Introduction:
As you should know, email marketing is an incredibly important part of any online business in today’s socially driven world. Emails are one of the primary ways to connect with your user, communicate with them, share your offerings and interact with them just like Facebook and Twitter. Email is a strategy that is followed by almost every business around, controlled by stakeholders from their palms itself. We often see too many emails in our inboxes. Tonnes of Emails are sent and received every day, but that doesn’t suffice that you shouldn’t be doing this for your game.
But, the question that comes here is, where do you start? Obviously, you don’t want to have to email all of your fans individually. Even if there are in a bunch of your list or even a few in dozen. It can be exhausting sometimes and will become unmanageable if all goes well too. Managing emails manually is a daunting task and requires a lot of hands.
For that, there are plenty of email newsletter services to cater for the problem of managing regular emails. But it can be difficult to determine which email marketing service would work best for you if you are in the music industry. We have collated some for you, which can prove good starting point for any musician.
Importance of having best email marketing service
Ultimately, the answer is simple. You own the specific email lists and with it the permission to reach your fans directly who are ready to connect, stay in touch, and sell music, tickets and much more. Email marketing strategy has even been shown to be as much as 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined.
With that said, we’ve put a guide and tips together covering all you’ll need to know to get started for building your email marketing strategy for your music creations.
Email is one of the most powerful tools at your business’s disposal when you are in music industry:
Emails can drive engagement and help you to build relationships. Email campaigns also help to get you a higher ROI than every other type of marketing category. Set up your emails properly, and it can be extremely lucrative for your music business.
Email marketing can be also be one of the most underutilized promotional tactics for musicians.
Interested in stepping up your email marketing game? Look no further.
Here are GrooveNexus picks for the best email marketing services for music artists, bands and record labels.
Know about some Email Newsletter Services that are best for Musicians?
However, it is wrong to specify one particular email marketing service if someone asks what’s the best email marketing service. Because these services are customizable, and you can choose the service as per your need. Therefore, we have got you a list of some of the best email marketing services that can help you build your brand best in the music industry.
1. Gmass
Gmass is a Gmail-specific service that helps in scheduling emails to your readers. Send out bulk emails, merge email campaigns and so much more activity. Here are some features of Gmass in music industry:
- With Gmass you can keep track of opens and clicks.
- Gmass help you send emails as replies to the last thread with each recipient
- You can send automatic follow-up emails until you get a reply.
- Gmass can be integrated directly into Gmail.
It comes with a $6.95-$12.95/monthly subscription*
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the leading email marketing services in town. It comes with an ability to connect a store, you can sell more merch and music in no time with Mailchimp. Take your email marketing one step ahead by offering your clients various ad campaigns, clear calls-to-action (CTA’s) and with stunning templates. Mailchimp comes with advanced analytics inbuilt, which helps you define and grow your audience clearly and clearly. Mailchimp email marketing service can get pricey depending on your goals set. It is an extensive tool that offers service at a very competitive price – $0-$199/month*
3. Zoho
Zoho helps you to import your email subscribers from various sources easily. If you’re already using Zoho CRM, Eventbrite or G Suite, you’ll find Zoho helpful. Zoho is one of the most useful services that comes with features which allows you to use A/B testing to figure out the most effective campaign you are running. Zoho’s pre-designed templates allows you to drag and drop editors. Autoresponders make Zoho Campaigns a great choice for the music industry. The price of service varies from $0-$65/month or pay-as-you-go*. It is one of the best free email marketing services of all.
4. YMLP
YMLP offers easy-to-use software to help you reach your fans. This is one of the best email marketing services that comes handy on a web app and offers 30 free sample templates. YMLP is a simple newsletter builder that comes with extremely competitive pricing. YMLP will get the job done and is a proven email marketing services and best email marketing service provider so far for those who requires a no-frills and yet effective email marketing service for their music website. The price of the service varies from $5/month*
5. SendGrid
SendGrid is a highly acclaimed email marketing service provider which Spotify uses, Uber likes. It is one of the widely used platform which is a cloud-based service as well. It offers following features:
- email tracking,
- customizable and elegant design options,
- clear and actionable statistics and much more.
If you are looking for a no-fail service, then SendGrid is a great choice to go for. Price of the service starts from $9.95-$79.95/month or premier*
6. Mailjet
Mailjet is a business-oriented email marketing service that is a great choice for record labels with a large list of song subscribers. Mailjet offer the following features:
- seamless contact list management,
- A/B testing,
- real-time data monitoring. Etc.
It is one of the best and cheapest email marketing services that comes with simple pricing options It allows you to send ample emails you want for your fanbase smoothly. The monthly subscription starts from $0-$12.92* depending on the features you opt for.
7. FanBridge
FanBridge is a two-in-one online email marketing service that offers fans growth and email marketing at single place. FanBridge is one of the best email marketing service that offers fan growth tools such as powerful social media scheduler, a YouTube Subscribe gate etc. FanBridge email marketing service utilizes many integrations like SoundCloud, Spotify, Bandsintown, geo-targeting, automatic event inclusion and so much more in just one go. With an easy pricing model, FanBridge is one email marketing service for bloggers, price of which is unbeatable. It comes with $19.99-$129.99/month*
With all the email marketing services mentioned above, it is to note that we should send emails only to our targeted audiences and when it is extremely important. Need more hacks on digital marketing tips for musicians? Head to our recently written blog. And groove to the beats of life!
*all the prices are subject to change time to time.
Email marketing tips for musicians
How do you plan to email as a musician is something that creeps in every business owner who is in the music industry. To get the best email marketing service for your music business, follow some brands in similar lines and look how they are tapping their TGs appropriately. Understand your offerings first and then choose the email marketing plan that suits your offerings best.
Follow simple and basic steps below and showcase your talent to the entire world with the help of best online email marketing services.
Overview of quick steps involved in email marketing guide for musicians:
1. Build and grow an email list
The first and foremost thing you will thing you will need to do is prepare a list of emails ids. There are a few ways to build such list and combine your best bet. You can then offer your fans and listeners a lead magnet. Means something which is related to get in return by signing up the form. An appropriate lead magnet for a musician or band would be an exclusive recording sheet of their recorded songs. For example a sample of unreleased album art, a quiz on your website, upcoming single, studio outcomes, or your website where fans will leave their email ids in return or you will give your email in exchange for better results.
This can go in various ways-
- Signup forms
Signup forms will help the business owner to collect emails on the dedicated landing page. It’s best to outline benefits for joining your email list. Like to get updates, upcoming event dates, coupon codes, etc. Our advice will be to catch crucial data, like email address and name.
Tips: Enhance your Social Media presence
Social media presence is very much essential for any musician or a band, for that of matter. Being present on Social media allows you to gain exposure, increase fan followings, engage with fans, and get new opportunities. Social Media can be utilized for building email list. Wondering how? Here’s how- If you are offering any extra content which can be gated that requires a signing up, you can put some money on your social media pages and boost it for some time.
- Once the form is created, add CTAs (call-to-actions) like “Sign up” or “Know more” to capture leads. These can be then further interlinked with your website or landing pages with an email sign-up form. You can customise your CTA’s with some incentive like “sign up to get your sheet music” or “sign up & get a discount code”.
- Run discount codes or contest on your social media channels and link them to your website or landing pages. Make sure to make them in a way that captures email addresses to participate. Do not forget to add required rules for your contests and giveaways. While running a giveaway campaign or form, tap the exact set of TGs, use the exact demographic location, and then run your ads. will help you to get more conversions. In the case of YouTube, learn to ask users to describe joining your programme and not just “hit like and subscribe.”
- Encourage your YouTube subscribers not only to “hit like and subscribe” to your channel, but also include a line or two in your script where you describe the benefits of joining your list. An end screen with a link would also be a great idea.
2. Prepare your emailers
After you have prepared a list of people who want to get emails from you/your band. Next step is to craft your first email campaign. There are hundreds of ways you can engage with your fans through emails and make something interesting of their choices and those are popular among musicians. Materials that will really help musicians are:
- Newsletters on music updates
- New music/ music video/ merchandise announcement
- Gig or artist’s tour dates
- Pre-sale info of artists Etc.
Emailers can be in any format, pdf, ppt, word, video format anything of your choice. Know the ways of email marketing for musicians.
3. Set up your first campaign
Once you have all the doc in place, you are all set to automate your marketing campaigns. Marketing automation is a process by which you refrain yourself form sending emails one on one. By using email marketing services mentioned above, you can automate your email marketing campaign and send across desired materials basis leads you have got and basis segregated data. Marketing automation is a powerful tool that helps to make email marketing a breeze. Marketing campaigns are made so that it triggers into workflow and with proper set up it interconnects the way a marketing campaign floats.
Although marketing automation helps to send many emails simultaneously, some of them allow you to send more personalized campaigns. Let’s say, you have to wish some artist on his/her birthday, you can schedule the mailer on his/her birthday and the wish automatically just reached out to that person.
4. Measure your results
To stay in control of how well your marketing efforts work, do not forget to measure the result. Find out the best email marketing services that do best for your business. With minor tweaks in your emailers can make changes in your email campaigns and see remarkable results. Compare your data and measure your results with slight tweaks.
The stats derived from your campaigns are mostly self-explanatory and easy to understand by the TGs. Some important metrics and KPIs to measure in your campaigns are:
- Email open rate
- Click-through rate
- Click-to-open rate
- Bounce rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Deliverability rate
- Spam complaint rate
- Average revenue per email sent
- Email campaign profitability
Speaking about all of the above email marketing services for your musical brand campaign, did we miss any email service that you think is essential for the musicians today? Don’t hesitate to comment us your suggestions below.
Also check out our blog about social media platforms for musicians and enhance your social presence on various platforms.