Email Newsletter Tips For Keeping Fans Close From Bandzoogle’s David Dufresne
Though text messaging is an increasingly popular way to reach music fans who've opted-in to your contact list, email is still a solid contender for reaching fans. In fact, according to a recent Pew Internet study, 64% of of respondents age 18 to 29 "send or read email on a typical day." So, since email is still quite alive, I checked in with Bandzoogle's David Dufresne to get his tips on email newsletters.
I contacted David Dufresne, CEO of Bandzoogle, one of Hypebot's sponsors, since I knew that they included email list management in their bundle of band website services. He points out that email remains one of the more consistent links with fans and that Emily White, of Whitesmith Entertainment, calls mailing lists "a musician's pension fund".
Given that email open rates are never what you want them to be, Dufresne suggested Ariel Hyatt as one well known music marketer who has a lot of solid insights on getting your email newsletters read.
You can find out more about what Ariel has to say at Music Think Tank in an insightful post:
How to Write Engaging Newsletters – Ariel's Greeting, Guts, & Getting!
A related post by Brian Franke draws on Ariel's book, "Music Success in Nine Weeks":
Why No One is Reading Your Newsletter
David Dufresne also pointed out that folks who do open your emails and read your newsletter are much more likely to be committed fans who will be interested in buying your merch or attending your shows. And the ones that don't are obviously aware of your band and probably can be reached through other channels.
For people who are using Gmail for email communication, Dufresne suggested Rapportive as a tool for finding out more about your contacts. Rapportive leverages the fact that folks tend to use the same email aross social networks to provide contact profiles. According to Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb, they get that info from RapLeaf.
I've been gathering additional information on email marketing and will be happy to share if folks are interested. Despite the common wisdom that email is dead, living beings apparently still use it quite a bit and there are many resources and services out there for developing email as a music marketing and fan contact channel. Such resources include another Hypebot sponsor, FanBridge.
For more on the Pew Internet study see:
Search and email still top the list of most popular online activities
Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. He is currently relaunching Flux Research to pursue his long-standing obsession with web business models. To suggest music services and related topics for review at Hypebot, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
