Daily D.I.Y. – Better Email Blasts
FOR THE INDIE IN US ALL - Music publicity firm Shore Fire shared a study by the The Center For Media Research on the importance of shorter subject lines that everyone needs to heed when sending out email blasts.
The highlights:
- Front load subject lines with the most important information
- Size matters: keep them as short as possible
- Many email services like AOL restrict subject lines to 38-40 characters
- When in doubt, test
How do you make your email better?
Share on:
Don’t try to ‘convert’ in the email, just get a click to a landing page where you do the selling.
Use personalization – put their name in the email/subject line.
Or you can focus on the bigger picture. Spend a little time getting to know your audience. For instance, if you’re blast emailing the press, you’re just spamming. Maybe only a few journalists write about your kind of band – so wouldn’t your time be better spent on writing a few personal notes instead of worrying about the latest research?
We always send out a letter first to our media blast list introducing ourselves and asking if it is ok to continue sending information on the bands we represent, usually listing the names and styles of a few, and adding if you are not interested in getting this information please email us back and we will not send the information out to you again. You would be suprised we get reposes of about 97% or so saying yes send it out and we actually get more press because the news is seen as valuable and we did the right thing.
Once you become credible with your audience, Opt-In email blasts are a good method. People trust them, they even expect them. There’s a study out saying how comfortable folks are becoming with their opt-ins. We wrote about it here: http://www.heilbrice.com/blog/uncategorized/dont-be-afraid-of-e-mail/
Specifically about music, it may be different, but some of that study may apply.