A guide to email communication for artists
Popular programs and web services for bulk sending out emails
With many companies offering bulk email sending services, it’s often difficult to see what would be best to use for your fans. Prices vary with the size of your email list and the level of tracking and reporting you require so it’s worth spending time choosing the write option for you.
The basic level of keeping in contact with fans by email is sending out a message from your band email account with the email address’ in the BCC field. The highest level of email communication treats each fan individually and tailors messages based on previous interest.
A rough list of bulk email providers:
Constant Contact – www.constantcontact.com
A paid-for browser based email collection and sending tool
Your Mailing List Provider – www.yourmailinglistprovider.com
Free up to 1,000 email addresses, funded by adverts. After 1,000 email address’ this become a paid for service.
Fanbridge – www.fanbridge.com
A paid-for browser based email collection and sending tool
Subscribed – www.subscribed.co.uk
A paid-for browser based email collection and sending tool
iContact – www.iContact.com
A paid-for browser based email collection and sending tool
MailChimp – www.Mailchimp.com
A paid-for browser based email collection and sending tool
PHP List – www.phplist.com
Free Open Source server software, which needs a bit of technical know-how to set-up but once installed on your web hosting, emails and data can be stored and sent through a web browser for free
PHPLIST is free to download and use, meaning that there are no costs per email, your databases can be as big and numerate as required and there is no advertising. All that is required is web hosting featuring MySQl/PHP (most web hosts should have this but this is worth checking, also check you are not prohibited from using mailing list software) and a little time to upload and properly install the program. As with most Open Source software this has been rigorously peer tested and there is a great deal of user generated documentation and support.
When choosing your bulk email product, there are a number of key factors to consider. Before committing to using any service, first make use of any free trial options to send a test message to at least a hotmail, gmail (google mail), yahoo and Microsoft Outlook based email account. After trialing a few different products, ask yourself a few questions about how you plan to use email:
How many emails do you intend to send per month to your database?
How much do you expect it to grow in the next 12 months?
How much time will you realistically have to send out emails?
How much time will you have to evaluate statistics and take care of your list?
The answers to these questions will help you understand how you plan to use email communication and in turn aide in deciding your product. If you don’t have time, for example, to spend much time evaluating your email but want to send out 2 or 3 times a month, you want to focus on a product that enables you to easily create and save templates and is as cheap as possible to send large numbers of email.
What data to collect
As a general rule of thumb at all of your sign-up points you want to be collecting the same details, this means that you can keep one clean and clear record of all your data.
To keep things manageable I would suggest just asking for name, email address and city, with mobile number as optional. Other fields you could include are:
Full address, Postcode, Age, AIM handle, myspace address, country…
The reason for the data suggested is that; email address is fundamental, name will usually help with any email address’s you can’t read from handwriting at a gig, the city will help you target your emails and the mobile number may well be useful as mobile communication becomes easier and more popular..
Where to Collect it
Sign-up sheet at a show:
The classic data collection tool, still as valid now as it has ever been. Make sure to provide plenty of space to write the email address and head the paper with the date, venue and city of the gig you are collecting from. Keep a sheet on the merch table or if this isn’t possible keep a copy with you after you play the show in or around the venue. If you are playing a big show it may be worth having a couple of friends to politely ask whether people would like to enjoy the mailing list, each person if possible should have two or three clipboards to deal more quickly with demand.
The quicker and easier the process is, the more likely it is that potential fans will sign-up.
Sign-up form on official website and Social Networks:
Collecting data from your social networks pages is a vital task that many artists do not place importance upon. Given the overwhelming amount of spam and ‘friend’ content that your average myspace/bebo/etc account is filled with, it may be difficult for you to effectively get a message across. Social network allegiance changes fairly rapidly and you may irretrievably lose contact with a fan when they stop being an active ‘friend’. Also it is an unfortunately regular occurrence for myspace, Bebo and even facebook music pages to be taken down or disappear entirely over night, taking with it all your contact with those fans.
This is not to say that email address’ are not subject to the above problems, but they do act as a sensible back-up. With governments bringing in tighter permission-marketing rules, spam email will decrease and the effectiveness of emailing your fans directly will continue to be useful.
Most email management programs will give you a ready made piece of html code to embed a sign-up form into a website. If you encounter problems with entering this html code into a social network/promotional site it is best to provide a large link to the page on your official site where the full sign-up form is. Trying to manipulate html to fit it onto a page and to counter any code bans on 3rd party sites (like social networks) may cause the information to be stored incorrectly or to not even save at all.
When a fan decides to enter the information to a sign-up form it is important that this can be done as quickly and simply as possible. It is conversely very important to have a clear and functioning unsubscribe link. Despite not wanting your fans to leave your emailing list, it is far better to do so than to plague people with unwanted emails. You stand a much higher chance of unsubscribers returning if you make the unsubscribe process as transparent and easy as possible.
Enticing sign-up
Signing up to an artists mailing list isn’t high on most peoples list of things to do, whether at a gig or on the internet. The prospect of receiving what are usually just bulk marketing messages from an artist does not entice someone to join a bands list. The act of joining therefore should be incentivised, there has to be something in it for the person signing up.
The most popular choices for incentivisation are free media, a competition or the prospect of what the email messages will contain in the future:
Free Media – Offering to send all those who join the mailing list a free mp3, video or background jpg is a very simple way of gaining many more sign-ups. What you are giving out is exclusive content but the real selling point is that it will be conveniently sent straight to the fan.
To make this incentive work to its fullest the free content must be sent quickly and simply to the fan, ideally in no more than 24 hrs from time of sign-up. If you want your new contact to have confidence in your band and to continue to look forward to your emails they must trust that you can fulfill promises. This initial test of your ability to do just that is crucial.
This could be done manually by attaching the content to an email and sending directly to all new subscribers as BCC. So once a day check your new sign-ups, copy all the email address’ into the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field, attach the media and send out.
There of course ways to automate this process which can be explored through your mailing list software or custom PHP/mysql coding. For example you could put a link to download a track on the confirmation of sign-up page which most bulk email providers allow you to edit.
A Competition – A quick and easy way to incetivise sign-up. All new sign-ups within a certain time frame will be entered into a prize-draw to win a competition. Competition prizes will usually be signed CDs/Vinyl/Merch, gig tickets or meet and greets.
It is good housekeeping on a competition like this to provide an end date and to inform all entrants as to who the winner was, i.e. “The winner of the signed 7” was Jenny from the UK.”. At every stage of the process building trust is important and letting everyone know that a winner was drawn is important in confirming that.
The Prospect Of What’s To Come – At the very least mailing list sign-ups should come with a description of what sort of things one can accept from signing-up. Try to be as specific as possible, “News and stuff” is not a good enough description.
Including text or video next to the sign-up form explaining why why you want the data and what you want to do with it, acts to encourage people to input their data. Show that this isn’t like signing up to a multinational company, this information is taken in an attempt to keep the fan better informed and by informing them of your intentions they are more likely to trust you with their data.
What To Send Out and When
The best rule of thumb for mailing lists is to make sure you balance your taking and your giving. When you contact a fan with tour dates, updates, new product etc you are asking for something from your fans. At the least you are asking for their time and involvement and at most you want them to part with their own money.
It is not the basis of a good relationship to constantly demand something without giving in return. While it is true that your fans may be interested in being kept up to date, will that make them want to open your email before all others?
Always bear in mind that you are not the only artist emailing each person, there could be 100’s of others all vying for the same pair of eyes to open and view their email. You have to consider what sets yours apart and why someone would want to read it.
The main criteria for good email communication –
Layout, Prose, Title, Reward, Frequency and Trust.
Layout
Delivering content that is easy to read and highlights key info is the goal of laying out any bulk email. To achieve this regularly it is good practice to develop an email template that you can use every time.
Test your content before sending it by test-sending it to and reading it in hotmail, gmail, yahoo and Outlook accounts.
Using complex html and images will inevitably cause problems. There are two solutions to this, the first is to use plain text and the second is to carefully design and rigorously test your design. With your email it is important to project your bands ‘image’ but remember that the chief goal is to deliver information and retain trust in the quality of your correspondence.
At the bottom of the email should be clear unsubscribe links as discussed previously. There should also be a link to sign-up to the email, as your fans may forward on your newsletter to friends or colleagues. Providing an easy way for them to jump on the mailing list increases the likelihood of them doing so.
Find out what works best for your audience, but for a starter here are a few suggestions:
Bullet point the main sets of information contained in the email at the start, in the order in which the content will appear in the email. This just allows for a fan to skip to the parts of the newsletter they are most interested in or that they don’t already know from elsewhere.
Include links (where possible) to buy the tickets/product you describe, the links should open in a new window and should deep link to the exact ticket or t-shirt size etc that it pertains to.
Place the most important information as close to the top of the email as possible.
Sign-off your email from the band as you would do in a letter i.e
“Hope to see you soon,
David, Matt, Ben and Joe”
This just makes the email seem a little less cold and impersonal.
Adding at the end a few links back to your main social networks like Bebo, Myspace and Facebook, as well as your official site, allow a fan to choose to continue finding out more if they wish to do so.
Prose
Take your time writing your newsletters as spelling mistakes and ambiguous sentences will severely reduce the joy of reading the email.
There is great scope for writing your personal thoughts, long winded diatribes and silly little phrases on your blog. The email-out though is primarily a fact-delivery system so make sure that along with a personable prose style, that you keep the ‘facts’ clear.
It’s worth bearing in mind that when your fans receive this email it will be read by its recipient, more often than not, sat at their computer on their own. Take into account that despite being a message to a large amount of people the email only ever reaches one person at a time and thus you should try and speak as if that one person is in front of you.
Take some time to sign up to other artists email list and look at how they present information and what the positive and negative aspects are of each.
Title
The title of your email is a crucial part of your email correspondence. Try to consider the title as a one line reply to a fan asking you “what’s new with the band?”, in this situation what would you say?
Remember that an email account may be filled with 100’s of new emails, from other artists, friends, work-related stuff, payment reminders, social network news, retail adverts etc. As the owner scans through their email your message should aim to achieve one of two things; Give them a summary of all the important info, whet their interest enough to open the email.
For each band and artist the way in which you achieve this depends on your target market, but it is nonetheless one of the most crucial aspects of this promotional tool. Once you have the fan opening your emails you should be able to maintain their interest in opening further email by the other facets of the promotional email.
Reward
To create a productive relationship with your readership there has to be an incentive for continuing to read, in the same way there is for signing up, as discussed above. A good rule of thumb here is to aim incentivise every third email…
Of course not every email should be about giving the fan a gift but remember that your email only reaches the fan upon their good-will, so keeping that should be a top priority.
What is an incentive?
An incentive should have value either in itself or due to its exclusivity. Here is a short list of some of the things you can do as incentives as either a part of a newsletter or an email on its own.
The exclusive first stream of a video or track
A link to download a video or track
The exclusive first announcement of gigs/tourdates, record releases etc
A competition only announced on the newsletter
Exclusive photo sets, 6-12 pictures not used elsewhere.
A newsletter only blog
There is no great cost involved in any of these, but it provides both a reward for the reader and, perhaps, as importantly, a token of recognition from the artist to the fan for their continued support.
Frequency
Email Newsletters need to be regular and only as frequent as your band is productive. There is no hard and fast rule to when and how often to send out your email messages, however there are a few pitfalls to avoid.
It is really bad fan management to just use your email list when it comes time for selling product. If you go quiet on sending out emails for 6 months then send a couple of emails, saying “ we are on tour” and then “we have an album out”, you are sending out spam. This is not a process of give and take anymore and the fan will feel they are being used rather than being informed.
Keeping up a consistent dialogue is a balance between keeping the content interesting and keeping it consistently delivered. Using an online calendar such as Google Calendar can help in keeping content regularly delivered, setting reminders for yourself that new content is due.
If you can get a main update every month, then you are on target for keeping your fan base happy. Depending on how well your data is segregated, you could also send smaller but useful emails out to your database as well. For example you could send out an email to all your London fans about a gig you are playing in Brixton, with a multimap link to help them find the venue, myspace links for all the other bands playing and maybe a few words about what songs will be in the set. Maybe even suggest a pub where you are going to have a few drinks during the day.
Trying to breakdown the formality of band ‘email newsletters’ is key. Some major label bands have a few faceless employees sending out information based emails intended to sell gig tickets and push product. It is very easy to compete with these emails by keeping your emails regular and interspersed with more personal and targeted messages.
Trust
Trust is the single most important basis for the artist/fan relationship. By implementing the steps above you can build trust in your email communication which will repay itself when you need to use the medium to ask for money. By investing time in your layout and content, by giving something back to the fan and in being a consistent presence you will rightfully earn trust.
Top 5 tips – a recap
Include unsubscribe links in every email as well as a link to sign up to the list. The very bottom of the email should also have your contact details.
Include links to your social network pages (i.e. facebook, myspace, last.fm, twitter etc) in every email.
Keep emails simple, large jpegs and any complicated html should be left out. Text should be key.
Test emails before sending out. Set-up accounts with Hotmail, Yahoo and Google mail and send a test email to all accounts. To fully test, open the email in each account using as many internet browsers as possible, including Firefox, Internet Explorer Opera and Safari on both PC and Mac. Once you have an email format that works, stick to it.
3 to 1 rule. For every one email you send out asking for something from the fanbase (buying tickets, merch, music or vote for us etc) you should try and send 2 or 3 emails that ‘give’ the fans something, e.g. a free mp3, a new blog post, a video link etc. This increases the likelihood of fans regularly opening emails from you and develops a better overall relationship.
