I knew I needed a mailing list for my music promotion. Every music blogger out there will tell you “YOU NEED A MAILING LIST”. Once I found my mailing list solution, I knew it was time to strategize and plan.
While I agreed it was important when I first started, I didn’t know too much about what I could really accomplish with Aweber. It’s not just about collecting an email and shooting out a newsletter.
I read some articles and became convinced that my mailing list promotion needed attention and not treated as just another tool.
Here is a collection of awesome articles to get your mind thinking on different ways to approach your mailing list promotion.
Invest time into your list. Build your list over time and finally market your music to people who are actually interested in what you do. They did sign up, didn’t they?
Design is a very important factor for musicians. I was looking for a theme for some other projects and stumbled across Themeforest. Themeforest allows independent web designers to upload their themes for sale for multiple content management systems. I am running my blogs on Wordpress, but you can find templates for Joomla, Drupal, Email templates and PSD templates. The prices are just right, ranging from $5 to $40.
Affordable Options
The reason I like Themeforest is I bought a theme for $25 and it had so many options, with a sweet modern design. If you are a Wordpress musician, you will love the options features on many of the themes.
Admin Options: Easier customization features within Wordpress Dashboard, versus dropping code into your templates.
Multiple Page Layouts: Important for me as an artist because it allows me to find a different page layout for my albums, home page, and blog area.
Installation: Step by step instructions for certain customization features
Save On Web Design Costs: Now that you have found a theme structure you like, you can still get expert help from a web designer. Having a theme idea already makes the job easier for a web designer and will save you money from starting a design project from scratch.
Customer Comments: check out the comments from people who have purchased the theme. You get to find out about how helpful the designer is with answering questions or any problems with their product.
Affiliate Program: If you like their service you can promote them on your blog or to fellow musicians you work with. Great way to get your money back and create a passive revenue stream. Here is my affiliate link.
Just another option if you are tired of looking at endless “Top 100 Free Wordpress Themes” articles found everywhere with the same recycled themes.
I recently switched over to Aweber as my solution for my mailing list. When I began blogging, I settled for a simple opt-in Wordpress plugin that would add some value to my subscribers.
The problem for me was the free plugin was limited and sometimes would have problems with random updates. I’ve been researching mailing list solutions and found some reasons why it is very important for your development.
Test For Yourself
I signed up for multiple mailing lists of websites that I enjoyed and found interesting things. I analyzed what I liked and didn’t like about their mailing lists: frequency of updates, or just too damn pushy and salesy.
My music operation is a business. I have made that distinction and its time to treat it as one. Reading some great posts by internet entrepreneur David Risley got me thinking about not just purchasing business tools but applying them.
If you don’t find ways to market your music with business tools then you are hurting yourself.
The view of the mailing list changed for me. I used to work crappy sales jobs and everything was about leads. I don’t want to be “that guy” because I have been on the receiving end of some horrible practices. This form of labeling made me not take my subscribers for granted, but reward them. Build relationships.
Aweber To The Rescue
I signed up for Aweber and was mad I didn’t do it earlier. The main reason early on I didn’t get it was I didn’t want to spend any money. I was just cutting corners and settling for passive email subscription services with limited features, such as Feedburner, just to save a buck.
Some of the features include:
Videos explaining the different ways you can use their multiple features to improve
your business.
Sign Up forms are easy to customize and install on your blog
Email Web Analytics allow you to track if people are actually clicking and reading your
emails or clicking on your products
Email Newsletters are easy to assemble and there are html templates to make your
newsletter shine if you choose
Follow Up Autoresponders are a great way to send a sequence of emails personalized
for your subscribers
Publish your email newsletter to Twitter
The service runs about $19 a month, with some low introductory offers for new subscribers. Paying for a high quality service like this is worth it. It is also the kick in the ass most musicians need. If you are paying for something, you want to get your money’s worth. Get active!
Reasons I See Value For a Musician Blogging:
Welcome Message: Send new subscribers a welcome message with some articles you think they will enjoy. Introduce subscribers to your website, or some aspect of your site you think they may have missed. Cover your ground
Autoresponders to the rescue: sending a sequence of emails that can introduce every
subscriber to your music catalog. Old albums and new albums can receive the same
attention
Newsletters can be sent on whatever timetable you like: daily, monthly, weekly. Test the
right timetable that won’t annoy your subscribers
Split Test Messages: see which subject lines people are clicking more, or which messages
are being opened. Maybe your music is great but your headlines suck.
See Sales Generated By Subscribers
Create Anticipation: while music is being created you can build anticipation for the
future release in hopes of stimulating sales and blog visits.
Everyone has an email account: building your reach and not just relying on passing
social networks
I like to promote services that I actually use and Aweber is one of them. It’s never to late to improve and I learned my lesson. Build your list as your traffic rises and don’t wait. Your mailing list is your asset that needs to be developed.
On that note, (shameless plug) feel free to sign up for Hip Hop Distribution’s monthly newsletter. The Sign up is located on the top right sidebar.
If you are just beginning your band blogging mission, this list will help give you an idea of things to monitor and improve your marketing attack.
If you have been blogging for a while, this list is great to make sure your focus is on point. I have been doing recent band consultations and found it necessary to create this PDF. Blogging is one aspect of a music operation but can open up endless networking and promotion opportunities.
This list has made it possible for me to reach a wider audience with my band blog and with Hip Hop Distribution. These 5 factors made my monthly visits increase.
Benchmark your Progress
When I first began it was hard for me to get a steady stream of traffic to my music. I started with getting a couple hundred visitors for the month, wondering what the hell I needed to do to.
When I would check out my stats all I would see is this “roller coaster” graph, watching monthly visits go up and down. I have been a big Search Engine Marketing nut, to say the least, and had been trying different techniques to implement into my operation.
The hard part was finding information that was relevant to music marketing. My initial concerns were how to keep traffic improving, without paying for advertisements, mainly focusing on search engine traffic, organically.
The website’s purpose doesn’t change whether you are a full time artist or a nighttime musician, creating tunes from your home. The website is your mouthpiece, your business card, your storefront, and your forum to connect with people.
The amount of money you want to make is really dependent on your effort and consistency. It’s really easy to create a revenue stream for your music, and offset costs of domain purchases, and web hosting. I did it and all it took was understanding your goals, setting a plan and executing.
The big thing to avoid initially is getting overwhelmed with too much promotion. This led to burnout and at the time I wasn’t grading how good my promotion was and what was working. This was an important step.
Don’t waste time; it will catch up with you in the long run. I created this sheet to evaluate what was working and what showed potential. From here I could create a solid foundation and add to the list different solutions to positive promotion.
These five factors were huge for my increasing visitors and counting.
Blogging
Social Bookmarking
Commenting Around the Web Keyword Research
Free Music Strategy
The crazy thing I realized is these 5 factors are dependent on one another. For example, Keyword research will improve your search engine rankings for your articles. Writing an article needs social bookmarking and commenting around social networks for best reach, they don’t market themselves. A free music strategy creates incentive for fans to interact with your website or mailing list.
When these clicked on all cylinders, my visitors and comments started increasing. I was getting help from people on social networks, because I interacted with them. My keyword searches started increasing and I had data to evaluate how people could find me better.
This is just one checklist I created for my Internet marketing campaign and have stuck by it with nice results. Do it yourself doesn’t mean you cant make a huge impact. Feel free to download here. Evaluate Your Band Blog (7)
Hindsight
It Works, Just Do It
“Do It Yourself” is not to be taken literally. For success to be achieved you have to be able to delegate responsibility to your strong points. Some band members may enjoy writing more, while others enjoy social networking on Twitter and Facebook. Once you have a list of areas you feel need to be built on, fill in the blanks with team members that can execute.
Simplicity dominated this project. After years worth of work, fading trends and social networks, this PDF is a constant for my websites. Create your own list, and evaluate your effort, and strategy. DIY operations can survive, but the importance of team work and active promotion can never be underestimated.
Keep working at your goals, but you have to set them to achieve them. Let me know what kind of things you as a musician use to benchmark your progress and failures.
Staring at my old Eric B and Rakim cassette next to a CD and flash drive made me think of how prepared am I for the next fundamental changes that might occur to my music operation once I get settled. As independent musicians, we need to create, maintain, critique and improve our methods for online promotion, or get left in the trash. The main thing I like about music marketing is that you can customize a marketing plan according to your needs. Pick the brains of fellow musicans and marketing experts and create a strong plan that can survive.
Agree to disagree. Prove your marketing strategies with numbers, build upon small success and do what works for your wallet as well. I selected some articles I found very informative that cover topics very important to every evolving music operation: Search engine optimization, album release planning, focusing on small or large fan bases, and embracing imagination with releasing your music.
Audible Hype
Justin Boland sparks the importance of planning when it comes to your album release and also embeds the importance of knowing your genre’s demographics and how to use it to your advantage.
Seth Godin breaks down the music industry and the fundamental shifts which created opportunities and threats. Social media and interaction is at the heart and soul of creating that “tribe”.
Music Think Tank gets musicians in gear with focus on work ethic and building a solid fan base from the ground up. Independent success is closer than you think.
Greg Rollet delivers some insight on affiliate marketing for musicians. Creating extra revenue streams for your music is necessary, and goes a long way in offsetting costs. You don’t have to be chessy with sales to make a little change.
Erik Peterson explains the importance of search engine optimization and music blogging. Small steps lead to major improvements in search engine rankings and traffic. When search engine spiders crawl your site, make sure they know what your website is about
I knew I needed a mailing list for my music promotion. Every music blogger out there will tell you “YOU NEED A MAILING LIST”. Once I found my mailing list solution, I knew it was time to strategize and plan. 
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