How to grow your email list

Author

Andrew Southworth
August 14, 2023

Hey music-fam!

You’ve probably heard how important it is to grow your email list. After all, social media is just “borrowed land” and the algorithms only push your posts to 8% of your followers (if you’re lucky).

Social media is a great place to find new people and interact with your audience, but you want to extract as many people as possible over time to a platform you control.

First, if you don’t have an email list or website consider checking out MusicFunnels. Not only does it give you a way to build an email list, but you can also build your entire website, store and funnels for one low monthly price. So…

How the heck do you grow an email list?

The most important part of growing your email list is the offer.

It doesn’t mater if you’re growing your email list for free using content, or you’re running Facebook ads to grow your list. The offer is the most critical part to get right.

What is an offer? Basically it’s your bribe. It’s the value proposition you’re showing to a fan as the core reason why they should give you their contact information. Here are some examples:

  • Join our list and hear our unreleased song 1 month early

  • Join my list and get download our new song for free

  • Get behind the scenes content we’ve never released publicly

  • We filmed our last show, join our mailing list and we’ll send you the whole performance!

  • Enter your email to see my production process for this song and get free access to the STEMS and Ableton Live file

  • Join our list and we’ll give you a free sticker! (you’d probably do this at a show)

If can literally be whatever you want. The important thing is that it should be valuable to people that like your music, and ONLY people that like your music. Giving away an Amazon gift card would attract the wrong type of person.

Now, you need to show people your offer.

There are 4 main ways you can grow your list.

  1. Free Inbound marketing - creating content on social media that drives people to your email opt-in page by conveying the offer

  2. Free Outbound marketing - DM fans, reply to their comments, interact with them online asking them to join your list

  3. Advertising - running targeted ads that clearly convey your offer and value proposition to drive people to join your list

  4. Shows - give people an incentive at shows to join your list.

In practice you’ll probably do all 4 of these things at some point (at least if you play shows, and have a marketing budget for ads).

When it comes to advertising i’ve had great results running Facebook ads to grow my email list. You can use a funnel software to create a landing opt-in page with a thank-you page, configure your Facebook pixel on that page and run a conversion Leads objective campaign.

If this sounds overwhelming to you, I cover this process in detail in my newest course Fan Growth Machine.

In Fan Growth Machine I also cover:

  • How to build a website and online store (using MusicFunnels, Squarespace, Wordpress and/or Shopify)

  • How to setup your email list (using MusicFunnels and Drip)

  • How to use Facebook ads to develop an online following and grow your email list

  • How to create landing pages to convince people to join your mailing list

  • What to post on social media

  • …and more!

What do you actually say in your emails?

This is going to vary a LOT depending on exactly what you do as an artist.

You’ll definitely hit up your list every time you have a new song or album out, and probably also when you launch new merch on your store, or are going on tour.

However you don’t want every email to be asking for something. When you have an audience everything is a value exchange. Notice how in this newsletter I spend the majority of the words giving you value? A relatively small portion is me telling you about my course.

You need to do the same thing in your list as well.

Send people teasers of your songs, tell them the behind the scenes story of your upcoming release, get personal and tell them about your life and what you’ve been struggling with lately.

This might not seem valuable to you, but fans want to connect with the person behind the music they love. They want to be entertained or educated or emotionally moved in some way, not feel like all you do is sell them something.

New Content

If you want to make the Spotify algorithm work for you, you need to get the RIGHT people hearing your music. In this video I give you 4 tips to do just that.

I interviewed Temima Shames, the founder of Next Step Talent about how music artists can grow and monetize on social media. Her company has generated over 6 BILLION YouTube views.

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and every other podcast platform. Click here to listen to the Modern Music Marketing podcast. 

Recently i’ve been posting a lot on Twitter (or now X, I guess):

News

Here are some music industry news highlights from the past week.

  • Patreon partneres with Spotify to allow Patrons to listen to exclusive audio on Spotify by linking their Patreon account.

  • Warner expects more streaming subscription price hikes ahead.

  • Paid streaming users in Southeast Asia are expected to quadruple by 2030.

  • Spotify has expanded its AI powered DJ feature globally to 50 countries worldwide.

Quote of the Week

❝

The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.

Steve Jobs

Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

  1. My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.

  2. My ad agency. Forbid Media specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.

  3. Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.

  4. 1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or Alex Bochel here.

My Links:

Discount / Affiliate Links:

If you’d rather just purchase the e-book, or physical book or audiobook you can do so here.

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