17 Ways Bands Should Use Email to Grow Their Fan Base and Sales

17 Ways Bands Should Use Email to Grow Their Fan Base and Sales
By MusicNomad

Your relationship with your fans has never been more important. They hold the money and are the ones that want to buy directly from you. They love your music and are whom you need to develop an intimate relationship with if you want your band’s career to grow. If used right Email and Email management is a powerful tool to make that fan relationship grow. Email can be used in a range of ways such as a personalized message to give them an update on your band or a call for action to buy something from you.  We have put together what we believe are the 17 best ways to use Email to connect with and grow your fan base and sales.

1. Bands (and not management or interns) should always write their own emails to be authentic.
2. Noon Eastern time on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday is the idea time to send broadcast Emails to your fans when people are at work across the US and Europe.
3. The ideal frequency of emails to fans is about every 2 to 4 weeks with updates on your tour, merch and music announcements.
4. Negotiate upfront if you leave from a record label that you keep your email list and you own it.
5. Give great deals on email offers for pre-orders, such as a $50 package for $25.
6. Don’t put links to iTunes and Amazon in your Emails. Fans want to buy direct from you so always link them directly to your home site.
7. In each Email make sure you have direct and separate links to buy merch, buy tour tickets and buy music. Don’t be afraid to have a big “Buy” button at the top of the Email.
8. Sell Email exclusive package offerings around holidays such as Christmas, Halloween, Cinco De Mayo, etc or just give some music away for free that day in exchange for an email.
9. Your fan Email lists are gold and building them up is huge! Collect emails and zip codes from your fans at shows or ask for them when giving away something for free like a download.
10. Pay someone to go around and collect emails and zip codes at your shows. It’s that important.
11. Ask your merch company for the emails and zip codes for the fans that bought your merch.
12. Send emails by zip code so you can target upcoming shows to promote them and ask them to come out.  The best time to send a show announcement is 30 to 45 days before the show date. The ideal time to send an email reminder about an upcoming show in a particular town is 5 days before the show. Offer them something special like a $5 coupon off at your merch table. In the subject line put the name of that city such as “New Tour Date announced in Chicago”. This will personalize it and increase the overall open rate for that Email.
13. Don’t go overboard in graphics and special effects in your Email but make it look nice and spend some time designing it.  Resize images in HTML as they download quicker.
14. Before you send out a fan Email send a test email to you and your band members Email to see how it looks and fix any issues before sending.
15. If you have only a fans Email and no zip code give something away for free such as a live show recording or free album download in exchange for it and tell them it will help you more effectively communicate with them in the future about tour dates or special appearances in their city. It’s the truth.
16. Don’t cut and paste blanket Emails to your fans. Be authentic even if it takes you longer as it will go so much further this way. They will tell a friend this band sent me a personal Email and viral marketing will begin. Split up the Emails and get everyone in the band involved.
17. Send an Email to fans in a particular city you just played and thank them for their support and have a local connection in your email to those fans and tell them what you did in or thought about their city besides your show.

If we missed one that you have found to be successful in your Email marketing experience please email us at [email protected] We would love to hear your ideas and share them with other musicians.  Thanks for your support and if you liked this article you can find a lot more as well as thousands of ranked and reviewed resources that help independent musicians at MusicNomad.com

MusicNomad is a musicians advocate organization that tries to make sense of the vast and fragmented music industry through researching, interviewing, reviewing and ranking thousands of companies in the music industry and filtering the ones that can really help musicians. They then do write ups on the companies, rank them and give you a direct link to their website.  There are also tips, news and articles for musicians to explore.  The Website (www.musicnomad.com) is free to use and focuses on fighting for the underdog, independent musicians!