Musicians may want to only create play music, but the reality is they do need to spend some time marketing themselves in order to get out there to existing and new fans, and to generate enduring and increasing interest. If you’re a musician and you want more people to hear you, marketing with emails can be a great tool if you know what you’re doing. Here are 7 tips to get you started.
- Begin with what you’ve got
Start with the contacts you have already made ie. collate all the emails of people you currently have, and ideally put them into a spreadsheet as this is how an email marketing platform will integrate them into their system. It gives you a list to work and grow from.
- Use an email marketing platform
There are several of these around like Mailchimp and iContact and are really worth it if you want to run an effective marketing campaign and send out lots of emails. A platform will help produce professional-looking multimedia emails, cope with a large number of inboxes, and will make sure emails don’t land in junk folders. They also have the technology to track the performance success of your emails, click-throughs, etc. so you can make the right decisions going forward with your marketing.
- Plan around a calendar
The easiest way to plan when you’re going to send emails to fans is to create a calendar. This can include all upcoming events, like gigs and the release of new music videos. A calendar also let you lay out and view all the different types of emails you are intending to send, so you can make sure you have enough variety, and that the time intervals between emails are optimal. If you’re organized with your dates, it’ll be easier to organize your most effective content.
- Continue to grow
Have a great website with a call-to-action email sign up tool so that any fans interested in you can sign up to your mailing list easily. Another good idea, through your website, is to offer discounts on merchandise, sneak peeks of new videos, and links to download free songs – although offer these sparingly. If you make your fans feel valuable and special, with unique and exclusive content, it helps to build long-term relationships and fosters support and loyalty.
Other ideas are competitions and giveaways, or blog articles explaining the meaning of lyrics. If you want to avoid direct marketing, you can have a link in your sidebar to buy a track or merchandise. The aim is not out-and out selling but building a connection with your fans.
- Try a marketing template
Marketing platforms for emails will offer a variety of templates to choose from, usually from a drop-down menu. Choose a template that’s both attractive and personal to you and include a recognisable logo, as well as using the same font, colours, and style for each email. When a fan receives something from you, they will know immediately it’s you getting in touch with them. You can also personalise each email with the recipient’s name to make your fan feel special – which they are!
- Write engaging copy
Persuasive writing is where it’s at when it comes to marketing, and although you may be naturally more adept at writing lyrics, great copy will really be beneficial is selling yourself and your music. Fortunately, you have multimedia on your side and very much to your advantage: Music videos, links to songs, recordings of jamming sessions, filming of the song-writing process… you have plenty of scope for immediate and great content. But think what message you want to go along with these, how to keep your fans excited, engaged and always wanting to see what you’re going to come up with next. Vary your message and your words, and study articles on persuasive writing. Remember, people like stories – true not just of your songs, but your email content, too.
- Monitor your progress
Keep a running check on how your emails are doing, how many people open them, the click-through rates etc. This data can be provided by your email platform but learn how to read and analyse it. Test and split test your emails to see which ones work best for you.
Musicians are creative but they also need to get creative when it comes to marketing themselves if they want to reach and gain more fans. The above strategies for optimizing an effective email campaign should help you strike the right note in bringing your music to the people and curating and maintaining a loyal fanbase who will always want to listen to what you’ve got to say.
Rebecca Leigh is a marketing strategy writer for Academized.
