Newsletter marketing for musicians and bands

Unless you’re an industry plant social media marketing isn’t enough to get your song to the top of the Billboard list. From the outside, social media appears to be the quickest and most direct way to grow your fan base, promote your music, and boost your music career. Fortunately for you, it’s not! Of course, social media has its benefits but it is unpredictable and not very artist-friendly. Platforms go in and out of style, trends change daily, and algorithms are nearly impossible to understand. Email, on the other hand, is steady and gives you total control. It is also the preferred and most direct form of communication to your fans. If you want to build a loyal fanbase, boost streams, and increase your revenue, you need to get into your email marketing bag expeditiously.

Community building

Community building is a musician's top priority because, honestly, what’s a band without fans? Communicating with fans is the most important part of music marketing. Newsletters are the perfect way to communicate with your audience directly and turn listeners into loyal fans who will support you through your musical eras. The goal is to build authentic relationships with them centered around your artistry and your music. Regularly sending emails deepens your relationship with your listeners while providing another promotion platform. Email marketing promotion keeps your audience engaged and excited about your upcoming albums, shows, and merch drops, increasing revenue. Yes, newsletters are one of the best ways to connect with your listeners but they should also offer subscribers value. Musicians often leverage newsletter sign-ups by providing exclusives such as early pre-sale codes or extra entries to sweepstakes. Give behind-the-scenes peeks into your music-making process. You want to make your newsletter content as enticing and personable as possible. When subscribers look forward to your emails, the chances of your newsletter being perceived as spam in the sea of emails and deleted––or worse, unsubscribing––decrease. High open and read rates translate to higher sales and a more loyal fanbase. The goal is to build authentic relationships with them centered around your artistry and your music so that you grow with each release. Cultivating a strong community is the key to growth aka the path to selling out arenas.

Marketing Autonomy 

In the music industry, there aren’t many marketing situations where artists have the final decision on strategy––you have complete ownership over your newsletter. Because you own your mailing list, you can use it for a very long time without much oversight––perfect for musicians. You have complete autonomy over what you say. You decide how you want to position your brand and what you share with your fans. If you want to tease fans with a snippet of an unreleased song, you can! There’s no red tape or long approval process like if you were with a label. Share a vlog of a studio session. You know what content is preferred. These interactions produce engagement which furthers the artist/fan connection, which is what you want to boost your band’s brand growth. 

Integrations

Being a musician, you need to be on a lot of platforms to promote your tunes. Cross-promoting on social media is difficult because you can only fit so much in your bio. Where do you put your links to your music or your shop? Many artists use a landing page service like Linktree to consolidate everything. The downside is that you usually have to pay for these services. Contrarily, many email marketing platforms, like Buttondown, offer integration tools that allow you to keep all your links together and attach your content like music videos and songs easily. Buttondown has a simple interface that musicians at any tech level can maneuver. Buttondown supports many musician-friendly integrations like:

• Bandcamp
• Soundcloud
• Spotify
• Youtube
• TikTok
• X

Fans want to support you––let them! Utilizing integration tools cuts your costs and highlights all the ways that they can support their favorite artists and bands (you!). Increase streams and views that lead to superstardom using integration.

Analytics/Metrics

Having a successful marketing campaign requires you to get to know your audience on a deeper level––a data level. The only certain way to know if your strategy is working is by monitoring newsletter metrics. Analytics provide valuable information on subscriber behavior. These insights help to optimize your marketing campaign. How else will you know if fans are engaged and interested in the content you are putting out? Metrics that provide these key insights are:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Unsubscribe rates
• Conversion rates

Analyzing these metrics can help you evaluate your email marketing performance, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and optimize your email marketing strategy.

Pricing

The music industry isn't known for making big bucks so using less to make more is the name of the game. A big plus of newsletter marketing is that it is budget-friendly with a high return on investment. While social media is free, you have limited access to core marketing tools and are fighting against algorithms to get views. Not ideal. On the other hand, email marketing has dozens of powerful tools that elevate your marketing strategy and you own your mailing list––truly, a bang for your buck. If you’re looking for a platform that has affordable pricing, Buttondown might be your match. Buttondown offers plans starting at 9/mo so you can make hot records without burning through funds. 

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for musicians to grow their fanbase and revenue. Creating a newsletter allows artists to stay in direct contact with fans. Consistent newsletters will result in greater financial success and continuous brand growth for your band for years. Think of email marketing as another outlet to express yourself and share your news, your way. Buttondown provides powerful core email marketing tools that can boost your fanbase and stream revenue. 

 Buttondown is trusted by multiple musicians:

• Tempest of Noise, an artist's agency and record label, based in Brussels, Belgium.
• Viking's Choice, a weekly-ish newsletter and playlist by NPR Music's Lars Gotrich.
• Gordon Withers, a rock cellist based in Maryland.