Learn the basics of email marketing to increase your fan base and generate more sales!
Email marketing is one of the best and most affordable forms of marketing, especially in the music industry. This is because it provides a form of direct-to-customer communication between you and your fanbase which is one of the most powerful forms of marketing for musicians and music businesses.
Your emails can be used to develop more meaningful relationships with your customers and fanbase by providing exclusive releases and valuable information straight to their inbox, making them feel more connected to your music or business.
However, it may be confusing to know where to start with this particular marketing tool and at worst, your email may be lost in your customer’s spam box. Therefore, it’s important for you to understand the foundations of this marketing practice to deliver meaningful emails and leave a lasting impact on your customers.
Setting up email marketing
The first step to successful email marketing is to set up the infrastructure you need to support this process. This includes two things: your email marketing tool and your sign up forms.
There are many email marketing tools available on the market today so it’s important to find one that’s right for you. Mailchimp, Hubspot, Sender, Omnisend and Moosend are all great places to start. Personally I use Mailchimp as Its user interface is clean and tidy.
Once you’ve chosen your email marketing tool, it’s important to connect this to your website and social media. For example, on WordPress you can manage your connections under “tools” and connect your Mailchimp account directly to your WordPress website.
From this, it’s time to start building your mailing list of customers. There are many methods to do this and you’ll need to begin thinking about how you will distribute your mailing list. For example, the most basic method of doing this is to add a signup form to your website, such as this:
However, you can also share this on your social media, include it in your Linktree and even promote signing up to your mailing list with a unique offer or prize draw to entice customers to sign up.
The most important thing to remember about this step is to provide your customers with value so that they begin to invest in your brand.
For a band or artist this could be an exclusive track or priority to pre-sale tickets for your events. For a record label, this could be sending your customers news about the music industry so they are more informed, such as funding opportunities.
This way you can leverage the value you are delivering and up-sell your products/services to your customers as you will have already demonstrated your value which encourages them to make a purchase.
The Purpose Of Email Marketing
Now you’ve set up your email marketing, it’s key to understand the purpose of email marketing to make sure you stay out of that dreaded spam box and provide emails that your customers actually want to open.
For example, one use for email marketing is to build credibility among your potential customers. People are more likely to do business with a brand or someone that they trust and rely on so providing your audience with professional and reliable information about a certain topic can help you build rapport with new customers and open a dialogue which can lead to further business.
As well as this, email marketing offers a multitude of touch points for you to communicate your message and brand values. With this, you can develop the relationship between yourself and your customers and in turn boost sales for a particular product or server that you offer.
*Touch points are a theory in marketing and refer to the times in which you make contact with your customer, whether that be through your own social media posts, advertisements, YouTube videos or otherwise. On Average it takes 7 touch points to convince a customer to make a purchase.
Another benefit to using email marketing is to create a market research dynamic. You can test out different email strategies by creating changes in your language, phrasing and terminology to see what your audience responds to best.
Tracking the results of these different emails will then allow you to develop your marketing and branding approach in future email campaigns. In a very cost effective manner, you can learn qualitative and quantitative data about your customers in real-time.
Types Of Emails In Email Marketing
There are a few varying types of emails you can use in your email marketing to deliver specific results and meet your various marketing goals. It’s essential to know these types of emails in order to avoid confusing your audience with too much information.
The most common type of email is a newsletter. You want to use this type of email to make your customers feel a part of the team and humanise your brand. Invite your customers to learn about your business, achievements and milestones, providing an insight to what goes on behind the scenes.
Another type of email is a product or service offer. Use this type of email sparingly as you don’t want to spam your customers with your products and services as this is a BIG turn off. A useful way of doing this is to announce new services or products and implement incentives for customers to make a purchase with exclusive discounts available only though your mailing list.
As well as this, you can use follow-up emails for potential customers that have visited your website but not yet made a purchase. For this you will need to track the data from your website but this will offer another touch point for the customer and remind them that your services could still be of benefit to them.
However, the form of email with the best open and click rate is a receipt email. Once a customer has made a purchase you want to send them a confirmation of this along with a receipt for the purchase made.
As customers are very likely to open this email as a form of assurance that their payment has been confirmed, it’s the prime time to up-sell another product or service.
Conclusion
In conclusion, email marketing is a great tool and asset for musicians and music businesses. It allows you to build a deeper relationship with your customers and allows for more touch points to convince them to make a sale.
It also allows you to strategise and create several different types of emails for different purposes.
It takes relatively little time and effort to set up and once you’ve created a mailing list, the maintenance of this is straightforward with regular emails and regular sign ups.
Do you want to get started with email marketing? Let me know in the comments below!
Joshua R F Murphy 