Email proves, again and again, it's the best way to engage your fans. Even with the deluge of social media options, email maintains the best response rates. On top of that, you want to make sure you have “control” of your fan base information. It’s really cool to have all those likes on Facebook, but who guarantees Facebook will still be around in 10 years? Remember Myspace? That's why you need to start an email list, grow it, and optimize it for your needs. If another site/medium become the new hot thing, you will still have your fans’ email to keep sending all your content and bring them to the new site. Other reasons why you shouldn’t invest all your resources on social media alone are: a) your page could be hacked; b) your page could be blocked from the site for infringing some norms; c) it’s becoming harder for your fans to see your content if you don't spend money to promote your posts.
Engagement as a percentage of your audience is much higher through email. When you put a Facebook post in front of 5,000 people, 75% or more of them won’t see it at all unless you're paying for a promoted post. It’s even worse on Twitter, where less than 10% of your audience is likely seeing each Tweet because of the number of tweets in their feed each day. Furthermore, according to research by social media analytics company Wisemetrics, the total life of a Facebook post is only around four and a half hours, and the life of a Tweet is just over an hour. But email? Email takes 12 days for its open rates to drop off that much.
Email marketing is your best bet. So if you're not already, it's time to take advantage of this effective marketing channel.
Here are 5 ways that you can use Email Marketing to engage your fans:
1. Share New and Exclusive Content - Think of some content that your fans would love for you to share with them. Some examples are original tracks, remixes, mashups, podcasts, sets, videos, articles, etc.
2. Kick Off Promotions - If you want to run any sort of campaign or promotion, having a good starting point in your email list is important. By having an active email list you are able to quickly promote it to your existing fans, who in turn help share it with other people they know. One popular and effective method is through giveaways. For example, if you have some DJ merchandise, you can do a giveaway of a your “Merch Kit” in exchange for something (i.e. follow/likes on Instagram/FB, exchange for an email address, etc).
3. Promote Upcoming Events - If you have a big gig coming up, you want to inform your fans about it. They will be excited, and it also serves as social proof that you have a successful career.
4. Drip Campaigns - Often called drip campaigns but known by many other names— automated email campaign, autoresponders, and marketing automation—the concept is the same: they’re a set of marketing emails that will be sent out automatically on a schedule. Perhaps one email will go out as soon as a fan signs up for your email list, another will go out 3 days later, with one more going out the next weekend.
5. Relationship Building - Your fans like you as a person as much (If not more) as they like you as an artist. You can use your email marketing to strengthen that bond between you and your fans. For example, when you go on a tour, you can create an after-movie and send it first to your fans on your email list. Or, it can be something very simple as just sending them an email asking questions (i.e. what was the craziest story that happened while you were in my concert/gig?). This is something very simple to do, but it creates a great bond between you and your fans.
Pay attention to the emails you receive from your favorite artists. You will get some great insights from it :)
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