How to Get At Least 38% Of Your Music Fans To Open Your Emails

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I have a very strange way of reading blogs…see the problem is that I subscribe to more than 1000 feeds. I know that sounds crazy but Google Music Alerts method makes it possible for me.

credit: Undertow851

And it’s not only blogs…I get Twitter feeds, Facebook pages and YouTube videos all delivered on a minute by minute basis. It’s like the Blitz of London but for music industry news, and sometimes I feel like showing the white flag.

Here is how I stay partially sane….

Sleep Cycle wakes me at 4.00am, drink coffee then head into the office and fire up Google Reader. There are usually more than 5000 items for me to get through so I need to be quick.

I scan for really cool shit that looks like it might have some music marketing tips I can implement, then I use the “Send to Instapaper” feature in Google Reader. After I’ve burned through all the new items I open the browser version of Instapaper and open up each post that had potential.

If the blog post is called something like “The Biggest Most Secret Secret In Music Marketing” I’ll scan the intro and get right to the secret ASAP, if it’s cool I make a note and if not I kill the page fast.

I honestly don’t have time for much music industry theory like “What the rise of Google music will mean for your cat over the next 20 years”. All very well written but nothing I can use right away.

So that is what I try to give on my blog as well; tactics you can take away and start to put to use quickly.

Which finally brings me to the point of this post, because I want to show you a simple tactic you can use to get more of your fans to open your emails. This is super important because if you have a massive list but only 5 people read your stuff you really only have 5 fans.

Here goes…let’s say you have 1000 people on your list…

1. Use your email provider to send 100 of your fans the same email with four different subject-lines.
2. Wait a couple of days and see which one gets opened the most.
3. Then send the one that got the most action to the other 900 people
4. Wait a couple more days then filter out the people who did not open your email and send them the same message with the title “you missed this” or something like that.

I do this all the time and it works like a champ. Maybe 28% of people open your first email and 10% open the “You Missed This” one. A 38% open rate ain’t nothing to be sniffed at.

You can set this up with Aweber, I’m not sure about FanBridge but if not you should contact their support and request it as a feature. They love to get ideas from enthusiastic musicians.

Hope that helps,

- Chris

P.S I think there is a certain irony in the fact that I used a long intro to tell you why I don’t spend much time reading long intros

Watch the video podcast version below…

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Tags: Email Music Marketing, get your music fans to open your emails