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8:01 pm
June 9, 2011
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QuoteSounds like a winning formula, Greg. In my follow-up I do everything I can to make it about the reader and not about myself. Sounds like that's what you're going for too.
Good stuff.
12:46 am
To throw in my 2 cents I'd say that autoresponder emails can be a great way to build relationships and get people engaged and to build familiarity, good will and trust before you sell to them. And the great thing about them is that you don't have to remember to send them out every week. You're building a system that will work for you continuously.
I'm working with an artist on this right now. We're trying a slower, long-term approach to see what happens. We basically frontloaded the sequence with emails that are all about relationship building and nothing to do with sales. We give away her most popular song for free and engage people and make it fun and compelling. Then, over the course of a few emails we start to tell the story of her latest CD and the interesting details about all the amazing people that she worked with and the history of the studio where it was recorded, etc. (for more on this, check out my post on the topic on CD Baby's DIY Musician Blog: http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/.....ot-the-cd/). Then, once the subscriber hopefully knows, likes and trusts the artist and assigns some value to the CD, we offer it for sale.
This sequence is new and no one has gone all the way through it yet, so we don't know what the results will be, but her open rates are excellent. I'll report back when we have more data.
As far as frequency goes, We send out an autoresponder email every two weeks. She sends broadcast messages once or twice a month.
1:24 pm
October 28, 2011
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I've been thinking about this. I'm in the process of finishing an album that I've produced and co-written with singer songwriter Maria McAteer. I've wanted to work out how to promote it and came across John's material through CD Baby. I'm really eager to begin but I'm afraid to start putting up the squeeze page without having a finished mixed and mastered track to offer as the enticement. I guess I can prepare things so they are ready to roll out when I have a proper product to offer. I'm just so eager to start 🙂 We have some singles out but they are mixed by me and I've decided to remix them with a proper engineer. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can't do everything... 🙂
Another question about the mailing list:
What do you do when you have new information? Do you send it out to everyone on the list or do you add it to the autoresponder cue? Is there not a risk of people getting the same information twice?
Björn
5:00 pm
June 9, 2011
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Bjorn,
If you have decided which tracks to offer for free, then yeah go ahead and get things prepared to go live for when you actually have them in the can to your liking.
That way you can just roll on to the next step without killing your momentum.
When you have new information, generally you would send it as a broadcast/ newsletter, but if for instance you are writing the broadcasts with the intention of adding them into the follow-up cycle, you send it first as a broadcast to everyone and then copy it into the sequence.
So let's say that from day one, you drive traffic to your squeeze page and you've got the free offer in place to run smoothly, from there you can create your follow-up by creating the messages as newsletters first, then add them to the cycle.
This way people who sign up today will get the messages in real-time, while the ones who sign-up tomorrow will get the same message, but as a part of the follow-up cycle.
You don't have to do things on the fly like this. You can prewrite them, but this let's you come back each day, or week and add another message to the cycle.
If it's a time-sensitive message (live show, discount offer, etc.) you want to send it out to everyone as a broadcast.
I hope that clears things up a bit for you.
-Steve
5:31 pm
October 28, 2011
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Thanks Steve!
I think I understand what you're saying. What I still don't quite get is: If I would decide that my next update should be part of the autoresponder cycle and I say that It should be delivered say 3 weeks from sign-up - how do I make sure people who signed up 4 weeks ago will get it and the people who signed up 2 weeks ago won't get it twice. First when I send it out to everyone and then when they reach week 3? Does that make sense? I still haven't set up the auto responder so perhaps that will all be clear then.
Does anyone use mail chimp for this btw? Our list is already on there and I saw they have an autoresponder service.
Björn
1:33 am
June 9, 2011
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What I would do is segment them by sign-up date. Your autoresponder should give you the option to select your recipients by sign-up date, that way you can send the broadcast only to those who have been in the loop for a few weeks and the new guys will get it when they get there.
I think Mike Ippersiel is using mail chimp and from what I remember he seems to be pretty happy with it.
8:35 pm
June 7, 2011
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Bjorn Dahlberg said:
I think I understand what you're saying. What I still don't quite get is: If I would decide that my next update should be part of the autoresponder cycle and I say that It should be delivered say 3 weeks from sign-up - how do I make sure people who signed up 4 weeks ago will get it and the people who signed up 2 weeks ago won't get it twice. First when I send it out to everyone and then when they reach week 3? Does that make sense? I still haven't set up the auto responder so perhaps that will all be clear then.
Does anyone use mail chimp for this btw? Our list is already on there and I saw they have an autoresponder service.
Björn
What I do is this... I create a basic series for my autoresponder, maybe 5 - 8 emails. This is designed to build the relationship, create desire, and to close an initial sale. These emails contain information that is timeless so it doesn't matter when someone signs up.
Then the automated cycle ends and I rely on live promotions and real time updates.
The only exception to this is when I'm not really promoting anything and want to focus on recording or something (which is the case for me right now. When that's the case I add some emails to the series to go out every few weeks that just share free content. IE tracks, videos, blog posts, etc. I do this just to keep the list from going cold and to keep the good will up. However when my focus is off of recording and I have some time to spare, I will probably delete those later emails and replace them with real time updates again.
Regarding mail chimp, I don't use them, but I hear good things. Personally though, I think Aweber is worth it. They just have such a long standing good reputation.
Regarding your earlier post in this thread, in my opinion you don't need to worry about everything being perfect. Just get the list started. The worst thing that is going to happen is that some of these earlier fans won't stick as well as the ones you get later on. But some WILL. Like Charley mentioned in the interview we did, he gives out recordings of practice sessions and it's going well for him. Just make sure it's something that you represents you as an artist.
The only caveat is that you might save any advertising dollars or JV partners you have for the big push around the release.
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4:13 am
August 27, 2011
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Hi guys,
I just thought I'd chime in again and say that yes, I do use Mail Chimp and have been happy with it. I haven't done any real list segmentation with it, and I think with any autoresponder there's a bit of a learning curve to get a feel for how to set everything up.
Even though I haven't used Aweber, I'd recommend them over Mail Chimp for those that can pay the $20/month or so to start with them. They are the leaders in the industry and have a lot of nice templates for squeeze pages and light boxes that Mail Chimp doesn't seem to offer at the moment. I also think they have more list segmentation options - but like I said, I haven't really pushed the 'chimp too hard as far as that goes.
If you want to do broadcast and autoresponder sequences and you want to do it for free - Mail Chimp to the rescue.
3:06 am
June 9, 2011
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Sorry Mike,
I didn't want to speak on your behalf. Just hadn't seen you in a while. Thanks for the mail chimp feedback. 🙂
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