Email Marketing for Musicians

For today’s artists and bands looking to build a full-time music career, email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools at a musician's disposal. With the ability to reach fans directly in their inboxes, email marketing allows musicians to cultivate deeper connections, promote new releases and engage with their audience on a more personal level. So let’s explore some best practices and how musicians can harness the power of email marketing to grow their audience, build a loyal fanbase and advance their careers.

Build Your Subscribers:

Having a large number of subscribers is the foundation for email marketing for musicians. Start by collecting email addresses from fans at live shows and by placing signup forms on your social media channels and your music website. Offer incentives such as unique content, free downloads or merchandise discounts to encourage fans to become newsletter subscribers. Be transparent about how often you'll be sending emails and what type of content they can expect to receive.

Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform:

Selecting the right email marketing platform is crucial for achieving your email marketing goals. Most services will allow you to create engaging campaigns, track performance metrics and generate different types of signup forms to capture email addresses. When selecting your service, the first thing you want to look for is whether it has a user-friendly interface because if it's hard for you to use you won't. Next, see if the service has customizable templates and if they collect analytics on items like open rate and click rate. We recommend using MailChimp to our members, but there are lots of other options, so choose the one that feels right to you. The key feature to look for is automation. You want to use automation to immediately send new subscribers a Welcome Message when they join your community. In addition to welcome emails, automation provides an easy way to send email sequences, which are a series of emails that are sent over a predetermine length of time. In short, it's an easy to use tool that helps you engage with fans without lifting a finger.

Craft Compelling Content:

Once you've chosen an email marketing platform, it's time to craft compelling content that will resonate with your fan base. Meaning, in addition a traditional newsletter, you need to create different types of emails tailor-made to provide value to your audience. You can choose to focus on exclusive behind-the-scenes insights or rare music videos, early access to new music releases or special offers on merchandise - get creative! Some best practices for writing include, being authentic, personable and always include elements of your brand. Write catchy subject lines that piques fans' curiosity compelling them to open and read each one of your emails. Also you don't have to solely talk music, look for new opportunities to interact with fans using your personal interests. We have members that share cooking recipes, inspirational quotes and wellness tips. Quick tip, whatever topics and activities you enjoy sharing with your friends, try sharing with your audience. It can be challenging to create extra content that is unique from what you post on your social media channels, but this list of people are members of your fan club, which makes them worth the extra time. After all, good marketing managers know not to neglect their core audience.

Segment Your Audience:

Segmenting your subscribers allows you to target specific groups of people with personalized content that is relevant to their interests and preferences. Divide your audience based on factors such as location, engagement level or purchase history. This allows you to deliver more targeted and effective email campaigns that resonate with different segments of your fanbase. Some segmenting can be done immediately using your email signup form, but the rest will need to be addressed once members join. For the record, we understand that segmenting may not seem important when you have 10 subscribers and you're right. However, we have plenty of examples of artists that had to organize 500 subscribers or more and it's an absolute nightmare, so it's smart to segment as you go.

Nurture Your Relationship:

The moment someone signs up for your mailing list is the day they become a fan. Why? Because, by giving you their direct email, they are saying that they want to stay up to date on your career. With that in mind, your job is to begin to grow that relationship. This can be done through traditional email marketing campaigns, but we typically recommend using a fan's email to send them a private message using your personal email. Sending a private message is a great way to build a connection with someone because it shows you want to get to know them and not just get something from them.

Offer Exclusive Content and Incentives:

Reward your email subscribers with exclusive content, special offers and incentives to show appreciation for their support. Offer early access to new music releases, exclusive behind-the-scenes footage merchandise discounts or VIP experiences. Providing exclusive benefits to your email subscribers helps foster a sense of loyalty and encourages them to remain engaged with your music.

Promote Your Music and Events:

Use email marketing to promote your music releases, upcoming shows, tours and other events. Send out announcements, teasers and reminders to keep your fans informed and engaged. Include links to where they can listen to your music, buy tickets for tour dates and engage with you on the different social media platforms. You want to make it easy for your most engaged fans to support your music and attend your events. And when you're promoting, don't simply convey what you're selling, tell them why they should care. It's always a great idea to put your promotion into context using stories that makes fans feel like their being included in an experience vs simply being sold to. From my experience, it's your best bet for helping them become supporters.

Encourage Fan Engagement:

Encourage fan engagement by inviting subscribers to participate in polls, surveys, contests or fan Q&A sessions. Ask for feedback on your music, merchandise or upcoming projects and incorporate their input into your creative process. Create opportunities for fans to interact with you directly, share in your career experience and make them feel like valued members of your music family.

Monitor and Analyze Performance:

Yes, this is the boring part of email marketing, but doing without learning is pointless, so if you want your marketing efforts to be effective, you need to track the performance of your email campaigns using analytics provided by your email marketing platform. Monitor metrics such as open rates, click-through rates and unsubscribe rates to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns. If you have low open rates, it means your subject lines need some work and if you have low click-through rates your content needs work. Use this data to refine your email marketing strategy and make data-driven decisions to better serve your audience.

Stay Consistent and Engaged:

Consistency is key when it comes to email marketing for musicians, as are the types of emails you send. Set a regular schedule for sending out emails, whether it's weekly, bi-weekly or monthly and try to stick to it. Stay engaged with your audience by regularly communicating with them, sharing updates and providing valuable content that keeps them excited and invested in your music journey.

That said, here's one of our key email marketing tips. Don't send emails simply because you want to stick to a schedule, email marketing is not like maintaining your social media presence, it's an art form that, when done right, allows you to create true fans and supporters. That means, you need to have something of value to share with fans, otherwise you'll be training your audience to see your emails as unimportant or irrelevant. If you don't have something important to say, because things are musically slow, it's better to wait and send an email when you do have something important to share. This is one of the simple basics of building relationships.

Quick tip, this is another reason why sharing personal interests and stories is important. If you have additional topics, besides music, that your fans like engaging with, it gives you other things to talk about when you don't have too much musically to discuss or if you're taking a break from music to relax a bit.

So to wrap this up, email marketing is a powerful tool for musicians to connect with their fans, promote their music, share their tour dates and grow their careers. By building a strong bond with subscribers, crafting compelling content and engaging with fans consistently, you can use the power of email to transform your fans into financial supporters and achieve your music career goals. If you aren't earning money from your career, take a look at you're utilizing your mailing list.

If you want to learn How to BUILD a music career from SCRATCH, I encourage you to check out our online artist development program the Musician Success Blueprint.

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