Playbook #003: The Power of the Newsletter
Author: Andre Mullen - 2.5 min Read
💡 Big Ideas:
1. An email newsletter is the bridge for your client to connect to their true fans.
2. Every artist needs to have an email newsletter.
3. Newsletters cut through the noise of social media.
4. You can use your client’s newsletter to build excitement, offer value, and get subscribers to take action.
“Influence makes all the difference.”
I struggled with creating an email newsletter for my clients for a long time.
I didn’t know how a group from L.A. was able to sell out a venue 4,500 miles away in New York City.
I knew it was based on their influence. However, I didn’t know how they achieved it until I asked their manager, “Steph”.
“We have a newsletter with 7,352 subscribers.”
This is where I learned the power of the email newsletter.
"Want your client to connect with their true fans, on their terms? Start a newsletter."
This was the first thing Steph told me and I have held onto this for decades after our conversation.
An email newsletter is an amazing and effective way for your clients to market themself as an artist, connect directly with their audience, and cultivate said audience into fans.
Developing business models from your client’s creative ideas is critical as a manager. For your client to reach an audience with their creative ideas, there needs to be a system in place.
The email newsletter is the system every artist needs. Every artist manager should know how to use a newsletter for their client to grow their audience into fans.
By emailing fans, your client can and will cut through all social media noise and keep their audience focused on their message.
I will walk you through my conversation with Steph to show you how you can unlock the power of the newsletter for your client.
“First, develop a beginning email list.”
Steph told me she started by creating a list of all the email addresses the group – “Anomaly” – had collected.
She and Anomaly hadn’t thought about a newsletter before, so their list was short. However, they got together email addresses they collected at gigs and from social media and started putting them in one location.
She used a spreadsheet to do this first and then uploaded the email address to a marketing platform. This is to ensure that you have the email addresses prior.
“Don’t use a list service to get emails”, Steph said. There are so many reasons why you shouldn’t that I won’t go into here.
Just know that a list service may have emails that are old, not real, and/or inactive.
“Second, choose an email marketing platform.”
Steph told me using an email platform – like MailChimp, ConvertKit, or Email Octopus – is a “must”.
They are essential for 3 major reasons:
1. They make it easy to push professional-looking, multimedia email campaigns to large numbers of people.
2. They have the technology necessary to track how the emails perform.
3. They prevent your emails from winding up in spam boxes, improving your open and click-through rates.
“Using our email platform helped us to you make smart marketing decisions”, she said. “Our newsletter subscribers helped us find venues and promoters for our tour.”
“Third, create an email template.”
To keep consistency, Steph created a dedicated template for Anomaly’s email newsletter.
First, it makes it easy to create professional-quality emails quickly. Most marketing platforms use drag-and-drop email templates so she could easily swap out images or videos into the template.
She was able to keep Anomaly’s emails looking fresh without having to start from scratch every time.
Second, she was able to brand the marketing template. The template included Anomaly’s logo, special font, and colors that were unique to Anomaly’s artist brand.
“Finally, send out your welcome email.”
Then, Steph sent out the first email to new subscribers welcoming them to Anomaly’s newsletter. She did this to get them excited to be part of their email community.
Steph used the welcome email to tell the fans about the type of content they will be receiving in the future.
She also took the time to encourage their subscribers to whitelist their email address to improve deliverability.
Here’s the play…
You can send out a thousand emails, but unless they engage your fans and invite them to take action, you won’t get the desired results you’re looking for.
Here’s how Steph used Anomaly’s email newsletter with 7,352 subscribers to sell out their 12-city tour:
1. Built excitement: Steph planned out 4 emails – once a week – with a teaser video of Anomaly: a previous concert, shouting out cities they wanted to go to, BTS of studio sessions, and new songs they would perform in a particular city.
2. Offered value: Subscribers were offered discounted tickets with physical and merch bundles. Also, Steph offered a “Bring Ya Friend” option. Subscribers who brought 2 friends only paid for 2 tickets.
3. Take action: Subscribers who bought the discounted tickets within 48 hours of sale were upgraded to VIP Meet & Greet.
Steph also made sure in each of those aspects that the fans were kept up to date on everything tour-related.
All of this from a newsletter.
Build an audience with your client’s email list.
Cultivate their fanbase with a newsletter.
✋🏾When you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
1. Schedule a 1:1 Growth Strategy Call with me on growth, strategy, content, and monetization.
2. My website offers resources that can help. Check out The Playbook for more information.