Is Email still valuable for artists music promotion
by Admin on November 11, 2010
Email may be the most effective way to connect with fans, but no one said this communications platform was going to be easy. And not everyone is sold on its effectiveness. ”How many people get an email from an artist and just delete it?” Epitaph director of Marketing Chris Trovero asked the audience at New Noise Santa Barbara over the weekend. Surprisingly, a healthy chunk – perhaps even a majority – raised their hands.
Sound familiar? Anyone who hasn’t been incarcerated since the 90s knows the sticky problems that come with email. And
(My comments on this: from a listbuilding standpoint it doesn’t matter if people delete your email, you just need to find new people. )
And getting fans to sign up can also be a challenge. At CMJ, one conscientious artist found it difficult to coax fans into giving their emails away at shows – even if free stuff was attached. Some fans simply don’t want another “blast” crowding their inbox, even from an artist they absolutely love (and will spend money on).
But is email just the best of the worst when it boils down to it? Make no mistake, Trovero uses email campaigns at Epitaph, though he favors social networks and location-based services because of their total immediacy. And, there’s also an engagement aspect – just a few days ago, eMarketer found that people are now spending more time on social networks than email. ”I’ve already read it [someplace else],” Trovero remarked on emails, while pointing to often weak open rates.
Music Promotion
(my comments: from a broader perspective, anytime you focus on what you’ve lost rather than what you’ve gained, your subscribing to the scarcity mindset.. always not having something or not enough. Instead why not focus on the fact that some deadbeat left your email list and made it lighter and more agile, they were dead weight and never would’ve bought anything anyway. Focus on how you can get emails from people who will stay around longer. Focus on how you can send emails that have more likeable content that keeps them salivating for your next email!)
But c’mon: are social networks, Twitter, and the rest actually more effective than email? Most music marketers are picking email hands down, for a variety of reasons. Topping the list is control: with email, an artist actually holds an address (and connection) in a database. And, once mailed, a message requires some sort of action – even deletion – from the fan, instead of being thrust into a flowing, fleeting stream (as in the case of Twitter or Facebook).
And, if MySpace has shown the world anything, it’s that white-hot networks can go stale overnight. And guess who controls those relationships? ”People will abandon those networks over time,” explained music.us founder Constantine Roussos on the same panel. ”Email is your number one moneymaker – it’s your Bible.”