A Musician’s Guide To MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the more popular options for musicians' email newsletters. It has a free tier and offers a wide range of tools and features for the pro music marketer. Like a number of smart web companies that offer services for broad markets, MailChimp has a guide to using MailChimp for Music. It combines general features musicians might find useful along with some specific to music that were new to me.
Mailchimp for Musicians
The MailChimp for Music guide focuses on basic MailChimp features of which you should be aware including some especially for musicians. Here are a few worth highlighting:
Using an integration with CASH Music, you can trade a free download for a new email address.
Create An RSS-To-Email Campaign
Whenever you post on your blog you can automatically send an email alert to subscribers.
Not only does MailChimp have social features but they also have templates to allow you to generate emails based on ecommerce outlets including iTunes.
MailChimp will host your audio files for free downloads.
There are more features of interest to musicians though the above are particularly relevant.
MailChimp's templates and design options are also quite strong. You can see examples of the wide range of possibilities.
MailChimp is the Leader
While people often mention MailChimp's 2000 subscriber free tier, that's an offer you can find elsewhere. I'm really most impressed by MailChimp because they have such advanced features as A/B testing and keep adding new ones like drip email campaigns.
These are the kinds of features that allow you to fine-tune marketing campaigns and develop closer relationships with fans who are likely to spend more money and see more shows. So that means MailChimp is a solid long-term tool for any musician who wants to grow their business.
More:
- 4 Tips For Music Marketing With Email Newsletters
- Marketing Your Music Blog With Just 3 Tools
- Using Bandcamp To Build Your Email List
- Bandzoogle Adds Seamless Bandcamp Integration
- Bandzoogle Now Lets Musicians Sell Any Digital File With No Fee
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) recently launched DanceLand. Send news about music tech startups and services, DIY music biz and music marketing to: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Once you break 2000, it’s way more expensive than FanBridge. That alone has kept me from trying it.
I need to take a closer look at FanBridge.
MailChimp does get way pricey.
There are many, many things about FanBridge that frustrate me to no end, but I don’t see any other option. I’m at about 5500 subscribers. I even dumped 3000 stale subscribers a few months ago to prune it down!
We are pretty happy with Fanbridge. The only thing it is lacking is the RSS to email option which I feel like would annoy the shit out of people if you updated your RSS everyday. I feel like your mailing list should be separate from your other stuff so as to make people feel especially special for subscribing. It’s like your in crowd. Fanbridge also has a great app that makes it so easy to get email addresses at shows and sync them into your data base immediately. The most emails we get are at shows with people we make a face to face connection with, and they are generally the ones who open their emails.
Brian, though it probably won’t be your solution I think taking a look at Bandzoogle for an all-in-one solution that includes email newsletters is worth doing. Especially now that they’ve revamped the whole thing.
Tyler, I hear what you’re saying on the RSS for newsletter feeds. Because I’m based in blogging I have to have that but it also puts me in the position of having to consider building two lists to include people that just want special announcements and that immediately feels bulky.