Tag: Haulix Help

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Boost Engagement With These Clever Haulix Promo Banners

Custom Banners Haulix

Haulix promos look great as is, but a few small changes can make a big impact on your contacts. We can help.

Haulix promos are designed to be beautiful and engaging right out of the box. We built our platform knowing that many professionals do not have the time or skills necessary to create original landing pages for each release, which is why they look great as is, but there are customization options available.

One of our favorite customization options is the banner. Located at the top of promo pages and promo invitations, the banner allows you to add one more image to your latest promotion.

We’ve seen countless examples of custom banners over the thirteen years we’ve been in business, but there are a handful of ideas that stand out as both a clever and creative way to increase the impact of a promo page. Check it out:

Promote The Physical Release Of Your New Album

Music professionals buy music. Maybe that isn’t shocking information to you, but it may sound alarms for others. Some believe critics never buy music because they have an unlimited amount of free content to consume at all times. However, in our experience, critics love purchasing the music they preview through Haulix. Knowing an album is great before you place an order is a huge relief.

The example above, from Listenable Records, promotes the upcoming vinyl release from the same band featured in the promo. The promo is for a single, but the banner announces the full release. It’s an eye-catching and informative piece of content that also serves as a reminder for key album information (artist, album title, label, etc.).

Increase Brand Recognition/Familiarity

Many publicists work with a wide variety of talent that can, in certain cases, stretch around the globe. To make sure their contacts recognize their latest campaigns, many clients use custom banners to promote their business, brand, and aesthetic. That way, contacts flipping through their emails will see the banner and think twice before moving on. 

The example above, from Transcending Obscurity, handles this well with a gorgeous, heavy metal-inspired logo that aligns with the sound of the artists they promote. TO is known for its ability to market smaller European metal bands, especially those from niche corners of the genre. For TO and their clients, brand recognition can mean the difference between a click and a skip.

Promote Your Mailing List

Did you know that Facebook and Instagram only show your content to roughly 5.2% of your followers? Twitter, TikTok, and other social media platforms are not much better.

We believe you shouldn’t be charged to reach people who have asked to receive news updates. More than any other form of communication, mailing lists nearly guarantee that your latest updates actually reach your fans. That is why we recently made a post and YouTube video about how surprisingly powerful mailing lists are in 2022.

The example above, from our client You, Me, And Everyone We Know, is simple and straightforward. It tells anyone listening exactly where they need to go to learn more about the band, which is information that promo listeners can use both in coverage and for themselves. It also emphasizes the importance of confirming the subscription, which Is never a bad idea. 

Share Tour Dates + Ticket Information

Haulix is built to promote music, but we know that the work of musicians does not stop in the studio. Every release cycle includes a tour, and custom banners are a perfect spot to promote upcoming performances. You can easily share dates and ticket information or point people toward the official tour site.

The example above, from UK metal band Architects, promotes the band’s 2018 tour. That banner tells people where and when to see the band, and it gives journalists something extra to mention in their coverage that could boost sales.

How do you use Haulix promo banners? Send your ideas to James@haulix.com.

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How to get more streams on Haulix

One common complaint we receive from people accessing our promos is that certain releases come with a limited stream allotment. This number, which is set by the sender, restricts the listener to only hearing each track a certain number of times – typically 5 or less.

The reasons people set limits on streams are numerous. Some, for example, believe there is a lower likelihood of piracy if the material can only be accessed a finite amount of times. Others want to ensure an album is streamed strictly for professional purposes and not, for example, to entertain someone’s friends.

When you encounter a stream limit you should email the contact who sent you the promo directly and request additional streams. That person may or may not grant your request.

We (Haulix) cannot grant additional streams without permission from the sender. 

Have questions? Email us: help@haulix.com

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Haulix Basics: Updating Your Contact Information (Without Sending One-Hundred Emails)

Very few things in life are permanent, and email addresses are not one of them. As you grow and develop, jumping from job to job, you will slowly accrue a variety of emails that will often complicate how people get ahold of you. The chaos this creates will only make your job as a writer more difficult, but thanks to our state of the art profile system those headaches can now be a thing of the past.

We understand that everyone in music is busy. Journalists often have numerous deadlines to meet, not to mention second jobs. Publicists, on the other hand, have the seemingly endless task of doing everything in their power to make sure their clients get the exposure they deserve. Everyone is always doing something and everyone seems to believe no one has time to help them.  We don’t necessarily believe that is true, but we have found a way to simplify the task of updating contact information in a way that eliminates both stress and the need to send numerous messages requesting a change of address on future promo materials.

When you’re viewing your Promos page on Haulix, click the ‘Profile’ tab in the upper left hand corner of the page. Here’s an example of what you should be looking for:

Once the profile page loads, you will notice a heading that reads ‘Email Accounts.’ I’ve highlighted this section in the image below:

The changes made on this page will be reflected throughout the Haulix platform. If you delete an email address from this page it will be erased from every client’s contact list on Haulix. If you change your preferred email address, that information will again be duplicated in the contact information stored on our client’s accounts. You control the flow of messaging. We just make it easy.

If you wish to remove an email currently being used by Haulix clients, simply click the ‘Delete’ button on the right side of the email. Once confirmed, the selected email addressed will be scrubbed from Haulix.

If you have a new email, or if you have an old account you simply want to have on our system, you can enter the new address in the space provided and have that email added to our database. If you want this new address to be your primary address, you can do so using the ‘Promo Senders’ section a bit further down on your profile page. For more information on how to do that, click here.

We will be posting additional tips to help you make the most of your Haulix experience in the weeks ahead. If you have any questions about our system please do not hesitate to email james@haulix.com and let us know. We will do our best to answer every request in a timely and concise fashion.

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3 Ways To Increase Engagement With Your Haulix Promo

Hello again,everyone. We thought we would celebrate the arrival of June with a surprise second post this afternoon, so below you will fine a column aimed at helping Haulix clients increase engagement with their promotional invitations. If you have any questions about the content of the blog, or if you would like more information regarding the distributional services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Haulix is the most preferred and trusted distribution service amongst music bloggers, but it can often be hard for even the best artists to make writers engage with their promo. As music writers ourselves, we understand that this is not always a result of bloggers not caring, but more often than not is due to a lack of time on the bloggers’ part to properly interact with every promotional invitation that comes their way. We cannot guarantee how many clicks any single promo will receive, but by following the tips below clients can increase the likelihood that bloggers will want to engage with their promos:

Customize Your Promo Design

Over the last several years the Haulix development team has strived to create a system that looks good ‘out of the box,’ but at one point we realized that in order to serve our clients needs promos needed to be customizable in order to grab the attention of distracted/rushed bloggers clicking through cluttered inboxes. With this in mind our team built and released a number of tools and options for promo creation, including color changes, multiple messaging option, image inclusion/placement, banners, backgrounds, and more. That list may seem overwhelming, but we believe our design has made these tools easy-to-use, even for novice publicists. 

There are well over 5000 promo invitation sent out using the Haulix platform every day, and that is not even considering the thousands likely sent out on our competitor’s platforms, or the artists contacting journalists through file sharing services (mediafire, dropbox, etc). If you or your client are still struggling to gain the attention of the press, customizing your promo design should be the first course of action to try and spur a few additional clicks. For additional information on getting started with customization, click here for a three step guide to creating eye-popping promos.

Personalize Every Promotional Message

As your contact list grows, it can be very tempting to send the same promo to every single contact, or at least a large portion of your contacts, at the same time. After all, time is of the essence when working on album promotion, and if we’re being completely honest the information shared with one person is almost certainly the information you will share with every person you message. The problem, however, is that no writer likes to feel like they are just another faceless entity you leverage for free content. Like musicians, many writers have fragile egos, and they like to feel as if they are needed and or wanted by the world. Generic press promotions are a dime dozen for them, but personalized messaging in much more rare. 

There is no doubt that sending out a generic promo to a large enough contact list will receive engagement, but content delivered with a personal touch will almost assuredly perform better with press. When you write to people and use not only their name, but facts about who they are and/or what they do you convey a sense of caring that forges a much stronger connection than a message delivered with marketing lingo and sales information could ever hope to achieve. If people believe you care for them and take in interest in what they do they are far likelier to want to work with you, regardless of what type of content you are trying to push. Networking is a force like no other, and learning to network well can make a world of difference in the trajectory of not only your career, but the careers of everyone you know as well.

Send out reminders, especially when promos are about to expire.

This may seem like a given, but having spent over half a decade writing about music I can tell you first hand that only a small percentage of publicists/bands ever follow up on the invitations that they send. They might resend that same promo, sure, but actually taking the time to reach out to individuals with personalized messaging to remind them a promo is available or alert them that promos may expire is far more rare. 

Make time for reminders. The average music writer receives well over 100 emails a day, and as much as they may desire to give attention to every email that catches their interest there is simply not enough time in the day for such a thing to occur. Many probably tell themselves they will catch up the next day, but then they awake to 100 new messages and the process starts all over. Reminders add to this clutter, yes, but they also reenforce the messaging you are trying to convey. Sending reminders gives you another chance to grab a writer’s attention, and taking the time to personalize the messaging further increases the likelihood of engagement/response.

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