D.I.Y.

The One Thing I Disagree With Most E-mail Marketers About

Sweepstake-spam-mail-656x339By Andrew Jones, Canada-based Artist Manager & Artist Development Advisor. This post originally appeared on Andrew's personal blog, CheckeredOwl.com

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

Screen-Shot-2014-09-10-at-9.52.01-AMOn 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.

Andrew Jones is an artist manager and artist development advisor based in Canada. He has also worked as a promoter, booking agent, tour manager, music video director and almost everywhere else in the music industry. You can find his blog at www.checkeredowl.com or follow him on twitter: @checkeredowl

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2 Comments

  1. Hey Andrew,
    Great post, we’re sharing this with the brands we work with as well.
    Have you had a chance to try our email marketing software Mailify? We would love to hear your feedback on our product.
    Thanks,
    Shawn

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