One of the best promotional tools at an independent musician’s disposal is the email newsletter. It’s a direct connection to your fans that builds a bridge for strong, long lasting connections. If done the right way, your email list can convert standby fans into loyal supporters. How is that done? By making subscribers your number one priority, providing authentic artistic content, and promoting back-and-forth dialogue between you and your subscribers, you can establish an enduring rapport with them that will lead to years and years of physical, financial, mental, and emotional support. But, if not done correctly, you can stunt the growth of your fanbase before it even gets off the ground. Let’s talk about what not to do with emails as an independent artist.
+How to Build up Your Email List
+Best Free Trick to Get More Mailing List Subscribers
Do Not Wait Too Long Between Emails
Any marketing guru will tell you that repetition is key to influencing behavior. That’s why you continue to see the same commercials, billboards, or hear the same music on the radio. Repetition is a major factor in generating awareness in the minds of your audience. The same principle holds true with emails and your subscribers. The more consistently you send emails, the more likely they will be to remember you. However, if you wait too long between those emails, they won’t remember who you are and your message will fall on deaf ears.
In my opinion, your subscribers need to hear from you at least once a month, if not more. I recently got into the habit of sending out an email once every two weeks. I don’t think my list can bear any more than that. This might be different for you, though. Depending on what type of music you do and what your platform is, your subs may want to hear from you once a week. Test it out and see what works. Pay attention to open rates and unsubscribe rates to find your sweet spot. See if you can identify a correlation between the consistency of your emails and unsubscribe rates, SPAM complaints, or open rates.
TIP: Be careful with open rates. Email newsletter platforms don’t always report the right numbers. Many times people are reading your emails, but they don’t have images turned on in their email platform. Without images turned on, your email newsletter platform has no way of knowing that the email was ever opened.
Do Not Write Super Long Emails
When an email is first opened, many people scroll through it all the way to the bottom to see how long it is. Depending on what they are doing at the moment, they might automatically delete the email if it is too long, or put it on hold to read later, or just not read it at all. It’s best to keep your emails brief. Remember, your subscribers have lives. I’ll go as far to say that they probably have really stressful days. So making your email refreshing, fun, and quick can add to their highlights instead of it being a task.
Do Not Complain, Whine, or Punish Your Subs
It may seem natural to share your disappointments and let-downs. But tread lightly when telling your subscribers about it. You might come off as throwing a tantrum or whining. Even if your complaint is not directly toward them, don’t use them as a dumping ground. It’s good to share the reality of being an independent artist every now and then which has its ups and downs. But, make sure you’re balancing that out with good things too! They fantasize that your job is cool and glamorous. They are living vicariously through you. Embrace that by appealing to these fantasies. There’s an old saying – ‘You’ll catch more flies with honey.’ The point here is that being positive is a lot more effective than being negative.
Additionally, be careful not to alienate your subscribers. I have been on mailing lists and have seen this with my own eyes! I’ve seen musicians complain about their own subscribers. They say things like “so and so unsubscribed and here’s what I told them.” Another thing I’ve encountered that musicians say is, ‘if you don’t like such and such you can unsubscribe.’ I understand that sometimes you have to address negativity, but tread lightly. You don’t want to alienate or punish your loyal subscribers on account of a few bad apples.
Do Not Add People To Your List Who Have Not Given Their Permission
You’ll get into a lot of trouble if you end up on a SPAM list. Email programs will automatically block your emails if too many people report you as SPAM. To avoid this, be sure to ask for permission before adding anyone to your list. People who didn’t give their permission to be added to your list will more than likely report you as SPAM. Too many SPAM reports will cause you to be blocked and you’ll be in email jail. When an email provider such as Gmail, blocks you, you won’t be able to send any emails to any of your subscribers who use Gmail for a long, long time. This is NOT an ideal position to be in especially when email is one of your biggest promotional tools.
More tips to avoid being reported as SPAM…
It’s very important to include the unsubscribe link at the bottom of your emails as well so that people have the choice of unsubscribing rather than flagging your email as SPAM.
Also, be diligent about cleaning your email list at least every six months. If you see that a subscriber hasn’t opened your email in six months, send them a warning email asking if they’re still interested. If they say no or you don’t hear anything back, remove them from the list yourself. Studies have shown that these people will eventually either unsubscribe, or worse, report you as SPAM. If you remove them first, you’ll be able to get them off before they have a chance to do so.
By doing these things you are protecting the quality and integrity of your list. The higher the quality of your list, the better chances you have of making money and expanding yourself as an artist. Warning, don’t be like me and let your list sit around with cob webs! Check out what I ran into when I lost over 1k subscribers! Eek!
Do Not Write One-Sided Emails
As I mentioned earlier in this post, the beauty of having an email list as a musician is being able to establish rapport with your supporters. A genuine rapport requires open dialogue with communication going back and forth between the two parties. Similarly, you can build a strong relationship with each of your subscribers by making your content more engaging. You can do this by asking questions, asking for their input, asking them to hit reply and send you something back, asking how things are going with them, etc. Any open ended question will do. Don’t just make your emails about you. Make it about them too. You wouldn’t want to have a one-sided relationship with someone in your life where they’re always talking about themselves, right? Give your subscribers an opportunity to converse with you. Just remember to respond back in a timely fashion when they do.
Your email list is one of the few tools you have to reach your subscribers directly. Use it wisely! Make sure you keep it consistent, brief, positive, and healthy. These are the people who have made a choice to be on your side. Take care of them by keeping in touch with them and giving them good content. If you’re looking for a great, easy-to-use platform to design and send out beautiful emails, try MailerLite! I’m using it and it’s been really helpful in building my business.
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