How to Start a Band Mailing List – Quick Start Guide

An email list is one of your most vital tools to promote your music and interact with fans. Unlike social media, YOU control your email list.

If you haven’t started building an email list, then start now.

Some may view emails as an old form of communication, but they are actually still one of the most vital ways to build your online fan base.

There’s a common saying in the online world: “The money is in the list”.

It’s no different for bands and musicians. Even if money is not the goal, increased engagement and direct communication can be easily achieved once you simply get your fan’s email addresses.

You need an email service provider

It’s important that you start properly and use the services of an email provider. There are many reasons why you should not send mass mails directly from your own band mail account. I’ll get more into the details of that later.

As far as email service providers go, I recommend MailerLite, as it’s free for up to 1000 subscribers, and then it’s still quite cheap after that. Alternatively, I also can recommend MailChimp and GetResponse. Here’s some info along with the pros and cons:

Why do you need an email service provider?

Using a regular email account for your mailing list can get it shut down!

Sending bulk emails via Gmail or Outlook can get your email account shut down due to email spam. If this happens, it’s bad news!

Reports

One of the biggest benefits of using an email provider is the ability to track emails. You get reports on how many fans opened and read your emails, you get to figure out what works and tweak your progress. Increasing the effectiveness of your email campaigns in such ways can greatly improve your results.

Privacy Violations

Sending bulk emails via Gmail or Outlook and not using BCC mean that the entire list can see each others email address, this can lead to data protection and privacy complaints.

Following laws and regulations

As per the CAN-SPAM act, you need to be careful about how you’re sending and collecting emails.

Using an email service provider means that you can stay on top of these regulations. E.g. If you’re sending emails from your own personal email address, how do users unsubscribe?

EU privacy regulations are very heavy on the ‘opt-in’ nature of email communication. A good email provider can send a confirmation message to the user to verify that they have the correct email address.

Some providers are free

MailerLite and MailCheap are free options up to a limited number of subscribers. There’s no better reason than that!


mailerlite_logo
PROS:
  • Free for up to 1000 subscribers – Very generous
  • Quite cheap once you outgrow your the limits of the free account
  • Very good support, even for free accounts
  • Good reporting
CONS:
  • Automation and reporting is not as comprehensive as the bigger business email services


mailchimp-logo

PROS:
  • Free plan for up to 2000 subscribers
  • Easy to use
  • Nice integrations with other platforms
CONS:
  • Prices can get steep if you outgrow the limits of the free version.
  • Bad support for free accounts
  • Mailchimp have very strict terms of use, you need to be quite careful of your email content. Mailchimp has a no-tolerance policy against certain content like commission based link promotions, which can lead to your account being canceled.

getresponse-logo

PROS:
  • Very easy to use, integrates nicely with website platforms
  • Very decent email automation
  • If you’re getting into designing landing pages, then GetResponse is a great option
  • Not very strict on email content
  • Spam testing
CONS:
  • No free plan available

The unsubscribe button

unsubscribe-email-list

Although this button is not what you want your fans to press, it’s vital to the success of your email marketing campaigns.

If people don’t want to receive your messages, they need to be able to opt-out. If they don’t have the option, they can mark your mail as spam or send in complaints.

Too many spam complaints may see your email marketing accounts band or destined for spam filters until the end of time.

Strategies to obtain email addresses

Make sure you’re being legal and white-hat about gaining email addresses. There are two ways to add email addresses to your list

Get Your fans to opt-in to your mailing list online

If you have a website, you can use an opt-in form to get the fan’s email address.

You can incentivize your fans to opt-in by offering exclusive tracks, early-access to news, free content, tips, etc.

If you don’t have a website, then check out our article how to create a music website. It’s a lot easier than you might imagine!

You manually adding or import lists of email addresses

Remember: Never buy email lists or share them with other bands! That’s spamming!

Here are some ideas for gaining email addresses:

  • Check your online band/music accounts. Are there any accounts where you’re already gathering email addresses? E.g. Bandcamp allows you to collect email addresses for fans that are downloading your music. You can import this list into your email service provider.
  • Collect emails manually: That’s right; we’re talking pen and paper here. Collect email addresses at the door of gigs, or at the merchandise sales stand. You could also take it one step into the future, and bring a tablet computer to your gigs with your email opt in form. This minimises mistakes and issues with reading terrible/drunken handwriting.

Automate email sending

Email automation allows you to automatically send emails to your new fans depending on different triggers. The easiest option is the ‘sign-up’ trigger. You can instruct your email service provider to send emails to your fans on specific dates after they sign up.

For example:

Day 1: A welcome email

Day 2: Free offer – An email with an exclusive free track, a link to a video, links to your free online streams, etc.

Day 5: An email with merchandise and album purchase links, or a link to your patreon account, or a link to a crowd funding campaign, etc. Using email automation, you can warm your fans up to supporting your band with purchases and fund-raising efforts.

What to not do with your email list

  • Don’t spam your list with excessive emails.
  • Try to send targeted emails as much as possible.
  • Don’t buy email lists – this will get your account marked as spam very quickly. Also, sending unsolicited emails is illegal and could get you in trouble.

Here are the benefits of using email over social media:

Greater reach over your fans via email

Although people can easily ignore social media posts, most still read or at least acknowledge emails that come into their inbox.

Gmail has some labeling that may mean your emails get put into a ‘promotions’ or ‘updates’ label, but the open rates are still likely to be quite high.

Stop spending money on social media promotion

Let’s say you’ve painstakingly gathered 10,000 likes to your facebook page. Once you post an update, most of your fans won’t even see it!

That’s right… Facebook now requires you to pay up serious money to ‘boost’ your posts in order for them to have any decent reach.

facebook-twitter-social-media

It can leave you with a sour taste in your mouth to realize that the majority of your fans are not seeing your posts on their newsfeed unless you pay money.

I’ve talked to active bands on social media where the vast majority of their fans were simply unaware that they were posting anything at all!

Enough said! Get back in control of your communication. Once you’ve done the work to get a fan, it should be easy to reach them.

You have total control over your communication

You can fully choose the format and content of your messages

Of course, you should make sure that you follow good practices when emailing and don’t bombard your email list unnecessarily.

There are much fewer rules to follow

Social media accounts are usually subject to much heavier rules than email marketing. For example, competition rules on Facebook.

If you break those rules, even by accident, it could lead to the termination of your account. Not good news!

Much better investment long term

An email list is a much longer-term investment than social media followers.

Many bands invested countless hours in promoting their MySpace profiles years ago. That social network ended badly. Many fans will simply not have re-engaged with those bands on other social networks. Networks such as Facebook are already showing serious signs of dwindling support and following.

You have control of your list

Social media accounts can be easily canceled or banned, even sometimes without good reason. With a list of emails, you can switch providers at the drop of a hat!

You can be super targeted with your list

If you gather some information about your fans, you can segment and be very specific about what messages you sent out to different groups.

What can you do with an email list?

  • Send out quirky and interesting news and updates to your fans
  • Promote up and coming shows
  • Promote music sales
  • Promote crowdfunding campaigns
  • Promote your pateron earnings

Summary – Creating an Email List for your Band

It’s easy to get started with creating an email list for your band. Right now, you might start small, but slowly building your list 10 or 20 people at a time can seriously pay off in the long run.

Once you have a few hundred or thousand email addresses, that’s an investment into direct fan communication that’s worth a lot more than using social media.

Throughout all of this, the one direct line of communication that you can bank on for many years to come should be your email list.

Brian Clark

Brian Clark

I’ve been a writer with Musician Wave for six years, turning my 17-year journey as a multi-instrumentalist and music producer into insightful news, tutorials, reviews, and features.

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