Building Your Email List as a Musician: How to Get Set Up

This post originally appeared on Music Entrepreneur HQ.

If you’re not building your email list already, then you should be. Building a mailing list is crucial to connecting with your fans, potential consumers, and those who can help you in your career. Email campaigns are extremely effective for music marketing.

Where do I start?

Chances are good that you already have the contact information of your family, friends, and co-workers. This is a great place to start, because if you’ve built a solid relationship with them, they will be open and receptive to receiving your newsletter (but don't forget to ask for permission – always ask for permission).

Perhaps they will come to your show or buy your latest release. Of course, you should start asking for people to sign up at your shows too. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

Begin by sending out an email newsletter to the people that are on your contact list (make sure to use some discretion in this area; only contact people that have actually given you the permission to do so). Unless you are using an email campaign platform like AWeber, don’t forget to blind cc every person that you are sending your marketing messages to. Otherwise, mass emails have a way of winding up in people’s junk folder, and that pretty well negates your email marketing efforts.

Now what?

At every show you play, it’s a good idea to have a place where people can sign up for your newsletter. Make it obvious and eye-catching so that more people notice it. Announce it from the stage for added benefit.

Don’t forget to come up with creative ways of collecting more names and email addresses from your audience. For example, tell people what your newsletter is about, and strive to offer quality content for your subscribers. Don’t just send out a newsletter every two months saying something generic like “come to our show”. Send out a newsletter every week, and make it easy for people to reach you if they run into any problems. Connect with the people that give you feedback.

It’s important to keep your fans up-to-date, and this will have the added benefit of reminding people that you’re still around and working on something new. Even when you don’t have a new album or gig date coming up, it's best to stay top of mind with your audience.

Can I collect people’s contact information from my website?

You most certainly can. Set up some feedback forms, or a simple mailto link. If you’re not collecting people’s names and email addresses from your website yet, you are defaulting on a valuable opportunity.

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