It should have been easy for me to get the blog done this week as band wise the only thing we've done is to have the first of our monthly directors meetings (as we are just in the process of establishing ourselves as a company and one of the things you have to do is have regular minuted meetings. I can't say that our meetings conform at the moment to what you might think a board meeting looks like:) What came out of that business meeting was a long long long list of company actions that we need to sort out. They include ticket management, sponsorship, website development, business cards, campaign decisions on the album release, new gigs, branding and a lot more.
So although I should have had lots of time to get the blog done this is the first time I've had to sit down and write.
This week it's all about building your mailing list and as I've said before this is something we only really began to get to grips with in January this year.
It's very true that your mailing list is just as important as selling stuff at shows because every person that you collect an e-mail address from at a show is an opportunity to get them to come and see you again, buy something from you, or tell somebody else about you.
I can't say that we've added friends and family to our mailing list, I can't say that we are using our mailing list as well as we ought to. I can say it's growing through signing people up as we gig, but I can't say that we've put a lot of time into building that mailing list up online.
We do give away a track to people who sign up to the mailing list and funnily enough a lot of people have heard of that track and have shared it with friends (the downside of that being we don't get hold of peoples mailing addresses and if it's been shared friend to friend.
It had never occurred to me to trade a mailing list with a band and though I can see the sense in doing that it's really important to make sure that people really want to be on your mailing list. Certainly, in the UK with my business hat on you need to make sure that you stick to and stay within the law around the data protection act. I would also recommend that you get registered because it is only about £35 and what you end up doing is using the data that you have on your fans not only legal way but also an way that is safe for them and you.
To date we've never collected phone numbers although quite a few people have given us their phone numbers (our drummer is particularly popular) and I'd never thought about sending a text message out to those people - though properly people are more likely to read a text message than an e-mail.
I like the idea of sharing mailing lists where possible and going through our MySpace friends to see if people would like to join our mailing list.
Another thing that we've seen other bands do that seems to draw people in is the onstage photograph. What I mean by this is that you take a photo of the audience and tell the audience you will put that photo on Facebook/ MySpace and get people in the audience to come and find themselves in that picture and say hello.
The people that do come and find themselves in that picture will often join your Facebook page, send you an e-mail and join your mailing list. and, get your free tracks and slowly become a fan for a along long time.
Cheers
Zak
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