3 Easy Way to Increase Your Album Sales!
GUEST POST: Chris Rockett is a musician and music marketing consultant from London who uses Direct-to-Fan marketing tactics to help level the playing field between DIY musicians and major label artists. Feel free to follow along on his Music Marketing Blog or Facebook Page
What is an Autoresponder and why should you give a crap about it?
credit: duh.deniseWell my friend…an Autoresponder is going to become your new best buddy as a modern day DIY musician…
Why?
Think of it like this..
- You shovel hits on to your website using twitter, YouTube, blogs and all the other stuff we talk about.
- You get people to join your mailing list by offering a couple of free tracks or something.
- Then as if by magic your Autoresponder sends out 25 messages that you have pre-written to be posted at regular intervals.
I hope you see the time saving power of this. You can slowly introduce people to your music and social profiles. You can promote your most popular blog posts and even throw in the “buy now” link for your album once in a while.
Basically it’s a way to become best friends with your new fans without having to spend hours and hours a day mailing each one individually every time you think of something to write.
And did I mention that you can also automatically include your fan’s name in the messages so that they look even more personal?
Seriously wicked!
So now you know why you should be using an Autoresponder for your music, I want to let you know a couple of tricks that will help your auto messages sell more albums.
1. Thanks for your order
When somebody buys one of your albums you should put them on a new “buyers list” and the first automatic message to that buyers list should thank them for their purchase and then offer them a discount code if they buy something else in the next 24 hours.
Tests show that people are much more likely to buy something soon after a purchase, so you should capitalize on that in your Autoresponder and give them a tiny little push with a great discount offer.
2. Get hundreds of reviews
Reviews are a great way to show your fans that your stuff is worth listening to.
The trick is to send people who have bought your album a message one week later that offers something cool in exchange for a review.
This is a great way to motivate people who are on the fence to jump in and get your stuff and will show that you care about what your fans think.
You can never get enough feedback, because you should always be looking to give the people more of what they love (Unless you just want to make music for yourself).
3. Make it scarce
One of the biggest things that motivates people to action is the idea that they might loose something cool.
So a great way to increase income through your email list is to run a sale each month where you discount your music for a limited number of people then the price goes back to normal.
You can also add in some manual hand written emails with progress on how many cheap copies you have left.
If you are worried that your fans will get sick of this every month you could do a bi-monthly sale.
But to be honest most people get too much email to really remember the pattern of your special promotions.
Also remind your mail recipients on your Autoresponder list of your upcoming events or products and the perks that they can enjoy if they make reservations in advance. This will build anticipation and arouse their enthusiasm to get hold of what you’re selling them.
I hope you found this article useful, I’d love to hear how you get on with the suggestions and any ideas that have worked to increase your album sales.
Good luck,
– Chris
