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Your email list is one of your most valuable assets when it comes to marketing your music. So it’s important to get email marketing right and keep your fans engaged.

If you go months without sending anything to your email subscribers, they’ll soon forget who you are. When you finally send them something, they’ll then unsubscribe since they may not remember ever signing up.

Because of this, in order to maintain a top-of-mind position among your email subscribers, it’s important to engage them often.

So, how do you keep your email subscribers engaged without spamming them?

Here are 5 ideas you can make use of.

1. Release Music or Videos More Frequently

It’s likely that your fans signed up for your email list to hear about new music releases. Why make them wait?

When making full-length albums, artists often only have time for maybeone release every year – and that’s if they’re not on tour.

Depending on a number of factors, like your genre and audience, more frequent releases of singles might be a better alternative to the more traditional EP and album method of releasing music.

If you want to release music more frequently, then the recording costs can get expensive – especially if you need to spend time in the studio. Because of this, it might be a good idea to invest in some recording software, and learn how to efficiently record your music.

If you aren’t an expert mixing and mastering engineer, you can outsource these tasks to a service that does online mixing and mastering after tracking your instruments and vocals at home.

If you release a song every week, every 2 weeks, or every month, your email list subscribers will get used to it and eagerly anticipate your emails.

Use these email templates to promote your music:

2. Tour Regularly

If you want to stick to the traditional release structure of EPs and albums, touring more frequently would be a great way to keep your email subscribers engaged.

While it’s harder to maintain a steady tour pattern than it is to release music on a regular basis, maintaining some level of consistency in your tour schedule can give your email list subscribers something to look forward to – assuming they’re in a city you can play a show in.

The downside to touring too often is that it can be tough on your band members. It can also lead to decreased demand for your shows, and will likely result in the need for you to spend more time practicing your instrument.

So if you choose to tour more often as a way to keep your email subscribers engaged, make sure you tour effectively.

3. Make Sure Your Emails Match Your Opt-in form

When creating your opt-in form, it’s common practice to convince people to subscribe by offering something in return – like a free download of a song.

This is great! But in addition to using this as your call to action, you want to make it clear that they’ll also receive updates on music releases, merchandise promotions, tour dates, and anything else you plan on sending them.

If you start sending them things that they didn’t sign up for, it’s more likely that they’ll view this material as spam, and will unsubscribe. Make what you plan on sending out very clear from the beginning.

By setting clear expectations early on, your subscribers will be more willing to engage with your promotional emails.

4. Send Your Email Subscribers Playlist Updates

Playlists are the new radio. And on music streaming services like Spotify, you have the power to create and promote your own playlist, and maintaining a solid playlist within your genre can be a great way to keep your email subscribers engaged.

Simply create a playlist on the streaming service of your choice, and update it at whatever frequency you find necessary to keep your fans engaged. This might be every week, every 2 weeks, or every month. It depends on your specific fanbase.

While Spotify is popular among musicians, keep in mind that not everyone uses Spotify. (Apple Music reportedly has more subscribers than Spotify in the United States) So it might be a good idea to create the playlist on a streaming platform that doesn’t require signup – like SoundCloud or YouTube – to give your subscribers an alternate option to stream it. If a subscriber, doesn’t use Spotify, and you continue to send them Spotify related emails, your emails will quickly become irrelevant to them and they’ll unsubscribe.

You can also re-create the playlist on multiple streaming services so your fans can choose where to listen.

Each time you update the playlist, send a link to it to your email subscribers. After all, they did subscribe to your email list because they want to hear about new music, right?

5. Allow Responses, but Don’t Encourage Them

Two-way communication is a powerful relationship building tool, so letting your email subscribers respond to your emails can build a strong connection between you and your fans – especially if you actually get back to them.

The reason you don’t want to encourage this, however, is because the bigger you get, the harder this will be to manage.

If you’re getting 1 or 2 emails a day from fans, it’s easy to keep them happy by responding. But once you start getting hundreds of emails each day, responding will become impossible.

Because of this, while you should allow for replies and do your best to communicate directly with your fans, it’s important to reduce the number of incoming emails if it’s likely to become a problem.

Here’s are some ways you can do that:

Include an FAQ page on your website for questions about merch orders and music downloads.
Try and have them interact with you on social media instead to increase engagement on your pages. This way, other fans can see the interaction and your posts will have more reach.
Try and write emails that don’t stimulate questions. If you send out a merch offer, for example, make it very simple.

Conclusion – Keep Your Email Subscribers Engaged

Keeping your email list engaged is key to being able to sell to them. However, if they only get sales-based emails from you, they won’t see much value in your emails and may view them as spam. Do your best to maintain value in your email exchanges with your subscribers, and you’ll be able to maintain high levels of engagement, which will ultimately lead to more sales of music, merchandise, and event tickets.

If you need more email tips, here’s what I recommend:

Guest post by Nicholas Rubright

As an indie musician, if you don’t have an email list (or you have one and never use it), you’re shooting yourself in the foot. So today, we’re talking about growing your email list. Compared to social media – where most of your posts can get lost in the feed never to be seen again – email open rates can be on average 25% (or higher if you have awesome content).

What does that mean? It’s your direct ticket straight to your fans, without the distracting videos on social media pulling their attention away. Which means that when you send an important email about your upcoming album, there’s a much better chance your fans will actually see it (and pre-order the album).

Obviously, it’s not as easy as just writing an email and pressing “send.” BUT if you don’t start building your email list now, you won’t be able to reap the rewards.

A lot of musicians and creatives get a little apprehensive about asking fans for an email address. It feels a little too “salesy.” But, especially these days, many music fans are on the lists of all their favorite bands. Email is no long an engine for overly-promotional spam. It’s now a place where fans get get insider access, exclusive content, first looks, and a whole lot more. Think of it like a special club of awesomeness.

Of course, once you start building an email list, you need to start sending your fans really awesome and interesting emails!

Use these email templates to promote your music:

Now onto the big question: How do you build an email list for you music if you are literally starting from nothing (or you have an empty list that you set up ages ago but have been too scared to promote)? Let me throw down a bunch of ideas to get you started.

What is an Email List?

Let’s start from square one. An email list is collection of email addresses you’ve gathered.

Note that these addresses are from people who have opted in somehow. Maybe they bought a t-shirt from your store or they signed up to be notified when you’re touring through their area. Essentially, these people are you more dedicated fans – the ones who have taken an action beyond just following you on social media.

You store and email your list through an email marketing service like Mailchimp. Personal email services like Gmail or Yahoo are completely different and should not be used to email your fans. Services like Mailchimp also give you the ability to segment your list (that’s just a fancy word for splitting up your list into different categories based on interest and activities).

There are plenty of email marketing platforms and services to choose from. Mailchimp is a great place to start (free up to 2K subscribers, yay!), but I suggest doing a little research to see which best fits your needs.

How to Build an Email for Your Music

Okay, now let’s dig into some approaches you can use to actually grow your email list. All of these ideas will work for someone with literally zero subscribers AND ALSO someone who’s already built up a bit of a list and is looking for some new ideas.

Of course, you don’t by any means need to use all 10 of these strategies – just pick the ones that fit best with your career and run with them. Everyone will have a slightly different approach (since we all have different fanbases, career levels, etc), so try some things, see what works, and go with that.

A few quick side notes about email (I don’t want anyone getting in trouble).

You need permission to email someone. That means they need to opt in to your list, buy something from you, or put their name on a signup list at a gig.
You need to let people opt out of your emails. Some people just won’t dig your emails for whatever reason. And that’s fine. Let’s get them off the list and focus on the people who do dig your emails.
Use your own email habits as a guideline. Do you like reading novel-length emails? Probably not. Do you like getting overly promotional “buy my cool stuff” emails? I’m going to guess no. Keep it valuable, keep it concise.

1. Create an Opt In Form

A good ol’ embedded opt in form on your website is something you should always have. It’s the key ingredient if you want to grow your email list. An opt in form is just a simple form that requests information (usually just a first name and email address), with a submit button.

Pretty much any email service will have the capability to create embeddable opt in forms that can be added to any website platform. (Here’s a link to a tutorial for Mailchimp’s embeddable opt in forms so you can see what I mean.)

So if you don’t have an email signup form on your home page, go set one up now. Seriously. Right now.

Fortunately, a lot of musicians have gotten this memo already so let’s talk about how you can make your opt in form perform even better.

Contrast is important. You want your opt in form to stand out on your website so your fans will notice it (and hopefully fill it out). So that means if your page is black, your form should be a contrasting color or white. If your page is white, opt for a color that fits with your theme but still stands out.
Keep it simple. You don’t need to know everything about your fans right now – just a name and email address will suffice. The easier it is to fill out, the more subscribers you’ll get.
Tell fans exactly what they get for opting in. A generic “signup for my email list” isn’t going to convince anyone and you’ll more than likely see low conversion rates. (More on what you can trade for emails coming up next 😉 )

2. Trade Something of Value for Email Addresses

Your email opt in forms will perform much better if you give your fans some kind of reward for opting in – think of it like a trade.

At the most basic level, your fan would fill out the form and your autoresponder would deliver the cool reward. You grow your email list, they get something cool.

Most musicians are pretty familiar with the notion of trading songs for an email address. BUT, let me share some ideas that will get your fans really excited about opting in.

Your best bet is to offer exclusive content – a.k.a. something fans can’t get anywhere else. Things like exclusive or unreleased songs, acoustic versions of songs, video lessons or tutorials, or gear sheets are all great ideas for gated content. (Get even more ideas here.)

Obviously what you offer in exchange for email addresses will vary based on the interests of your fanbase and your career. So do some testing. Try a few different things and see which drives the most signups.

3. Set Up a Landing Page to Grow Your Email List

In the world on online marketing, a gated landing page is about as basic as it gets. And yet, I see very few musicians utilizing it. Without a doubt, this is the most effective way to grow your email list (which is why I’m putting it right up front 😉 )

We have a more detailed, step-by-step guide to creating landing pages here, but for now let’s go through the basics.

First step is to create a gated piece of content (which we just talked about in point number 2).

Next, you need to create a landing page that tells your fans exactly what they’ll get when they opt in. A headline like “Get unreleased acoustic versions of these three songs,” or “Signup to get a list of all the gear I used to get the guitar tone on my latest single,” would be perfect.

Include a few bullet points to explain what they will get and/or how they will benefit from it, and an opt in form. The sole purpose of a gated landing page is to get fans to sign up to get the cool thing you’re providing, so avoid adding anything that will distract fans from this purpose (that means no social feeds, no blog posts – nothing!)

4. Grow Your Email List in Person and at Gigs

Never overlook the value of a face-to-face interaction – ever. If you’re a performing musician, live events, gigs, and house concerts are a perfect opportunity to grow your email list.

The easy-mode approach is to just have an email signup form sitting on your merch table. Have a blurb written large across the top (big enough so it’s easy to read in a low-light venue environment) telling your fans what they will get when they signup.

If you want this approach to work even better, do a little announcement during your set telling fans that they can sign up for emails to receive some cool exclusive thing. It doesn’t have to be a big uncomfortable pitch – just let them know it’s there.

If you want to get a gold star for effort (and probably get even more signups) try turning it into a contest. Enter everyone who writes down their email into a contest to win a cool merch bundle or something like that.

5. Use Social Media to Grow Your Email List

You have a ready-made group of people who have self-identified themselves as being interested in your music on social media. So why not use it as a channel to promote your email list?

It’s very easy to share a link to your landing page (remember the one we setup earlier?) on social media. Don’t overdo it though. Social media is mostly for fun and interesting content, and a place for you to engage with your fans, so a tweet promoting your email list every day is probably a little much.

To make things less promotional, try making these posts about your fans, not you or your list. Simply shift the language from, “I have a mailing list, click here to sign up,” to “I’m going live for an email subscriber-only event. Click here and signup to get in on the fun,” or “A lot of you guys asked how I got the guitar tone on [song name]. Here’s a list of everything I used and a quick tutorial: [link to landing page]”

So it’s all about having a light touch and focusing on value. Keep that in mind and you’ll see more email signups from social. (And you’ll feel a lot less uncomfortable about waving your own flag.)

6. Host Some Kind of Online Live Event

You don’t need gigs to get that in-person, face-to-face connection with fans. And with all the online streaming and concert platforms, there are a lot of options.

Obviously you could host a live online concert. But here are some other options:

Host Q&A sessions with your fans on Facebook or Instagram Live
Stream your rehearsals
Have “write with me” sessions where you stream some of your songwriting process
Teach your fans something specific like how to play a certain riff, or how to set up a home studio. (This is best for musicians who know a lot of their fans are also musicians)

Now how do you use these live online events to collect email addresses and grow your email list? There are two options…

One, you could make the event public for all your fans to join. While you’re live give your fans the chance to opt into your list to get some cool thing. If you hosted a live concert, give them a free download of one of the songs you played. If you used the live session to teach your fans something, give them a free checklist or toolkit PDF.

And two, use the live event as a piece of gated content. Promote it on social media in the days or weeks prior. Let fans know that they need to be signed up for your email list to join. You can host private streams on YouTube quite easily. Just set the stream’s privacy to “unlisted” and share the direct link with your email list.

7. Start a Blog (Or Podcast)

Getting into the habit of posting regular longer-form content on your website will do wonders for growing your email list.

It gets fans visiting your site on a regular basis. (And the more they visit the more they will be exposed to your opt in forms.)
Every article or podcast you post is an opportunity to promote your list.

So, for every blog post or podcast you post, have a call to action encouraging fans to sign up for your email list. It only has to be one line with a link to your landing page or opt in form.

8. Make a YouTube Channel

This is in the same vein as the previous point, but it’s still worth mentioning.

The description box below your YouTube videos is a great place to put a link to your email landing page or optin form and the face-to-face connection that you get talking to your fans through the video will usually get you more conversions.

Take a second in the video to actually tell your fans that you have a link to sign up for emails in the description. Tell them what they will get for signing up and all the cool stuff you send exclusively to your email list.

Something as simple as saying, “Thanks for watching! If you want more music there’s a link in the description box to signup for my email list. I’ll send you 3 free songs and you’ll be able to join in the fun email-club-only live streams we have here every month.”

9. Set an Exit Popup to Grow Your Email List

An exit intent pop up is an email opt in form that will appear if someone on your site moves their mouse to exit the page.

Your pop up should offer your site visitor something of value. So a simple pop up may have a headline saying, “Want 3 free songs? Signup for my email list to get 3 unreleased tracks.”

There are some plugins for WordPress and other website platforms that will allow you to easily set one up.

Don’t worry if this seems a little pushy. If you go to pretty much any website these days, you’ll see exit intent popups. Fans are pretty used to it at this point.

10. Make Your Emails Engaging and Valuable

Of course, all these tips won’t be worth much unless the emails you send to your list are awesome (the last thing we want is to go through all this effort to grow a list only to have everyone unsub).

Make sure you’re writing in your own voice, sharing interesting stories or opportunities, and not overwhelming your fans with too many emails (or too few). Try starting out with these email templates and do some experimenting to see what kinds of emails seem to get higher engagement.

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Tag Archive for: email newsletter

1. Release Music or Videos More Frequently

Use these email templates to promote your music:

2. Tour Regularly

3. Make Sure Your Emails Match Your Opt-in form

4. Send Your Email Subscribers Playlist Updates

Conclusion – Keep Your Email Subscribers Engaged

Use these email templates to promote your music:

What is an Email List?

How to Build an Email for Your Music

1. Create an Opt In Form

2. Trade Something of Value for Email Addresses

3. Set Up a Landing Page to Grow Your Email List

4. Grow Your Email List in Person and at Gigs

5. Use Social Media to Grow Your Email List

6. Host Some Kind of Online Live Event

7. Start a Blog (Or Podcast)

8. Make a YouTube Channel

9. Set an Exit Popup to Grow Your Email List

10. Make Your Emails Engaging and Valuable

Click to get the free email templates:

Online Courses

Site Map

Get In Touch