Hello, everyone. Thank you for finding time in your busy life to spend a few minutes discussing music marketing with us. The post you’re about to read was written by Andrew Jones, founder of Checkered Owl. The contents highlight common mistakes found in many email marketing campaigns, as well as what you can do to improve your messaging. If you have any questions, please leave us a comment at the end of this post.
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Everyone should know at this point that e-mail better be a part of your online marketing strategy. While social media sites can suddenly change their terms of service, re-evaluate their algorithms or lose they user base, e-mail is always there. Not to mention the fact that WAY more people actually BUY things from e-mail than any social media site.
There is a ton of great advice out there for e-mail lists so I don’t feel the need to write “TOP 8 E-MAIL TIPS MARKETERS DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW”. My main two pieces of advice are simple:
#1. Use Mailchimp to blast out your e-mails. They make your life so easy AND IT’S FREE until you have over 2000 subscribers!
#2. Speak genuinely. People want to connect with you not just get a flyer.
Which brings me to my third piece of advice. Something a little different than most of the articles I have read recommend.
#3. Don’t “personalize” the “to” field
On any decent e-mail service there is a section to “personalize” the e-mail with a tag, so you type in “Hey [FNAME]!” (or something similar) and the person opening it sees: “Hey Andrew!”.
Sounds great right? Here is the problem, EVERYONE KNOWS IT’S FAKE! It’s like those sweepstake letters you get in the mail, you know the ones; they have your name on them, they look like they were written in blue pen from the desk of the CEO, occasionally they will even use non-glossy paper or even pretend to cross out a word. But…they don’t make you want to enter.
Instead, at least for me, they turn me off, they are laughable.
If you want to be personal, be personal.
Write me a personal e-mail, I appreciate that. OR Fire me a nice looking HTML update that goes to 500 people and say “Hey Everyone!”.
I’m not offended that your band (or brand) doesn’t write me a personal letter every month, who has time for that? What does bother me is seeing something that says “Hey Andrew” and I think I have gotten a personal note only to discover it’s a mass blast. Just be honest.
Make the personal personal, make the e-mail blasts communal.
A communal blast has it’s advantages too! It (if executed well) can help begin to form a community, talk to everyone, together, as a unit. The KISS army approach works! Let people join your tribe!
And then when a key moment hits that’s worth a personal message, send that, personally. There are no shortcuts to relationships.
This post was written by Andrew Jones, editor of Checkered Owl. It originally ran on his blog, but we loved it so much we felt it deserved to shared once more on ours. If you like his work and want to read more of his writing, or if you want to be super cool and offer him full time industry employment, reach out and connect with him on Twitter.
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