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6 Artist Newsletter Tips to Keep Fans Connected With Your Music
Your fans are interested in your music but sometimes it’s hard to stay in touch with what you’re doing and where you’re headed. One great way to promote your music and keep fans engaged is with an artist newsletter.
Sure, social media is a great tool that you should definitely use to communicate with your followers.
A music newsletter lets you communicate your most important information to your most engaged audience. A fan’s inbox is a direct line to their attention.
You should use your artist newsletter to make sure the people most likely to support your music know about everything you have going on.
In this guide, let’s take a look at some tips to put together a unique and interesting newsletter that will keep your fans up to date and excited about your project.
What should I put in my music newsletter?
Your newsletter is a unique opportunity to share something unique about your art with a special audience.
It doesn’t have to look like a newsletter either.
A music newsletter lets you communicate your most important information to your most engaged audience. A fan’s inbox is a direct line to their attention.
Your newsletter could just be some cool pictures from your last tour and a nice poem if you want.
You can put anything you want in your music newsletter, but here’s a few ideas:
- Any upcoming tour dates
- Teasers for new releases
- In-depth information about albums, EPs and singles
- Merchandise and clothing drops
- Links to new articles about your project
- Invitations to support a charity or cause
- Your art, words about life, lyrics and poetry
Your newsletter is one way to showcase your art and share it with your audience.
Anyone who subscribes to your newsletter is interested in you and the personality of your work, so show it!
How to create your own artist newsletter
If you plan on using an email newsletter there’s a few moving parts to consider.
Here’s six things you should be thinking about when sending an artist newsletter
1. Be true to yourself
The first step is to ask yourself how an email could best represent you.
You probably know by now what aesthetic your sound and art follow so your emails shouldn’t veer away from that.
You probably know by now what aesthetic your sound and art follow so your emails shouldn’t veer away from that.
Whether your music is dark and brooding or colorful and sweet there’s an appropriate combination of colors, font, art and copy that work best for you.
Don’t just send something that your audience would expect. Think outside of the box and create something surprising, fresh and interesting.
2. Collect emails in a classy way
No one likes getting spam, so don’t send emails to anyone who doesn’t want to hear from you.
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This means finding a respectful way to collect emails.
Keep a list at your merch table any time you play a show and welcome people to give their emails if they want to keep up with your project.
You could even give away a free pin or sticker to encourage people to sign-up.
Put a signup form on your artist website and ask for emails whenever a fan visits you online.
If you offer free downloads of a track through Bandcamp you can exchange those downloads for an email.
3. Catchy templates and email tools
Okay, you put the work in and managed to grab your first 20 emails.
Now what? Obviously, you aren’t going to send your newsletter individually.
It may be tempting to bcc everyone in your send list but it makes a lot more sense to get a free email marketing tool.
These tools make it easy to upload your list of contacts and send emails with eye-catching customizable templates.
Email marketing tools will also automatically update your contact list if someone fills out a signup form on your website.
Best of all you’ll get all kinds of stats about your send-outs so you can understand what people like.
Here’s a few email marketing tools to check out:
4. Offer something of value
Give your email subscribers a reason to be happy they follow your newsletter.
Give your email subscribers a reason to be happy they follow your newsletter.
One way to do that is by offering exclusive access to your art and releases.
Let fans know what is coming up for you and share an exclusive single with them.
Offering a small discount on show tickets or merch is a great way to show your diehard fans that you care. Plus you’ll also make some money!
5. Send your emails reasonably and regularly
It’s best to decide how often you want to send your newsletter and stick to a schedule, so your fans know what to expect.
It’s probably best to send your newsletter at a monthly or bi-monthly interval.
Sending out a newsletter every day isn’t reasonable for anyone and could annoy your fans, especially if the content isn’t good.
Sending out a newsletter every day isn’t reasonable for anyone.
Your main goal should be to send a great newsletter often enough to stay top of mind with your fans without annoying them.
6. Subject lines and goals
Any email you send contains a subject line, a body, and a call-to-action.
Your subject line should be designed to encourage the recipient to open the email. This is called the open rate.
Your subject line should be designed to encourage the recipient to open the email.
Once someone clicks the email they will read the body and interact with whatever words and images it contains.
If your email’s goal is to get someone to visit your website, buy concert tickets or buy merch, your email will contain a call-to-action that links to a web page.
As you create your email think about how these three factors influence one another and can be optimized to increase the chances of someone clicking the call-to-action.
Artist newsletters are easy to do so don’t overlook them
You want to focus on creating music so its understandable if sending an artist newsletter isn’t number one on your to-do list.
But, if you want to get ahead by promoting your music, newsletters are definitely something to include in your marketing arsenal.
They aren’t terribly difficult to do, especially with modern email marketing tools. Plus you can use them to sell merch and tickets!
It’s all about engaging your diehard fans and growing your following.
Just be yourself, share things that are valuable and your fans will love it.
Alex Lavoie works as a staff writer at LANDR by day and writes indie post-punk tunes in his band UTILS while moonlighting as drummer for folk-rock outfit The Painters.
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