FanMail Case Study: Madison House/String Cheese’s Sci Fidelity Records

Case studies written by one of the parties directly involved can by nature be a bit self-serving.  After all they have a point of view: they’re product works.  FanMail Marketing’s case studies are probably no exception, but that doesn’t mean that their spiffy email marketing solution (see our interview with the company’s founder here) or that music marketers can’t learn from what they have to say.  Here is the first in a multi-part series of FanMail case studies:

Created in 1998 by Madison House Inc. and the band The String Cheese Incident, SCI Fidelity Records began as an alternative to the traditional major record label. This small independent label provides complete management and marketing services to numerous national recording artists, including Steve Winwood, The String Cheese Incident, The Steve Kimock Band, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe and dozens more. SCI Fidelity prides itself on its creative vision, resourceful marketing strategies, strong attention to developing and maintaining successful careers for artists, and cultivating committed fan base.

Street teams have proven to be one the most effective methods of promotion for SCI Fidelity Records. Each artist on the label has its own street team whose members are assembled from fan ranks to help promote the artist in return for tickets, CDs, and other benefits. In order to ensure that SCI Fidelity artists have promotional support in every major city for tour marketing, they have to remain in close contact with the current list of street team members – keeping them informed of upcoming concerts and release dates while also recruiting new members.

It was challenging for SCI Fidelity to manually manage a list of thousands of street team members nationwide. They stored information in a basic Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and updated it manually. SCI Fidelity Records spent countless man hours adding new addresses, removing duplicates, and blasting plain text emails through a list-generated bulk email program without any way to track, target or efficiently update contacts.

In addition to their street team lists, the label had multiple fan databases for each of their artists in multiple locations and formats, but no standard way to consistently and effectively reach these fans. SCI Fidelity Records wanted to reach out and use the passion of thousands of loyal fans, while also seamlessly updating contact information, coordinate individual show promotion, and communicate expectations and news at the lowest possible cost. They also wanted a tool that could be used by multiple branches of the Madison House family, including Madison House Publicity, Madison House Travel, Baseline Ticketing and SCI Gear, to facilitate individual marketing goals.

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