Hey Stacy,

All good questions...

As for the follow up series, there are a few different approaches you could take. Some people want everything automated and they just create one long autoresponder series that goes on for years. I personally only create a short autoresponder that lasts for about two weeks and is designed to make that first sale. From there I go to real time broadcasts to the entire list, mainly to keep them engaged so that I have their attention when I want to promote something new. A good schedule would be at least twice a month. Once a week would be even better. I would try to avoid letting your communication get any less than once a month. You can create a list segment to exclude all people that have not yet completed your autoresponder and then tick that every time you send out a message. That way people that are still in your funnel won't get hit with those real time messages.

As for what site to send people to, it's pretty simple. Send cold traffic to the squeeze page, and existing fans and industry to your "official" site. You can completely customize the theme so that it matches, if that concerns you. Be sure to monitor results though because fancy, colored squeeze pages tend to perform worse. I personally think it doesn't matter what your squeeze page looks like, so long as it converts well.

I think all those third party sites are a bit over rated. But I know what you mean about people expecting to see them out there. My personal feeling is that you might be best served to launch new albums through your own funnel so that you can make the upsell. Then, a few months down the line you can get that older content out there on all those third party sites so you can take advantage of the search engine exposure that those engines offer. If you don't have an upsell then it really doesn't matter as much.

Hope that helps.

Cool. That's my plan for the next release as well. There is too much money to be left behind on upsells if you sell through those channels that most consumers would prefer, not to mention the fees they all take. I think selling yourself can be positioned as something really cool. And then you can use the iTunes release as an excuse to re-promote the album to the non buyers a few months down the line.

Stacy Basner said
Mike, John! Thank you for such detailed and insightful responses!  I really appreciate it.  

We're getting ready to be more interactive with the email list. John are those the emails I get with your blog posts?

Happy to help. What emails are you referring to? I'm not totally following.

Hey Stacy, I'm still not 100% sure I follow, but to clarify, here is what I do..

For a basic list I usually create 5 - 7 emails that are designed to build a relationship with a new subscriber and ultimately to close the sale. These will be a mix of emails. Some will include links to blog posts, free music, videos, etc, and eventually they will include links to more direct promotions.

This initial series usually concludes in about 2 weeks. I also send out real time broadcasts to my list just to keep them engaged for the long run (usually with blog posts and other media) and promote future products, events, etc. But I only send those real time broadcasts to people who have completed the initial series. You can do this by creating a segment that consist only of the people who have reached the final email in your series, and then sending your emails to only those people. Does that answer the question?

Awesome, please do.