Keys to Fan List Success

I. Own Your List

We can’t say this enough to musicians. Having MySpace or Facebook friends is not a real
fan list. Same with Twitter. They are all great services and each has a different purpose,
but how much of the actual real info do you have of your ‘fans/friends/followers’ on
those places? Can you easily view a list of everyone’s real name, email address, location,
phone number, etc? The answer is NO, yet many musicians forget this because the
service is the hot internet site of the moment and everyone says “Oh, you need to be on
here.”

Your band should have a presence on these social networks (more on that in a later
post), but you need to use these services to feed people to YOUR fan list. Fan
Relationship Management services like KSe give clients html code that let them
put a sign-up form on their MySpace, Facebook, website, etc, so their fans can sign up
direct to the band’s own list.

Once you have built your own list, you can do amazing things with it that you couldn’t
do otherwise…things like:

• Targeting messages by zip code and radius (so you don’t need to blast your
whole list)

• Scheduling messages to be sent at a certain time

• Grouping fans based on custom criteria (street team, bloggers, groupies, etc)

• Tracking your messages to see who opens, clicks, and much more

• Tons of other cool features that save you time and build your career.

II. Communicate Regularly

Most musicians know they should regularly communicate with their fans, yet they are
often at a loss for things to say. We’re here to tell you that you shouldn’t be stuck on
what to say, but rather make sure you talk to your fans on a regular basis! Why do fans
sign-up for your list? To hear from you!

Don’t be boring and only tell them about this show, that show, and your new album. Tell
them about YOU. They want to be fans of your music AND you as a person. Talk about
great movies you’ve seen recently. Talk about other artist’s albums you’ve recently
listened to. Come up with a “special” city of the week/month and explain why.

When we look at the fan list size of artists who communicate regularly and artists who
don’t, it becomes very clear. The artists who talk to their fans regularly (whether it is
once every two weeks or once a month) have lists that are constantly growing and have
better interaction (opens/clicks). Artists who send an email every few months because
they have “nothing to talk about” are ones whose list sizes either stay flat or actually
decrease.

Make sure to use a service, that includes a “Forward to a Friend” link in
the footer of every campaign. This lets fans easily pass your message on to their fans
and services like ours will allow you to track who is doing it. It’s a best practice to take
this info and reward those people that are spreading the word about you. They’re likely
your most avid fans, and rewarding them will incentives to continue to promote
you and your music among their own groups of friends.

III.  Include Links to Places You Want Fans to Go

This one seems obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many bands do not include a link
to their website in each message. Not only should you be including a link to your
website, but you should have a link to your MySpace/ Facebook/ Twitter/etc profile,
your merch store, a place where they can download your music, your tour dates, and
anything else that’s important. You’ll be surprised how much more traffic you get when
you start including links.

A service like ours will make it as easily as possible for clients to include links in their
campaigns. For example, by checking one box, you can automatically include links to buy
your music. We also track every link you put in a campaign, so you can see EXACTLY who
clicked on which link in your message, and when they clicked. This is very valuable info,
and will help you target future campaigns to specific people based on their past actions.

IV. Go Professional

Don’t try and do it yourself using outlook/ apple mail/ gmail/ msn/ hotmail/ yahoo/ aol/
entourage/ custom server scripts. Unless your core skills are computer programming,
email/mobile deliver-ability, and related things, you are probably better off leaving the
fan list management to a professional service and focusing on what you do best: making
and playing music. There are a few providers out there (some suck, some are great), and
obviously we’re partial to KSE for a band’s fan relationship management needs.
You want something that’s simple, intuitive, and will help you to easily and efficiently
maximize that relationship between your fans and your music. And you don’t need to
pay an arm and leg these days to get that.

Posted via email from Music Business Information