Email is still one of the best ways for the music industry to communicate with fans. It’s trackable, provides clear, actionable data, and, when fans opt-in, can generate a dedicated revenue stream.
We’ve simplified the approach to email marketing for the music industry with FanMail Template System, a robust and scalable solution for each artist or label’s specific brand. This system makes it easy to quickly create engaging emails with enhanced content blocks, responsive behavior, and updates that make it the most efficient, capable email system for music marketers today.
We asked two members of the FanMail team, Rhayven Jones, Lead Developer, and Brian Vogel, Creative Director, about their approach to creating engaging and interactive emails that deliver content that increases engagement, click-through rate, and sales.
What’s your approach to designing engaging emails?
BV: An artist’s brand is my starting point. Creating a responsive email design that is true to their current release takes time, but it ensures the artist and label will continue to use the template/design consistently. It’s a 360 degree branding approach that gives fans a better overall experience, which makes them desire further interaction with the artist or label. Our goal with visuals is to create excitement and anticipation with fans and drive the desired outcome, whether it’s a purchase, download, pre-save, or tour info. This also encourages fans to continue to open and click through emails to additional content or an eCommerce site.
One of the most recent hero image trends is to incorporate GIF images in emails. This allows for a more dynamic visual experience that’s particularly effective for the music business. It’s a great way to generate engagement and excitement from fans.
The latest technology gives us a wide variety of typography available for email design. Our team has done research to see what works better across different browsers and email clients. We found that Google’s web fonts give us some of the best compatibility results, on top of having a great variety of available options to use.
RJ: In general, email design and web design are “playing well together”. By this, I mean that there are several new tools to build emails that allow email to have a better look and feel that is similar to web pages. Using animated and interactive images provides a more interesting user experience that encourages fans to continue to interact with the artist or label.
Targeted, personalized emails give any fan the experience of feeling as if the artist is crafting messaging just for them. We’ve been using Movable Ink, a tool that allows for more personalized email image content based on location, interests, time, etc. This enables us to add things such as a countdown or the person’s name to an image.
Why is the FanMail Template System a perfect tool for the music industry?
BV: Our template system takes the design challenge out of the equation for clients and ensures the look is consistent across devices. This is especially true with Salesforce, where we can create and customize content areas. MailChimp has a more vanilla approach that makes it a little less flexible than Salesforce, but we’re able to create workarounds that allow us to customize emails and tailor them to the content effectively. It’s a great fit for music marketing and can extend to other email platforms as well.
We can create templates and content areas that address specific needs. The way our email template system works makes it easy to create emails based on pre-designed content areas that can be used to announce new releases, videos, albums, tour dates, merchandise sales, social media posts, and other artist or label needs. These templates provide a consistent, professional design, and easy to adapt a system that can be used over time and is easily updated when needed. Also, these template designs take into consideration that fans are going to engage with these emails on a different number of devices, browsers, and email clients. We work to make sure the design stays consistent and is true to the artist’s brand and design standards.
RJ: We are building on our existing template system to support all the new email tools and trends. Our template system is designed to make it easy for our clients to customize and deliver messages that look right on every device and OS. We ensure clients can easily replicate and deliver well-crafted and visually engaging emails consistently over time. Of course, the goal is to enhance a fan/customer overall experience with professional-looking emails that fans want to receive.
How has Dark Mode changed FanMail Marketing’s approach to email design and development?
BV: More and more mobile users are embracing this feature since it’s easier on the eyes and has power-saving advantages. It’s cool. So with our creative design, we take into consideration Dark Mode, mobile-friendly/adaptive design, and use gradients on emails backgrounds and call to action buttons. We make sure logos, fonts and images look good in Dark Mode because we know when it’s not taken into consideration, images or logos can render poorly. This can confuse the message of the email and diminish the fan experience.
RJ: What we do for our clients is deliver more interactive, dynamic, personalized, and adaptive emails. We have new ways to display content, images, and forms, and we also make sure every email looks good when users switch to dark mode on their devices. It’s imperative that anyone investing in digital marketing is ahead of this trend and utilizing it to their advantage.
How does copy contribute to the success of an email?
BV: Subject lines, preheaders, and headlines all need to drive interest with clear intent. The copy needs to be relevant, to the point, and complement the visuals with a clear call to action. Using emojis can create visual interest that quickly communicates the mood of the email, plus they are eye-catching when a user is scrolling through their inbox.
Why is email such an effective tool for the music industry?
BV: Email marketing is still one of the best ways for artists and labels to communicate directly with fans. This creates valuable data that can be used to learn, gain insights, especially when you that information back into the marketing plan. Email is easily trackable and can help labels create content that fans want to interact with, leading to more opens and more purchases or interactions. When you consider that 80% of revenue is generated by just 20% of the most loyal fans, it’s one of the most effective ways to communicate with your strongest revenue stream.
RJ: I see brands, companies, and influencers looking to connect with those fans who are willing to spend and support their work. Facebook and other social media platforms are a good way to reach people, but it’s not the best for personalized, relevant content. Even in that social space, you see a platform like Patreon where influencers are connecting with fans that are committed and willing to spend more to get more. A well-designed and managed email program can help identify and segment connected, loyal fans who are interacting with a brand or artist’s content, so you can provide a VIP personalized, relevant experience to them with targeted content.
Ready to put the FanMail Template System to work for you? Talk to us about how to create an email system that will create an immediate connection with your fans, keep them engaged and, most importantly, increase revenue for artists and labels.
