers, 125 people saw it: just 12%

Sure, you probably won’t have 100 people on your email list right away, but you’re probably just starting out with email marketing, and you’ve been on social media for HALF A DECADE. Give it a minute.

Use this method multiple times over months and years, and you’ll grow a solid email list.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A LOT

The allure of social media is that most everyone can do it. You see what other people are doing; you just write some text, add a link, and hit publish. Then you’re done!

Unfortunately, most of your posts aren’t even seen, which means you have to keep posting, and staring at your phone, and “engaging,” to get any sort of results. This is hours of time that you could be working on your craft.

Or you could send one email a week and probably get the same results.

So, if you have some questions, reply to this email.

If all of this seems like too much, you could hire me to set it up for you, too (for about the cost of selling 10 CDs, or five vinyl records).

Reply to this email and we’ll make something happen.

ALSO:

“Without an email list, you might lose out on potential clients or customers just because they found you at the wrong time. But when you collect their email address, you get to show up in their inbox at regular intervals to strategically educate them until they are ready to buy,” from ConvertKit.

“People love to feel special and even though it’s a little silly, we all get that sense of pride when we get something first. And you can totally incorporate this into your email strategy. The general idea is that before you release anything, be it a blog post, tour tickets, new merch, or an album, you give your email subscribers first pickings,” TuneCore

Useful for when telling people about your new video or getting people on your email list!

And please, steal this idea:

Don’t just hand over all your photos from tour to social media outlets – put them on your site! Link to them from socials and your email list. Drive people to YOUR site. Make your site THE place to go for your art, your magic, your music!