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Gaelic Storm Follows Recipe For Email Success

Gaelic email Gaelic Storm has grown from playing pubs to selling out theaters with no label and almost no airplay. Their success has come in large part because the band and Matt Maher's ROAR management team have consistently used modern marketing to stay connected with the many fans earned at their fun live shows.

This isn't rocket science.  But in a single email, the band includes a free mp3 teasing their new album,  a contest for a trip sponsored by Southwest Airlines,  their tour dates, an invite to an after-party where they asks fans to wear Gaelic Storm t-shirts for a group photo, a couple of trips fans can go on and a call to buy merchandise. The fan gets rewarded with a free mp3 at the top of the email and then is offered a variety of ways to stay engaged with the band through the email and on their active website.

Very basic stuff, but when executed all together and done repeatedly it’s incredibly effective. View the full email here.

Bruce Houghton on 03/11/2010 in Uncategorized | Permalink | Comments (4)
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4 Comments

  1. Great post on the creativity and fun you can have engaging your fans!!
    I think a couple key items to note is they offer their fan base several “benefits” or “offers” in the newsletters, whether it is the free song, the Southwest contest, Pub of the Month info, etc. Also, they make these offers on a “consistent” basis.
    If you repeat those two items, your fans will keep coming back for more since they see the benefit of following you and have fun as well.
    Thanks again,
    Greg Brent

    Gaelic Storm did get some exposure at the beginning from performing in this little arty movie called “Titanic.” The movie won a couple of awards, and did OK at the box office. 🙂 Gaelic Storm played the Irish band accompanying the dance scene in the steerage section.
    I have thought for some time that DIYers ought to be studying how the folk/traditional music scene keeps going. Folk & traditional has been almost entirely outside of the major labels since the end of the Great Folk Scare of the 1960s, yet their artists keep going and going, like the Energizer bunny.
    And it’s not just for geezers any more, at least not in the British Isles. Over there, they have had a huge revival of youthful energy in both the performers and the audience for folk & traditional — there are bundles of artists under 30 years old, and visible numbers in their young 20s or teens. Most artists who make CDs seem to be self-releasing them.

  2. It’s true that Gaelic was in the Titanic film. But when we got involved with them it was a couple of years after that and with a couple of exceptions they could still only sell out small clubs. The payoff came later after they put all the pieces together and worked the plan.
    And you are right, there is a lot that can be learned from the niche genres. They understood the need to stay close to their fans as well as to successfully record and release records without big labels and traditional media long before it became fashionable.

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