Online businesses have been using successful email marketing campaigns for decades! You will have seen interactive signup forms (website pop-ups) on many blog post articles and eCommerce websites all urging their website visitors to enter their personal emails.
And there is a very good reason why DJs and artists should be doing just the same.
Email marketing lists are still one of the most effective methods of connecting with your target audience and promoting your music and products. Email mailing lists share many similarities to social media use including the ability to interact with your fans.
The big difference is that, unlike social media, you have complete control over all your marketing campaigns and who ends up on your mailing list and who sees what you want them to see.
In this breakdown overview, we’ll go over how to capture email addresses start, use an email marketing mailing list as well as some of the primary key benefits that even surpass social platforms.
Lastly, we’ll take a look at some of the things you’ll need to optimally establish your mailing list as well as some marketing email campaigns and strategies you can use to collect email addresses and automate email sending to your potential customers.
How To Build Email Lists (in short)
Email lists can start small in the beginning. However, by progressively building up more and more over time, and optimizing your landing pages or pop-up forms, you can end up with a much more dynamic and engaged fanbase than you ever could through social media.
What Is An Email Mailing List?
As the name implies, an email mailing list is a list of different people’s email information that online businesses, including DJs, can use to send targeted communications via email campaigns. These email communications can be used to offer a product as well as to establish greater outreach. Make sure you collect email addresses!
Email marketing is also great for drumming up interest in performances.
Below are just a few of the many benefits that you’ll achieve via list building list, generating new subscribers, many even surpassing what you might experience by promoting yourself on socials.
Benefit #1. Cheaper Than Social Media Channels
The first thing you’ll notice when switching over from strictly social media accounts marketing is the fact that the cost of creating a targeted email list is going to be a lot less compared to cultivating a following or promoting ad campaigns on things like Facebook or Instagram.
As an example, a marketing platform like Facebook is now asking for a considerable amount of money if you want to “boost” your posts and give them a chance of reaching a significant target audience. The same is true for sites like Instagram.
If you want your posts to stay in people’s top-viewed mentions, you’re not going to be able to “just” put it out there and hope for the best.
The big reason for that is simply the fact that most of your target audience has hundreds or thousands of different people they’re following, all of which trying to get their attention and posting different things.
Just imagine if it’s you vs “XYZ” and there’s only one top spot. Who’s going to get it?
The answer? The person who’s willing to pay more than the other to get it.
List building doesn’t work like that.
With list building, you do have to pay for certain things, yes, but the result is targeted email campaigns that go out directly to the person who’s already shown themselves to be a fan of your content and interested in hearing what you have to say.
Not only is this a more effective way to connect to them, but it’s cheaper and more likely to translate into something.
Mailchimp | Marketing, Automation & Email Platform
Pros:
- AB testing
- Easy to Use
- Easy integration
- Good support
Cons:
- Free plan very limited
- Can get expensive
Benefit #2. Not As Competitive As Social Media Marketing Strategy
As previously mentioned, while there are perks and benefits to all forms of marketing, when compared to social marketing, list-building email marketing is far less competitive.
The biggest issue with most social media platforms, when it comes to marketing yourself as a brand, is the fact that everyone else is doing the same thing.
And, because audiences and customers only have so much they can focus on in any one sitting, it can be easy to have your voice effectively lost in the crowd of other screaming voices trying to get their attention.
As an example, you could find yourself trying desperately to hit 10k total likes on a Facebook or Instagram page only to find out that, even despite that, very few of your fans will see your next update or post.
Again, this is because your name is just one of another thousand names that are putting out an update and trying to connect with that person, some of them may not even be brands that they follow! This is why costs have risen so much on these other platforms, as paying to keep your posts in people’s faces for longer is the only surefire way you’re going to get people to care about what you have to say.
It is not true that Email mailing lists have largely fallen out of style for the majority of major brands.
Yes, many of them still have email options, but it isn’t quite as “flashy” as social media posts.
But emailing your existing customers directly is far more powerful than any other digital method.
Sendinblue Email Marketimg
Pros:
- Low-cost plans
- Simple Integration
- Solid email automation
- WE
- WordPress Plugin
Cons:
- Free plan send limit is low
- Can be slow loading sometimes
Benefit #3. Create Marketing Campaigns
While social digital marketing is great in certain areas, you kind of have to market yourself to a degree that matches your competition.
Too much and you lose credibility, while too little causes people to lose interest in what you have to say. Not only that, but you can’t really choose the format or method that works best for your message.
Email marketing is great as you’re able to send out exclusive content and messages as much as you want and in a variety of different formats.
While you don’t want to bombard a person (more on that later) it’s also true that, if you want, you can offer something out several more times compared to over social media.
Benefit #4. Not As Many Rules To Deal With
Rules are very important, and it should be said that a lack of following proper rules can end up hurting your reputation with fans regardless of the platform.
However, it’s also true that, because websites, like Facebook and Instagram, have their established Terms of Service (TOS), you run the risk of accidentally getting your page completely shut down if you don’t cross all your “T’s” and dot all of your “I’s”.
In a nutshell, all your social platform data belongs to them not you, don’t be fooled by that.
This is not the case when you build an email list that asset belongs to you.
Benefit #5. The List is Your Asset
It’s NOT true that email marketing has fallen a bit out of style, people still use email daily and it could be potentially your most valuable promotional asset. This fact shows that emailing has become an evergreen concept that will likely never go away.
The same can’t be said for a third-party social media platform.
For example, if you were DJ in the early 2000s, you may have invested heavily in your Myspace profile page.
Today, that page would be all but worthless in terms of accruing any interest in what you have to offer. That’s because the platform itself has fallen out of style and people aren’t using it anymore.
Even today, we are seeing an ever-increasing lack of interest in platforms like Facebook and even Instagram as people begin transitioning over to apps like TikTok.
While there is still value in those platforms today, the same may not be true in another five years; something that email marketing is pretty much immune from, as it’s existed even as early as the Yahoo and AOL days.
How To Start an Email List From Scratch
#1. Email Marketing Software
So starting an email list from scratch. First things first, you’re going to need to use an email provider. to manage your new subscribers. You certainly “could” perform mass email dumps using your mail account but it’s probably going to take up a ton of time or come across as very unprofessional.
Not only that, but if you’re using sites like Gmail or Outlook, you run a very serious risk of getting flagged as a spam account and having everything shut down! It’s just not worth the risk.
List-building email service providers also ensure you’re up to date on what your fans are actually reading and what they aren’t. This can help you better tweak what you’re offering when you build an email list as well as how your emails are presented, something that is impossible if you’re just sending out bulk emails from your email account.
They also provide a plethora of different landing pages that can easily be edited. An effective and well-tested landing page can make a huge difference to your email subscribers.
There are a lot of different email service providers out there to help build an email list and create marketing strategies, with many of them having an extensive free trial period along with some fairly affordable rates thereafter.
Here are just a few marketing automation names worth considering. Most are free tools with essential upgrades required as you build your list:
- Mailchimp: This well-known email marketing list-building tooloffers free service to up to 2,000 subscribers and HFDYUD /.WWGLLC.÷is super easy to use, have a great range of landing pages & signup templates, pop-up forms, and opt-in forms templates, and integrates with other sites. They can get a bit pricey once you’ve outgrown the free email signups, and they have strict terms of service, however, this is probably one of the easiest and most effective options out there.
- Send in Blue: We actually use this service for our blog posts, list building, and data management. They have really easy-to-edit embedded signup forms, a range of dedicated landing page, opt-in pages, and email sign-up form templates and are an all-around solid service when it comes to collecting email addresses. That’s why we use it!
- MailerLite: They offer free service to up to 1,000 new subscribers, though their prices afterward are still reasonable. MailerLite also offers great support and reporting options even at the free level. The downside is that the automation process, signup form, or landing page options aren’t quite as effective or useful as sites like Mailchimp.
- Getresponse: Another super useful and easy-to-use platform, Getresponse has great automation, ideal landing pages, an awesome signup form selection, and less stringent rules for operating. The downside is that there isn’t a free plan that’s available, so you’ll have to be willing to invest upfront.
In addition to setting up a quality email marketing tool, you’ll also want to make putting in an unsubscribe button a top priority. Even if it’s not something you want people using, not having it as a prominently displayed option can have a prospective fan feeling like you’re going to make unsubscribing very difficult at best, and that you’re a spam site at worst.
MailerLite Create Email Marketing
Pros:
- Automation is unlimited even in free tier.
- You can 1,000 free subscribers
- Quick email support
Cons:
- Landing pages limited
- Popups limited
Step #2. Get New Email Subscribers
Obviously, your next step is to build an email list to get actual email subscribers for your email service provider.
This must be done as legitimately and legally as possible. If you start buying email lists, you may have a treasure trove to start with, but people aren’t going to know who you are or how you got their information, again, ending you up in a spam folder.
DON’T NOT BUY LISTS.
It’s too risky these days with GDPR and open rates are terribly low.
There are two ideal ways to get an email list growing: manually and by leveraging your fans from other platforms.
The manual process is as simple as it gets. Whenever performing, bring a pen and paper with you and physically get in there and take some names and emails. It’s easy, it’s effective, and it results in pre-selected members of your list.
The fan leveraging option works effectively the same as the manual way, only done through digital means. This generally is done by incentivizing your fans to give you their email addresses either through social media platforms or via pop-up forms on your website.
You want to offer things like early access to music, some free content, or any other thing you can think of. This takes a bit more work on your end but can be much faster than through manual gig email signups.
Step #3. Lead Generation via Using a Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is an opt-in incentive. Opt-in incentive lead magnets fundamentally offer the subscribers something in return for their email addresses. They are often referred to as lead magnets.
A lead magnet can be anything from a free ebook, free course, free product, or in a musician’s world, a new track or guest list to their next event.
Step #3. Automated Send Outs
Lastly, it’s time to start automating your emails. This is essentially the same as bulk emailing, only through an email service provider so that every fan feels like the message was tailor-made for them.
These emails are sent when a certain condition is met, such as when they first fill in a signup form or on a certain date.
For example, the moment a person officially submits their email address, this could be a condition that sends out a “welcome” email.
Another condition may be that, after that initial email, after 24 hours, a second email comes out offering something exclusive.
The automation process is fairly straightforward and, so long as you don’t spam or bombard them with different emails daily, you’ll start to see serious conversions for your performances.
GetResponse | Professional Email Marketing
Pros:
- Drag and drop simple to use
- Delivery rate
- Ui is cool
- Statisticss are helpful.
Cons:
- Poor Customer Support
- Customization
- User control
How To Build Email Lists: Summary
Now that you know how to build email lists the world really is now your oyster and you can begin to reach out to new potential customers, new subscribers, or a brand new audience.
You can continually build up and grow your audience entirely undisturbed by competing messages that force you to pay out considerable amounts of money just to stay ahead. You’re also able to deepen your connection and interaction with audiences and fans.
This can result in more people consistently showing up to your events and becoming fans of your gigs and performances all through your sign-ups and exclusive content.
Are you ready to build an email list? Are you ready to learn about list-building strategy?
Don’t dither, just crack on!
