In the last week itself, I got three e-mails from one independent musician, sending me a reminder to attend his gig in London. If I get one more of those from him, I’ll probably just hit “Unsubscribe me from your list” at the end of his e-mail and he’ll lose me as a fan. If I’m a fan thinking like this, there’s probably tons of other fans who think the same way.
However, it’s not just this guy’s mistake. Many independent musicians commit the same mistake as well. They think it’ll just be a “quick nudge” to remind the fans to attend the gig but instead it’s perceived as more e-mail in the inbox. The fact is, if you send your fans one e-mail that’s enticing enough, they’ll come to the gig if they want to. If they don’t want to, there’s really not much else you can do to convince them otherwise.
My advice is to just e-mail once a week, once a fortnight or once a month based on what you have going on. I prefer to receive information once a fortnight from independent musicians that have got stuff going on. If you haven’t got more than 3 gigs in the month and you’re not really doing anything else, there’s probably no point e-mailing once a week, right?
I still believe however that sending a reminder to someone to come to your gig is good - just not through e-mail that takes up people’s valuable time and they may not come anyway. So how about sending them a quick “note” - it’s a nice and new idea from a web 2.0 startup with their product called loopnote.
Loopnote works like this: you set up a loop for your band, call it “Seattle, Blues, R&B” for example, and then get all your fans and friends to join up to the loop. They get to choose how they wish to receive notes (RSS, mobile, IM, etc) and then when you’ve got a gig coming up (or anything else you need to let them know about), you simply have to shoot them a quick note with the core information the day before. Within minutes, your fans will be reading the note.
If you want to see how it works, check out the directory of loops, find one that stands out to your interests and join it.
That’s a quick reminder without taking up time and clogging up their inbox. More importantly, it also shows you value your fans time.
Popularity: 41% [?]
I make use of the Constant Contact e-newsletter resource and email e-newsletter subscribers on a monthly basis. Rather than send out email to everyone that has subscribed, I ask subscribers via personal email to identify what group(s) they wish to have their names included in.
Options include, but are not limited to, Ontario Media; Quebec Media; Illinois Artists; Project Sponsors; Project Advertisers; Newsletter; and, General Interest.
This allows people to pick and choose what sort of information is coming to them from me. If the individual only wants the e-newsletter, then it’s once a month. If the individual is a media contact, he or she may not be interested in the monthly e-newsletters and may only want media releases which are sent as something important happens.
I believe that when you are of the belief that your fan base and media contacts are intelligent, that you attract a greater number of like-minded people who view you as intellgent as well.
In my opinion, one should never abuse the title of being intelligent in the eyes of another. Be respectful of the title and be respectful of thsoe who have put that title on your shoulders to wear proudly. Do the title justice!
I haven’t hear of Loopnote until this blog post, so I absolutely will be checking it out later on today.
Elyse