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The dos and don’ts of proper email etiquette

Email Dos and Donts

Dear reader: Are you in a band, managing a band, working their PR, or writing about them? Perhaps you’re about to send off that all-important request to photograph a live show of your favorite artist or apply to write for a major publication?

Regardless of what area of the music industry you work in, there is one universal aspect that connects all of us: emails are every bit as important as phone calls and Skype meetings. In our world, an opening email is often your first and best chance to make the right impression. Make a good first impression with a band or company and you can be set for years. Make a bad impression, however, and it is extremely difficult to recover.

As a publicist, managing editor and former hiring manager, I’ve seen nearly everything over the last five years. A few of my email experiences with bands and industry clients include alcohol-driven rants, smiley faces after every sentence, misspelling my three-letter name (if I had a nickel for every time I’ve been called Jo or Joy…), being called Insert Name Here, and being outright insulted.

It’s a roller coaster, this music business. But with five years of experience in multiple fields, I’m here to share with you some tips on maximizing your email correspondence. Whether you’re in a band looking to get a label’s attention, applying for that dream paying job, sending a request to your favorite band’s PR team or just looking to expand your relationships with the right people, these are a few do’s and don’ts to make you look as professional as possible in all your industry dealings.  

DO: Get straight to the point.

This is essential, regardless of what industry field you work in. Whether you want to speak with a label executive, get your band some coverage or send a job application, don’t overload your message with unnecessary text. A quick 1-2 sentences for a polite introduction, then get down to business.

Use your first main paragraph to outline your reason for contact and what you’re looking for. For publicists, in particular, state the artist’s genre and who they sound similar to. With many industry workers forever fighting losing battles against their inboxes, if you take too much time getting to the point, your message may be deleted. Always make your language clear, concise and professional to give yourself the best chance of getting your desired response.

DON’T: Try to fake sincerity.

Sounds incredibly obvious, right? Well, just like measuring someone’s tone in person or on the phone, it is also easy enough to judge a person’s sincerity in e-mail correspondence. Do your in-depth messages receive a sentence or two in response? Are there a lot of basic spelling errors? Sentences with no punctuation at the end? Particularly blunt language? All of these imply a level of laziness, a lack of respect, and too little desire to be helpful. An insincere person can often be spotted a mile away, even through e-mail messages, and news of an unpleasant experience spreads quickly in this industry. So how can you maximize your chances of making the right first impression?

DO: Be as kind and accommodating to the other person as possible.

The music industry is all about building relationships, and chances are you’ll be dealing with a lot of the same people over and over. If you make yourself easy and pleasant to work with, new friendships will emerge and the number of great opportunities you receive will grow very quickly. This quality could make the difference between being approved or denied from that “dream opportunity” you’ve been waiting for.

DON’T: Introduce yourself with “What’s up?”

For job applicants, in particular, this is a must. During my hiring manager days, the number of applications I received that started with “What’s up, Joe?” was startling. More often than not, that intro was followed by a poorly written application letter and no resume attached. When you’re looking to get your foot in the door of your chosen field of work, keeping your language proper and professional (and, of course, actually having a resume) is essential if you hope to land that all-important interview.

DO: Always click “Reply All”.

Bands, this one is for you. Before a recent meeting I had with a potential PR client, we introduced ourselves through e-mail and I kept my boss on CC so she could see how the talks were progressing. A total of 10 messages were sent back and forth, and not once did the client hit “reply all” to keep my boss in the loop. This was a red flag – one of several throughout the correspondence – because it told us the client was not reading my messages carefully (despite me repeatedly mentioning my boss’s name). After a not-so-great start, the meeting resulted in my boss and I decided this was not someone we wanted to work with, despite being incredibly talented.

Obviously, there were more important factors than the client’s lack of CC knowledge, but bands, it is vital to keep ALL parties involved in your correspondence. Many of us have bosses, interns, managers, editors, etc. who need to know what is going on at all times and can offer insight when necessary. It’s a simple task to check if anyone is CC’d in a message, but if you really can’t remember to do it, Gmail even gives you the option to make “reply all” your default setting.

On behalf of every industry friend, co-worker, and acquaintance I’ve ever known, please use “reply all” so we can stop tearing our hair out!

DON’T: Put your subject line in all caps.

DO YOU SCREAM AT PEOPLE IN PUBLIC TO GET THEIR ATTENTION TOO? Unless you’re in a crowded bar or at a concert, I doubt it. An all-caps subject line makes us feel like we’re being yelled at, and although some believe it increases your chance of getting the other person’s attention, it often does more harm than good. Just like the message itself, keep your subject line short, to the point, and with normal-sized letters. As long as your words are clear and attention-grabbing, you’ve done your job.

DO: Respond Promptly Whenever Possible.

Now, I’m not saying be a slave to your e-mail inbox. Many of us get overwhelmed with hundreds of messages every week and sometimes it’s not possible to respond quickly. But this isn’t Facebook, where everyone plays the “click on the message notification to see the first few words and if it doesn’t look important, I’ll respond 10 hours later” game. Many music industry workers use apps like Mandrill or SendGrid which lets them “track” the e-mails they send to see if and when they are opened by the recipient. Personally, if I read a message and see that it doesn’t require an essay in response, I try to reply within 24 hours. Look at it this way: do you take days to respond to a call or text from a friend? Of course not, so why should professional work-related messages be any different?

Responding promptly tells the other party that you are taking them seriously, you’re dedicated to the cause, and you’re being accommodating to their needs. Amazing how many details you can see through someone’s online correspondence, isn’t it? However…

DON’T: Respond to important/lengthy messages with your phone.

Have you ever sent a super-embarrassing text to a friend or family member thanks to the ultimate frenemy known as auto-correct? Yes, you have – don’t lie. Unless it’s just to say “thank you” or it’s absolutely time-sensitive – in which case a phone call is better – hold off on responding to your most important messages until you’re in the much safer confines of your laptop. A later, well-written response is always better than the virtual foot-in-your-mouth typo that phones often bestow on us.

Joe Ballard is a music writer and publicist. He cares as much about the words used to promote music as he does the music itself, and that is part of the reason we love him. Learn more about Joe and his work with talented young artists through the Muddy Paw website.

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How to handle failure (and yes, you are going to fail)

As much as you may like to believe your career in music is infallible, or that you have a gift for songwriting no one will be able to deny, I can guarantee you there will always be days when your best efforts come up short. Failure is an unavoidable byproduct of any creative endeavor, and regardless of what level of fame you reach in this business there will always bad days. The  point of continuing to create is not to work towards perfection, but to take into consideration everything that has happened, both good and bad, and apply it to whatever comes next. Art, like life, is a constant progression, and the best you can do is learn how to frame each failure as something other that is ultimately beneficial to your career.

The number of ways you can screw up in music are numerous, and they range from writing a bad single, to performing in a such way that disappoints your fans. We cannot begin to breakdown every single instance of failure and how it can be viewed as a positive, but we can offer tips to help you deal with any instance where things do not go as planned. The advice that follows may seem fairly basic to some, but if applied to your next misstep we guarantee growth will occur. It might not be easy, but it will be beneficial to your creativity in the long run, and at the end of the day that is what matters most.

Start with the truth. Accept the situation for what it is, and be prepared to face it head-on.

Everyone has heard that line about how the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and the reason we’ve all heard it is because it’s absolutely true. You might have written the best song you believe yourself possible of creating, but for one reason or another it might not connect with listeners. Likewise, you may give what you feel is the performance of a lifetime, only to look at Twitter after the gig and read tweet after tweet complaining about the sound. In times like this it’s incredibly easy to take a defensive stance, but to do so would be an error. Accept that not everyone will experience things the way you do and try to see things from the outsider’s perspective. Be humbled by the fact you received any response at all, as most never do, and ask yourself how you could improve or change what you’re doing in the future.

The key to this step is honesty. It’s okay to say you love something that your fans do no, but do not blame them for not feeling the same. Art is subjective, but if you listen to your audience you should be able to find a way to do what you want while still playing to their demands. You don’t have to, of course, but most great artists find a way to compromise that satisfies everyone.

Look for the positive, no matter how small it may be.

Let’s say your new album was expected to sell ten thousand copies its first week and only sold fifteen-hundred. That disappointment would be quite a sting, especially from a financial standpoint, but considering the fact less than 1% of all the albums released in any given year sell more than a thousand copies you’re still among the most popular musicians in the world. You may not have ten thousand people clamoring to purchase your new album, but fifteen-hundred consumers is certainly nothing to scoff at. There are towns and villages all over the world that have populations far below fifteen-hundred people, and even less people outside those communities know they exist. You may not be where you want to be, but you are farther along than most, and that is something you should never take for granted.

The point is, there is also an upside. Your new demo may have gone over worse than Jar Jar Binks, but at least by sharing it with fans you learned something new about what they expect from you and what they hope to hear from future material. This knowledge can and should inform future recordings which, in theory, will be received better than whatever came before.

Do not be afraid to take time away from the internet

We are convinced there are at least two negative comments for every positive one on pretty much every song, video, or think piece posted online. People are far quicker to complain than they are to compliment, especially in a public forum, which is why you should consider taking time away from the constant barrage of commentary social media provides when things take a turn for the worse. If you know the incoming messages are going to be riddled with negativity there is no reason to wallow in the hurt feelings such commentary can cause. Absorb enough to understand why people are upset, then step away and take time to reflect on how you can improve your efforts in the future. You do not need the internet to do this, and in our opinion you shouldn’t use it. Stay offline until you have something new to share, and if that doesn’t go over then feel free to take more time away. In fact, take as much time as you need. The internet will still be here when you return.

Whatever you do, keep creating

No matter how you initially react to failure you cannot let the ensuing negativity defeat you. Keep creating, always, and do not stop until you decide you are finished. There will always be someone in the world who thinks you are not good enough, but you cannot let the opinions of a select few stop you from expressing yourself through art. Creativity is a gift that is all too rare in this world, and it should be expressed at every opportunity. Don’t let the haters win.

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One surefire way to overcome creative blocks in art and business

Anyone trying to make a living with their creativity, from music to marketing, will tell you there are few times in life more frustrating than those moments when you feel as if your inspiration has run dry. You know the feeling. It’s usually something that hits you settle into work on your passion project at night, or perhaps just after you have arrived at the office, and try as you might to get something meaningful accomplished you pretty much just spin your wheels until you feel comfortable excusing yourself in order to spend the rest of the day in a ball of self-loathing introversion on your living room floor, praying to any deity willing to listen that you have enough episode of The West Wing left to avoid you work for one more day. We’ve all been there, or at least those of us who have been working long enough to burn through the first 50 or 100 ideas that we had, and if you feel you’ve yet to reach that point then trust me – It’s on the horizon.

We don’t bring up those uncomfortable times in order to scare. We face the same thing on a fairly regular basis, and we like to refer to it as what author Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance.” That is, a universal force that works against human creativity on a daily basis. We all face it in our own ways, much like we all fight our own battles most the world never knows of. There are a million anecdotes and essays on overcoming Resistance, and we’ve offered several here on this blog. Whether or not it works for you can only be learned through application. Yes, good old fashioned trial and error.

The next time you’re confronted with a creative roadblock in your professional life, take time away from your forced search for inspiration and try losing yourself in an alternate path. Develop an alternative path for yourself, your music, your agency, your label, or that secret side business you always hope to one day attempt. These adventures can sometimes be the source of new real life paths, such is the case with many so-called ‘side projects’ in music. Artists from various genres take a break from their day-to-day career to pursue other creative avenues just like anyone else, and sometimes their efforts lead to new financial avenues that certainly don’t hurt their bottom line.

Developing alternative paths to success for yourself can allow your mind to relax and consider options you might not have been able to adequately access when attempting to force creativity. Let’s explore a few examples to better illustrate this point:

Musicians –

Let’s say you’re the lead guitarist and songwriter for an aspiring rock band. Your first demo went over well with local audiences, and the second was good enough to help you secure a few opening slots on national tours when they roll through your region’s bigger venues. You may have even been able to tour, albeit without the benefits of a bus or guaranteed sell out crowds. Still, you’re making progress and you can feel your dreams of stardom starting to come together.

As you find yourself beginning to thinking about your third release, which would probably be your first full length, you discover you have hit a creative wall. Writing riffs and lyrics was never something you found all the difficult before, but for whatever reason everything you’re coming up with at this current point in time is clearly not good enough to help you get you ahead.

To clear your head and relax your thoughts it might be wise to consider an alternative career in, say, top 40 radio pop. Ask yourself, “What would it take to make it in pop music today?” Think about the songs and artists topping the charts, the themes found in their music, and what it is about tracks like Bieber’s “What Do You Mean” or The Weeknd’s “I Can’t Feel My Face” that keeps people reaching for the repeat button again and again. Some answers will come fast, but others will take time. Think about what these artists do that you do not and ask yourself whether or not their approach to marketing or songwriting could aide your personal efforts. Heck, you may even try penning a song or two. Why not? Trial and error is part of any healthy exploration.

By the time you realize how lost in your pretend career you’ve become enough time should have passed for you to return to your real work with clear eyes and an open mind. Remember the things you learned about yourself and your peers during your brainstorming session and use it to influence your future work.

Industry professionals (label owners, site editors, publicists) –

Maybe you’re a label owner, struggling to keep your costs low while hustling around the clock to not only bring attention to the talent on your roster, but also to sell records. The grind required to keep a small business afloat, let alone build a new music empire, can be devastating on the mind of a creative person. One the one hand, your spirit and soul desire constant exercise and exploration. On the other hand, you need to find what works for your business and stick with it.

On those days when you cannot seem to focus on emails, accounting, marketing, or anything in between, it might be best to allow yourself to unwind with by exploring an alternate professional path. Just like the example for musicians above, you should stay within the realm of what you do (aka – running/building a business), but what it is your fake company does is entirely up to you.

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say your secret wish is to start a subscription box company that offers consumers the chance to receive 1 new album in the mail each month, along with an explanation for the record’s selection. The first thing you need for this business is a name. You decide ‘New Music Monthly’ is a good name and from there set to outlining what would be needed in order to get your business off the ground. You need a web host, a logo, and a cost estimate sheet. You know boxes can be bought in bulk, but you will have to contact the labels/artists you wish to work with in order to know if they would be willing to offer you a discount in order for buying X amount of records. You also need startup cash, which can be earned through launching pre-orders for your first box.

After the basic business details are ironed out, you should then turn your focus to understanding the type of customer who would want this product. Assume that your first few music shipments will be products from your own label, then outline what kind of music fan would be interested in whatever release you might choose. Be specific. Narrow down your fans to a specific age group (teens, young adults, adults 25-35, 35+, senior citizens, etc). Do (or did) these people go to secondary school? Do they attend a lot of concerts?

Once you figure this out you can begin to brainstorming how to accomplish the difficult task of targeting these consumers. Do they frequent Facebook? Twitter? Would placement in a magazine be a wise choice? Depending on which method of outreach you choose, how much will it cost? Can you advertise this way regularly, or do you only have the budget for a single campaign? Again, be specific.

Once you iron out your faux business plan you will not only have a potential new path to financial success, but you will have inadvertently developed marketing tools that could also be used for the real problems facing your actual business. The target market for your faux company will likely be the same, or close to the same, as your actual business. The plans you made to reach those made up customers can be applied in one way or another to the customers you are hoping to reach in with your label. You will have more or less done the work you needed to do in a way that tricked your mind into doing work it might not have wanted to do otherwise.

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There are a million potential paths through life available to all of us, but far too few ever make much, if any, effort to explore their options. We would never advise you to abandon your dream(s), but we do believe that exploring alternative career paths can lead to success in your current field. What matters most is that you keep an open mind and try as much as you are able without jeopardizing your current professional/financial situation. You can use the examples laid out in the post to get you started, but don’t hesitate to make up your own adventure whenever time allows.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

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How To Take The First Step Towards Professional Success In 2016

Friday marks the end of 2015, and after what I can promise will feel like an all too short holiday weekend the vast majority of music professionals will be shaking off their Christmas break laziness in order to return to the endless grind that is entertainment promotion. If you’re a blog owner, or someone still doing everything in your power to make ends meet on a week to week basis, you are probably already working. For those individuals, and I include myself in that grouping, Christmas is a one or two day break at most. We can only survive if we have a steady flow of income, and most low to mid-level industry jobs do not come with two weeks paid vacation. Heck, I don’t receive paid vacation at all. If I take a day off I am also sacrificing a day’s pay, and I can only afford to do that a handful of times in any given year.

Let’s say you don’t get paid. Maybe you run a blog, or perhaps you intern for a label, but whatever the case you know this time of year to be a hard time to feel as if you’re still connected to the music business. When you see your peers posting updates from a beach or tweeting to proclaim they have no idea how to use all their free time you fight the urge to tweet something sardonic in response. It’s not that you hate those professionals, but you might envy them in some small way. As an up and comer, every break is more like a pause on your hustle towards the position you hope to attain. As writers, we can fight the lack of news and announcements that comes with every holiday break by crafting original content, but without anyone in a position of power to see/read/share the material you create there is a near-constant fear of having any hard work you do contribute going unnoticed.

I wish so very badly I could write to you with a creative way to expose yourself and your skill set within the industry during these slow times, but after a decade in this business I have found the best path to success is one that begins with a plan. I know that is not an innovative idea by any means, but having a plan has been proven to work time and time again in developing talent, both on stage and in professional circles. Plans make it possible to set realistic goals, as well as the steps needed to achieve them, and they help keep you on track while you’re trying to do anything or everything you can to establish yourself. I didn’t realize how much simpler my professional life could be with a calendar until I was over 25 years old. When I did, I immediately committed myself to using calendars in everything, from writing, to running a label, to simply staying in shape. Having a plan makes it possible to do more without inundating yourself with work, and as we head into the new year my hope for you is that you too learn to appreciate the possibilities the open up with a good plan is made.

With the time you have left before this year slips away I want to urge you to sit down and think real hard about everything you hope to accomplish in 2016. Once you have a few goals in mind, write them down, and follow those notes with a reasonable timeline for completion. Some tasks will take weeks, while others may take months Be honest with your abilities and build from there. Afterwards, take a hard look at each month in the coming year and begin plotting what you will accomplish on a week to week basis. If you’re running a blog, this means developing a content calendar. If you’re running a business, this means setting marketing and/or sales goals. Whatever the case, lay out as much of your future as you can think to piece together. If you don’t reach every goal or complete every task, that’s perfectly fine. What matters most is that you make a plan, stick to the plan, and wake every day knowing what must be completed to move closer to the position in life you desire.

I believe in you if you believe in me. Together, nothing can stop us.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.

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