Social media is a great way to connect with fans, but if you’re looking to make some real money from your band, it’s not an amazing business tool. Often, you’ll end up being enticed to spend way too much money on something which doesn’t have a long future anyway – apps come and go, and it’s almost guaranteed that Facebook and Twitter’s popularity won’t last for as long as the internet does.
But one part of the communication-based internet which has always stood strong is email. This might be because of its business links – many businesses use emails, and they are seen as professional and fairly secure when compared to social media – or its solid structure and widespread, consistent popularity, but, whatever the case, email is clearly here to stay. So, how can you use it for your band’s gain?
Email Lists
Email lists are about as literal as you can imagine: they’re lists of emails which you have collected from people, presumably fans, who are willing to be contacted by you, by email, at random. These emails could be newsletters or reels of memes, but your fans are putting their trust in you to deliver them quality content, whatever that might be in your case. Newsletters and announcements are usually the way to go, with many fans appreciating these as less informal ways to see how you are doing than late-night Instagram stories and pictures of concerts on Facebook. Getting a larger email list increases your reach from emails, making them better forms of communication as you get more popular.
Signup Boxes
If your band already has a website, try and make sure that users are prompted to either sign in or literally add their emails to a mailing list with a popup box or other type of prompt. Encouraging sign-ups with merchandise purchases is also a good call, and ordering some form of business cards might not go amiss for this purpose. But making sure that a signup box is close by and prominent will make it easier to gather emails, so long as you remember to add a checkbox asking if they consent to the gathering of their email.
Free Gift
People love getting something for nothing, so why not give them something for the small, small price of giving away their email? For bands, I would recommend something musical, since your fans are going to obviously like your music, and that would be pretty inexpensive. Some sort of free MP3 file of one of your songs, or an exclusive poster which the user can download, would appeal to that sort of crowd. In order to get peoples’ emails in the first place, an incentive is a good idea, so displaying this incentive clearly on your website – near the signup – can boost the amount of people deciding that they should be on your mailing list.
Create Amazing Content
This should go without saying, but you have to make your emails stand out and look professional. If your emails look rubbish, fans could mistake them for spam and delete them without even looking at them, wasting your time and resources as well as the fan’s, so try and keep your emails as professional as possible – without becoming corporate, of course! Spell checking can be a lifesaver, and even just using a template from online can increase the aesthetics of your emails by a lot, making them kinder on the eyes. Sometimes, if you don’t have a design background, it can be difficult to decide what works and what doesn’t, so hiring someone – even if it’s just a freelancer – to help or even create your emails could be the way forward for your band.
Gets Fans Involved
If someone knows that they’re going to be featured in your next email, they’ll likely look out for it and show it to their family and all their friends, increasing your reach by a lot. Running little competitions within your emails and encouraging people to respond and reply by including questions or opinions can improve engagement, and make fans excited for your next email. This will also increase your band’s good reputation for communicating with and appreciating fans, which may give you a lot of respect within the music industry, so it’s a win-win situation.
Courtesy of Ashley Halsey.
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