We have received feedback recently from artists who would like us to post more articles about how to promote and market music as an independent/DIY musician. Not ones to ignore such feedback, we will put on our promotion hats and post a new promotion related article every Monday. Here is the first of the series!

The Mailing List

The importance of a well managed mailing list cannot be understated. Having a strong database of email addresses to fans is very important, and if you are not putting some effort into developing your mailing list it is fair to say you really should be.

A mailing list is your number one way to communicate with your fans about new releases, new videos, upcoming concerts and tours and other news. If used correctly, a mailing list can also help you nurture and solidify new relationships with fans. Asking for feedback on new songs, videos and photos, holding competitions, giveaways and generally engaging fans and making them feel more involved will do alot to strengthen your their ties do you.

The ultimate goal of a mailing list is to develop true fans. These are die hard fans who will play your music at parties, where your T-shirts, sing your songs in the shower, brag about your music and how cool you are, buy and stream your music and even get other people to sign up to your mailing list. An important part of starting to cultivate true fans is by reaching out to them, and one of these ways is via the mailing list. Thus is it is important to make it easy for people to sign up your mailing list at every online location so when a potential fan checks your profile you can solidify this bond. A good way to encourage sign up is to offer a free promo track as a reward.

We will look more at how to build a mailing list in future posts. In the mean time, a great service for allowing you to create  and organise mailing lists, send out good looking e-mails and track their progress is Championsound. Of course, if you are hardcore DIY a spreadsheet and a little designing will give you equally good results.

To find out more about how to create and manage a mailing list, we recommend the following articles:

The best way to manage a mailing list - by Andrew Dubber (New Music Strategies)

Effective Newsletters: The #1 Technique to Swiftly Increase Your Fanbase – by Ariel Hyatt (Ariel Publicity)

Tags: DIY, email list, independent, mailing list, marketing, Promotion Advice, record union, unsigned

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Promotion advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.