Are you tired of pouring your heart and soul into your music, only to feel like you're shouting into the void? The truth is, social media algorithms can be fickle, and the real problem is you never truly own your audience on those platforms. But there's a secret weapon that most musicians overlook: their email list.
Email lists for musicians
The reality is, it is hard to promote music and most artists don’t really even want to do it. I remember as a young musician coming off stage and being relieved if it wasn’t my turn to try to collect names or phone numbers for the mailing list ( on paper! ) as it was embarrassing…the only upside being a good excuse to talk to girls. Of course, you were going to get some rejections to sign up, especially from members of other bands...but sure enough - if you made an effort that list would grow.
The next stage was remembering to actually USE the list and let people know when you’re playing. People in bands really aren’t the greatest at planning, or multitasking, or following through as they are so busy doing twenty things that they tend to have enthusiasm for the newest, shiniest task, and let others slide. Isn’t it enough to give your all making the music, and playing? Well…no!
Today it’s much easier to grab an email address, and there are even apps for that exact purpose - but most people aren’t organized enough to even put all of their fan data in one place. The way social media is designed doesn’t help either as you tend to not have direct access to a persons email address directly, so we are left with the challenge of direct messaging people on multiple platforms which can be quite tricky, or simply hoping they see our posts if we are trying to remind them that we have a new record coming out, or a show.
It’s the major function of the label machine, these days more or less THE purpose - the turning of an artist and their art into a PRODUCT and selling it, and as we all know - marketing itself is a massive, complicated industry so it's no surprise that an independent artist is going to struggle. I don’t believe for one second a small artist can replicate that but you can start small and do what I think is the most important thing you can do to grow.
I’m going to ask you to do one thing - build your fan list. It will require you suspending your embarrassment, and do one thing - ASK for those contact details!
Grab those emails
Here are some suggestions to get you going. Try the following:
1. ) If you play shows, take 15 minutes and go get people’s email address. I’m guessing if you are reading this you’re probably not at superstar level with a security team - so go for a walk and talk to the people after the show. If you’re at the level where you have a merch table or something that’s also a great place to have people sign up.
2.) If you have a website, have a pop-up to collect fan emails, or at the very least some kind of sign up form. Maybe even have a lead magnet, some kind of freebie to entice people like exclusive content, early access to songs, a private “members-only” area or even some kind of fan club if you want to get old school.
3.) Make regular call to actions and ASK for people’s email address on your socials. You could use the classic link tree in bio, or pin a post, or have give aways, access to exclusive content, competitions or other reasons to grab fan details, your imagination is the limit.
You can easily link to a page to gather the information, which reminds me of the other key element:
Put them all in one place
As you gather them, make sure you set up some kind of email collection system to put all your mail contacts in one place. There are loads of options out there, and even Mailchimp is free for the first 500 subscribers - but I am sure you can find other alternatives before you actually have to spend money. There are other things, called segmentation you can do with the data ike sort people by location if you ask to capture that information, very useful for bands that tour, for example and note where they signed up from so if there’s some kind of platform specific event happening you can reach the most relevant people. Consolidate all of the fan data you collect into the mail platform you choose, and now the final step:
Use them.
Once you have made the effort and taken the time to get the information to be able to contact them...make sure you actually reach out to the people! Let them know what you’re doing, where you’re playing, when your new song drops on Bandcamp, when you have made a t-shirt, whatever it is that is new or intersting to make sure they remember who you are. It doesn’t have to be spammy, be you. Send a newsletter when something cool has happened, use common sense, make sure people know what they need to know, offer them value and it won’t be something people mind getting and keeps you in their thoughts. Let me know if you go for it, and I’d love to hear your feedback about the results if you actually follow through. The new year has arrived and it’s time more people knew about you, and your music and that fanbase grew!
I hope you found my post on building an email list for musicians useful, and if you need help making sure your music really is as great as it could be, why not reach out to me and say hello? I am always looking for fantastic artists to work with, and can help transform most artists recordings into great sounding records people love. We made millions of ears happy last year - let's do it again!
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