Email marketing has a crazy high return on investment and a low barrier to entry, making it an ideal way for cover bands to start building a marketing strategy.
Writing an email newsletter might seem intimidating at first, but we’re here to break it down and make it super simple for you. With a little setup on the front end, you can create a quality marketing newsletter–that helps you book more gigs–without spending more than 15 minutes writing per issue.
Big picture, your three basic steps are:
Create a template (don’t reinvent the wheel every issue)
Stick to a schedule
Monitor results
Before you get started, choose a marketing email service with pre-made templates. If you’re just starting off and don’t want to make a huge upfront investment, there are a ton of free email services out there–and most paid services offer free or low-cost tiers as well.
Following our own advice, we’re not going to reinvent the wheel: this article has a great breakdown of several free services. Pick one that sounds like it fits your needs.
We’re going to create templates for both the layout and the content in your email. If you’re using a marketing email service, the layout part is already basically done for you: pick a premade template that suits your band’s aesthetic and stick with color/font/design choices that fit your style.
Making a content template is the key to your newsletter success: creating a great newsletter is all about compelling content in a consistent format. People love to get new information in a familiar way, so we’re going to set you up for success by building a newsletter formula. You can always add to this formula if you have bonus stuff to talk about, but for now, we’re going to keep the main body of your newsletter to three sections: tell a story, ask a favor, give a gift.
Section 1: Tell a Story. Use the intro of each newsletter to help people connect with you/your band. Tell a funny story about a recent gig, share news about a band member’s kid’s latest accomplishment, introduce your bass player’s new hamster to your fans–basically, include anything that shows some personality and helps people get to know you. If you have a relevant photo, include it too–pictures help to break up text and make your newsletter more visually appealing (and we all want to see Roger’s new hamster).
Section 2: Ask a Favor. This is what marketers refer to as your “call to action.” For each newsletter, decide what you want people to do (RSVP to a show, book a gig, help you pick a new song to add to your song list), explicitly ask them to do that thing, and then make it easy for them to do it. Put links to upcoming gigs/events, share your contact info, ask people to respond to your email with a song they’d love to hear you play.
Side note: if your “call to action” is always the same thing, that’s totally ok! Maybe the purpose of your newsletter is to get more people to your gigs. You can just update this section with current dates for upcoming gigs and call it a day.
Section 3: Give a Gift. After you ask people for a favor, give them something to thank them in return! This doesn’t have to be an actual, physical gift–there are plenty of ways to say “thank you” by sharing things you love that don’t require gift wrapping.
A few ideas for this section:
“What We’re Reading” – share links to 3-5 articles you’ve enjoyed recently
“[Band] Recommendation” – tell people what TV show, book, or podcast you’re enjoying right now
“Mystery Link” – share a fun YouTube video or interesting website (make sure it’s safe and not spammy if you do this)
If you do want to give a physical gift, find a way to reward people for following through with your call to action: “We’re giving away a free [band name] koozie to the first three people who say hi to us at our gig on Saturday at the [venue]!”
The final step will be creating a compelling subject line. There are a lot of theories out there about what makes a good subject line, but the long and short of it is: a good subject line is one that makes people open your email. Try different things–give a hint about what’s inside, ask an interesting question, tease an upcoming event–and see what works best for you (we’ll figure that out in step 3–monitor results).
Pick a frequency: once a month, every two weeks, whatever you think will work best for you and that you can reasonably accomplish. Put it on your calendar and stick with it, even if you’re starting off with a small email list of mostly family and friends.
Because you did the work to set up a template for your email (pat yourself on the back for getting that done!), you should be able to put together content for each issue of your newsletter in about 15 minutes.
Your marketing email service provider will tell you all sorts of good info about your effectiveness. Schedule time (once a month, once every three months–whatever makes sense for you) and look through to see which subject lines are getting you higher open rates and what kind of content is getting click-throughs. Make adjustments to your strategy based on this info and continually refine your plan.
If you’re new to email marketing and don’t have much of a contact list yet, we’d love to help you build that out! Schedule a demo with us and we’ll show you how our free artist tool NextSong can turn audience members into fans while at the same time increasing your tips and helping you book more gigs!