B2-CH13 – Fan and Audience List Building

Why would people want to be on your mailing list? Isn’t that “asking to be spammed?” Why would you even want to have such a list?

Unlike artists of yesterday, today you not only “can” but are in fact “expected to” be in touch with your fans. If they truly like and respect you, they want to be your buds. Simple as that. Emails from your friends are not “spam.”

But there’s more to this than that. If you’re serious about building a music BUSINESS for yourself, then you also need to respect certain marketing “laws” and chief among them is: you must have a list of members you can market to.

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If you’re promoting a new record – or a product – it’s easier and cheaper to reach out to people you already know, first.

Your “list” are people who agreed that you contact them. They WANT YOU to contact them.

Emailing them costs you nothing. And a vast number of them WILL open your emails and read them (unless you either bore them stiff or actually spam them with meaningless daily “updates” or product pitches). So, quite apart from the fact that you want to be in touch with your fans, having them on a list which you can access at will is an essential ingredient of your overall marketing and promotional cost-cutting.

But there are some important considerations when dealing with “lists”. They are PEOPLE just like you or me. Respect is key.

Like most people, I’m signed up to lots of different lists. Some I opted in to, others scalped my email address from somewhere and are just spamming me. I unsubscribe from the latter, and frequently I also unsubscribe from the many lists to which I originally subscribed to – if they bore me or if they’re too darned pushy. But there are a few lists where I eagerly await their next communiqué each week. THAT is the kind of relationship you want from your members.

That kind of a list is priceless and it’s important that you never abuse it, i.e. never spam it with trashy content and ALWAYS deliver the highest value to your members.

So, how do you get your head around this?

Think of your own experience on the web. How many times have you signed up for something online? Why?

Build the kind of subscription service YOU would subscribe to!

Typically, you’ll see something interesting being offered to you for free. For example “top 10 hottest tips for marketing your music – a special report”. Or whatever. In order to receive it, you only need to fill out your email address and that’s it. Seconds later you receive the report you wanted in the mail.

Shortly afterwards, however, you will also receive a “follow-up” email from the owner of that report. If he’s any good, that follow-up will be engaging and it will offer you more valuable information or things that you will appreciate. It may ask you to sign up for more things or it may even, at some point, recommend that you purchase something. And that’s it. You’re in somebody’s “sales funnel” until you unsubscribe from it. If their funnel is classy – you will NOT unsubscribe. If it’s REALLY classy, you’ll get your friends to sign up too!

There are many ways in which you can create a list of your own. Some such ways are entirely free, some cost something on a monthly basis. As always, there are endless options on the Internet.

The free methods include opt-in forms you can “plug in” to your website. They collect the address and redirect the visitor to a thank-you/download page. Also, many artists have fan-club signup forms with them when they perform and after each gig someone goes to the computer and enters all that stuff in!

The paid methods involve what is known as an “autoresponder”, a program which does all of the above, plus it allows you to create complex follow-up campaigns where you can set everything up and from that point on the auto-responder will take care of all your correspondence and follow-ups. This is definitely a better way.

Once you start building a list, you’ll also want to give your subscribers an option to unsubscribe, which is another area where an auto-responder is simply irreplaceable.

The manner in which you follow up with your “list” – i.e. your FANS – is an issue for a separate discussion (see part 3). The fan-artist relationship is not quite like that of any other business, but there are many similarities. Perhaps it’s mostly the TONE and sensitivity which is different.

I’ll deal with funnels and lists in more depth in the third section of this course, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, you should now have at least the conceptual basics in your head.

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Book 2 – Chapter 12 Turbo-Charge Your Sales	Course Overview	Book 2 – Chapter 14 Building Fans With Email

Book 2: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14b, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, Overview