4 Tips For Music Marketing With Email Newsletters

4 Tips For Music Marketing With Email Newsletters

As musicians and music marketers build their lists of consenting recipients, from fans to friendly contacts, a number of approaches are taken. Some simply contact their list with special announcements. Others focus on building subscriptions to regular news often via a musician's blog. Former Daily Candy CEO offers tips for a third now less frequent approach of creating a separate email newsletter that is distributed first by email, archived on the web and then publicized or reposted on social media sites.
DailyCandy built a thriving digital publishing business centered around an email newsletter. It's now a more complex efforts but former CEO Pete Sheinbaum maintains that such email-first publishing efforts are still quite relevant.
While building an email newsletter as a business sounds like quite a challenge, though I think Sheinbaum is correct, it's much easier to use email newsletters as a form of content marketing and fan communication for musicians.
Creating custom content that goes first to subscribers and can be accessed via mobile devices is definitely a way to feed your fans. Given that both music marketers and ecommerce providers are currently reporting strong results from email, a regular email newsletter with fresh content might do well.
Pete Sheinbaum shared his "tips for anyone trying to build a successful newsletter today" that I think are quite relevant to music marketing:
4 Tips For Music Marketing With Email Newsletters

1) "Entertain and inform"

Always make your newsletter enjoyable to read even if the news is fairly dry.
2) "Be brief"

Get to the point. People be busy!
3) "Stick to one topic"

Think of it as more like a single blog post rather than a week's worth of posts.
4) "Leverage non-email channels for delivery"

Even email-first should not be email-only.
If you're struggling with your email marketing strategy or thinking about going email-first, definitely check out the full post for additional insights.
[Thumbnail image courtesy Card Karma.]

More:

Email Still Top Marketing Tool, Says New Study
5 Email Marketing Rules From Six-Figure Musician
3 Key Music Marketing Lessons Based On Eye Tracking Studies
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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3 Key Music Marketing Lessons Based On Eye Tracking Studies

5 Email Marketing Rules From Six-Figure Musician

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Clyde Smith on 10/15/2013 in Apps & Mobile, D.I.Y., Marketing, Music Tech | Permalink

 

Make Videos That Fit The Artist and The Audience [Leadership Music Summit Panel]

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Make Videos That Fit The Artist and The Audience [Leadership Music Summit Panel]

An unlikely sounding panel at this week's Leadership Music Summit in Nashville, "Bringing Content to Fruition," kicked off a lively discussion about videos, music marketing and even a bit about building and monetizing a relationship with an audience for the long haul. Opinions varied but all seemed to agree that most choices come down to creating videos that fit both the artist and the audience.

Tuesday's Leadership Music Summit featured numerous talks and panels. A discussion focused on "creating video content...to expand a band/brand's message" touched on a number of interesting points.

Moderated by Hit Shop Records' David Ross, the panel included:

Stokes Nielson - Stokes Tunes/Country Now

Dez Dickerson - The Pavilion Group

Jamin Guy - Streamweaver

Brody Harper - Skorinc

Jared Scheel - Populr.me

High Points of the Discussion

Stokes Nielson got things going early with the audacious statement that musicians should be making videos because they're the "most effective way to communicate with other human beings."

Later Jared Scheel pointed out that video is an "incredible storytelling platform."

But to unleash the power of video, from music videos to backstage chronicles, many of the panelists spoke to different aspects of authenticity.

Dez Dickerson shared the first of many concepts he uses, in this case, to understand the act's "DNA" as a way of maintaining authenticity:

Who are we?

What do we do?

What are we doing it for?

By discussing such questions a band and team can then more easily evaluate a video project and whether or not it's appropriate for the act and the audience.

The panelists also discussed the fact that fitting both the act and the audience can affect such issues as production values. A new act has less money so a low-budget look is appropriate. More established acts are expected to have higher and therefore more expensive production values.

But this was one of the spots where panelists resisted formulating a one size fits all approach.

Stokes Nielson pointed out that first looks are so important that it can make sense for an emerging act to spend more money to make a strong first impression.

While Brody Harper says they've found with bigger stars that more off-the-cuff videos can work cause it offers a more human connection than fans are feeling from social media. On social media, they don't know if a tweet is actually written by an artist or by a team. When the artist is sitting there adjusting their webcame, it's a much more intimate moment even when watched by a large audience.

Other Tips and Insights

Stokes Nielson encouraged musicians to do collabs on YouTube to reach their audiences. In particular, he pointed out that YouTube stars are likely to be open to a collab with a musician as simply a cool thing to do, so reach out.

Jamin Guy suggested making sure your video works for all devices. Sure, it plays, but how does it actually look when played on a big screen vs. a smartphone screen.

Videos are a powerful tool for building relationships with one's audience. Dez Dickerson maintained that the long-term play is a shift from a transactional approach (i.e., buy this new release) to a relational approach (i.e., let's get to know each other so we can be friends for a long time).

As Dickerson pointed out, a hit doesn't necessarily translate into a music career. But if you have an audience, you can have a career.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians.

Related articles

• Make Videos That Fit The Artist and The Audience [Leadership Music Summit Panel] (hypebot.com)
• Lady Antebellum's Dave Haywood and Associates Discuss Working Together On Digital Initiatives (hypebot.com)
• REWIND: The New Music Industry's Week In Review (hypebot.com)
• "Data Is The New Hustle" - Is The Music Business Getting Any Fairer? (djduece.wordpress.com)
• Musicians: Why Your Self-Presentation Is An Important Part Of Your Music (djduece.wordpress.com)
• Analysing Music video - Ed sheeran 'A team' (mo10man.wordpress.com)

The Top 10 Truths Of The Music Business

The Top 10 Truths Of The Music Business

The music business has changed quite a lot throughout the past decade, and while new technical innovations may have caused the restructuring of many business models (and the inner workings of them), several other truths continue to remain the same today – such as extremely compelling music continuing to be the cornerstone of any artist endeavor. In this downloadable lesson from Berklee College of Music, Future of Music co-authors David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard have identified what they feel are the Top 10 truths that will guide the future of the music business, as well as define the nature of the relationship between artist and fan.

The Top 10 Truths Of The Music Business

1. Music matters more than ever: the music market is alive and vibrant.

2. The record business is not the same as the music business.

3. The artists are the brands, and entertainment is the main attraction.

4. Artists and their managers will shape the future.

5. Publishing income is a crucial income stream.

6. Radio is no longer the primary way that people discover new music.

7. Digital niche marketing outperforms mass marketing.

8. Customers demand—and get—increasing convenience and value.

9. The current pricing model goes out the window.

10. Music is mobile, and new models will embrace a more liquid view of music.

Related articles

• The Top 10 Truths Of The Music Business (hypebot.com)
• Breaking Into The Music Business Today (djduece.wordpress.com)
• 7 Music Marketing Truths ALL Musicians Should Know (hypebot.com)
• The Future of the Music Business: video update by Futurist and Speaker Gerd Leonhard (gerdleonhard.typepad.com)
• Breaking Into The Music Business Today (hypebot.com)
• DJ Bay Blog: Breaking Into The Music Business Today (djbaymusic.com)
• BABOOM is the new music service from Kim Dotcom. Launching in a few months. (the4cast.com)
• How the Internet has Changed how the Music Business Does Business... (jackieblack365.wordpress.com)

3 Key Music Marketing Lessons Based On Eye Tracking Studies

3 Key Music Marketing Lessons Based On Eye Tracking Studies

Given the importance of your website and email for marketing your music online, it's key to understand what people do when they interact with your site and email newsletters. Eye tracking is a particularly powerful research approach that is designed to help you understand where people focus when they look at your site. Here are 3 music marketing lessons from eye tracking studies to get you started.

Eye tracking originally involved observing where people looked when they were doing such things as reading text or shopping. While there are devices for tracking actual eye movements while people look at computer screens, marketing studies often rely on the activity of one's cursor as a proxy.

That raises some significant questions about research findings but when combined with clickthroughs, signups and purchases, one can understand a lot about good website, blog and email newsletter design.

The following 3 music marketing lessons are drawn from "7 Marketing Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies" on the KISSmetrics blog, an excellent resource for such information.

They include one that caught me by surprise and is a reminder that research is sometimes most valuable when it challenges one's assumptions. However all research should be read with a critical eye and compared with what you and others are finding in actual practice.

3 Key Music Marketing Lessons Based On Eye Tracking Studies

People tend to browse web pages in an F-shaped pattern.

"Web users tend to browse sites based on their reading habits. For English speaking people (and languages with similar reading patterns), the left side of the screen is heavily favored, and all sites tend to be browsed in an F-pattern."

Keeping important content "above the fold" (fold = bottom of visible screen when first loaded) is not as important as previously assumed.

"Multiple tests...have shown that users have no problem scrolling down below the fold. Surprisingly, they will browse even further down if the length of the page is longer."

People spend less time scanning emails than web pages so keep newsletters "short and sweet."

"Once you’ve earned the right to appear in a prospect’s inbox, be sure to keep that privilege by crafting emails that are clear and get to the point quickly. You don’t have as much time to broadcast your message as you would in an online article."

The Fold Doesn't Matter?

The issue of whether or not putting content above or below the fold matters is the one that caught me by surprise. But note that the studies to which the KISSmetrics article links are all based on pages that are a combination of text and visuals designed to lead you to a call to action which usually involves signing up for something or actually purchasing something.

Related research from The Washington Post considered ad "viewability" (not sure how that's defined in the study) and found that such behaviors as quick scrolling mean that top of the page isn't always the best place for an ad if you want it to be seen.

Their experiments included an "ad unit to combat quick scrolling by following the viewer for the first seven seconds of scrolling." It then "floats back to the top of the page."

This report opens up some interesting possiblities to explore on your own website where you should be testing results rather than relying only on studies that report average results.

For example, many blogs will have links to social networks that allow you to easily share a particular blog post. Some services now provide a floating social media sharing bar that appears next to the post by the headline and then stays in view as one scrolls down the page.

If you're looking to increase social shares of your blog posts, trying out different sharing bars and tracking shares is an example of how you can test such things on your own site.

So do take research seriously but remember that one size rarely fits all and that you should ultimately be finding ways to test variations on your website and in your emails.

Related articles

• 3 Key Music Marketing Lessons Based On Eye Tracking Studies (hypebot.com)
• 7 Marketing Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies (kissmetrics.com)
• Part 2 : Lessons Learned from Eye Tracking Studies (firstdigital.co.nz)
• Eye-tracking cameras show peahens' wandering gaze (sciencenews.org)
• User-Friendly Eye-Tracking Could Outshine Passwords ! (inttelixsecurity.wordpress.com)

Music Video Sharing = Music Marketing With Cull.tv, Flickr, Chill – hypebot

http://djduece.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/music-video-sharing-music-marketing-with-cull-tv-flickr-chill-hypebot/

Creative Music Marketing: Foo Fighters, Bluebrain, Adam Tensta – hypebot

http://djduece.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/creative-music-marketing-foo-fighters-bluebrain-adam-tensta-hypebot/

Music Marketing With Facebook Timeline Covers & Movie Maker (Hypebot)

Music Marketing With Facebook Timeline Covers & Movie Maker

Why Blogging is Essential To Your Music Marketing

Why Blogging Is Essential To Your Music Marketing - hypebot