1. People Generally Check Their Emails
One of the best things about having a mailing list with all of your
fans on it, is you can contact them easily any time you want. While some
people may not check their other online accounts daily, people
generally do check their emails. After all, everything goes through
there. Their Facebook account, their Twitter account, their gym
membership, their work related things, and much more. Therefore, having
access to their email address means your message should get in front of
them.
People are often very responsive to their email messages. As long as
you’re something of interest to them and you have an enticing heading,
there is a good chance they’ll go on to open your email and read it
through. Once they get in the habit of doing that, as long as you keep
providing useful information and songs, they will stay a reader for
life.
2. Retain More Fans By Getting Them On Your Mailing List
When people visit your website, a lot of them will probably have a
look around, download a song or two, and never come back again. That’s
just the way of the web. While they may like what you have to offer,
there’s just so much to look at on the net. Because of this, unless you
do something to retain your visitors, many people will only visit your
site once and never return.
One of the best ways of retaining a visitor is to get them to sign up
to your mailing list. If you get them on your list, you will have
access to them whenever you want. You can also encourage them to come
back to your site when you need to.
3. Remind People You Exist Through Your Emails
Like I said, the net has so many different things to offer people.
There’s always something new to see or do on the web, so unless you’re
always in someone’s face they could forget about you very easily. If you
manage to capture their email address when they visited your website
however, you have the ability to remind people you exist. When you send
them messages (Be sure not to email them too much) you are effectively
appearing on their raider again. If they remember about you, there is a
good chance they’ll go back to your site to see what’s new.
4. Email Marketing Builds Up A Relationship With Fans Of Your Music
Once you have people on your list, you have to market to them with
emails. This isn’t as cold as it sounds however, and it can actually
help improve your relationship with your fans. The more someone hears
from someone or about something, the more they become accustomed to it.
As long as you don’t overdo it, people will warm to you once you have
been sending them messages for a while. You want to make people feel as
if they almost really know you, and have them feel involved in your
development as a musician. If you can make them feel like that, people
will buy into you and your products. After all, why WOULDN’T you buy
something that you’ve had a hand in making?
5. Funnel Fans To Where You Want Them With Your Messages
Emails are great, as they allow you to draw attention to a specific
going on or area you want people to pay attention to. Let’s say for
example you have a big gig coming up, you could always email your
visitors and let them know that this is happening. You could also
include a link to a page where they can read more information about the
gig, and a link to where they can buy tickets to attend. This minimises
the chance that people will miss anything to do with your music, as you
can easily highlight the most important parts.
6. Mailing Lists Show The Most Dedicated Fans Of Your
Music
As I’m sure you know, there are different levels of fans. Some of
your fans may think you’re all right, but they may also like lots of
other musicians and bands. They’ll open the odd email from you if the
header sounds interesting, but they wouldn’t always open them or follow
any links your provide in these emails.
On the other hand, there will be fans who open all your emails as
they have a big interest in you. They will often look further into the
information you provide in your emails, and most likely go on to buy
your new releases.
When you sign up to a mailing list provider, you are provided with
stats for free. These stats show you quickly and easily who your most
dedicated subscribers are, who in turn are probably your most dedicated
fans. Once you know who they are, you should go out of your way to give
them free bonuses and make them feel welcome. They are generally the
ones that will buy your releases and help spread the word about you, so
make sure you keep them happy.
7. Easy To Promote Your Song And Merchandise Releases
Then great things about when people sign up to your mailing list, is
they pre-qualify themselves as people who could be serious about your
music. If someone goes on your website and isn’t too impressed with what
they’re seeing, they’re not going to sign up to your mailing list, let
along buy one of your songs. If they do like your music and want to hear
more from your however, there’s a good chance they’ll sign up. They
actually want to hear from you, and have made that clear.
These are the ideal people to sell to, as they are
targeted visitors.
What’s more, you now have unlimited access to them whenever you want.
This is ideal if you have a song or album to release, what better way to
make some initial sales then to promote your new release to your
mailing list?
I’d advise you don’t over bombard them with emails during the time of
your music release, as people will get annoyed by this. If they get
annoyed, they will unsubscribe and you won’t have access to them any
more. I’d suggest you message them twice about the release, maybe once
to say it’s coming next week, and another time to say it’s out now. If
you’re running a special offer e.g. The song is reduced in price for the
first week, you can message them once more when the special offer is
about to run out, reminding them of that. I’d say you don’t message them
any more then that though, people don’t generally like being sold to so
don’t push them. If they want to buy your music, they will during one
of the first two emails. Therefore, sending a third will just wind them
up.
8. Email Marketing Encourages Fans To Interact With Your Music
A good idea is to add autoresponder messages to your email marketing
campaign. Autoresponder messages are messages that are sent out
automatically once a certain condition is met e.g. Someone has been on
your list for 30 days. If you send people a free songs automatically say
once a month, you are reminding people what you can do, and encouraging
them stay a fan of your music. You can also offer them more to do,
telling them if they liked that song they can go and buy the rest of the
songs on your website. Be sure to add a link to the relevant page on
your website where they can buy it, as if you make it difficult for
people you will lose sales.
You can also use your emails to get people involved with your music
via competitions, via asking them their opinions on things, and by
generally having two way communications with them. There are a lot of
different ways to do this, so use your imagination and make them feel
like they’re part of something special.
How To Build Your Own Mailing List
So now you know how important building a mailing list is, how do you
actually go about building one? Well, we look at exactly this in
lesson 5 of the IMA Music Business Academy.
We also show you how to start raking in the subscribers, how to market
to your list effectively, and lots of other great tips and advice that
will have things moving in the right way. So if you want to learn more,
check out the Academy now.
Email Marketing For Musicians Conclusion
As you can see, incorporating email marketing into your music career
can be very beneficial to you. Communicating effectively with fans have
never been more important to the independent musician, or musician at
any level. Having them on your mailing list makes this more easy then
ever, and is cheap to set up. If you want to take your music career
seriously and want to start moving forward, you need to set up your
mailing list and start building up a relationship with your fans today.
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