All the experts will tell you that getting fans' e-mail addresses is a huge deal: the fans that part with that information will spend more money on you than those who don't; they will come out to more of your shows; they tell more of their friends to check out your music, etc.
But knowing how valuable your e-mail list is simply raises questions: How often should I e-mail people on it? What should I send them? And, scariest of all: why aren't more of them opening what I send?
Unless you took a bunch of marketing classes in college, you probably don't know that most people ignore most of the e-mails sent by people they don't know personally. According to this E-mail Marketing Benchmark Report, the overall open rate for e-mails sent to lists that are opt-in and permission-based (meaning all recipients chose, at some point, to join the list) is 17.98%.
Last year, the open rate for music-related e-mails was 16.29%, and the click-through rate was a pretty dismal 1.46%. But thanks to a “shift towards more value driven fan engagement campaigns (free track giveaways, discounts etc.) which have improved engagement," both numbers have gone up--open rate to 21.32%, click-through to 4.7%, which is good for third-best across these sectors.
This number, of course, depends on a huge number of variables. But if you have a decent-sized e-mail list, and your open rate is significantly lower than 20%, you now know what kind of work you have to put into what you're sending, and you should consider the following things:
Stop Sending So Many F#&@ing E-Mails!
The easiest way to get people to stop reading your e-mails is to send too many of them. You should never send weekly e-mails. Unless you have some huge, pressing announcement or irresistible offer (free concert tickets, a last-minute booking, etc) that came up within days of your last e-mail, try to avoid sending out more than two mass e-mails per month.
Make Them Worth Opening!
If you don't have some specific point of engagement for your fans, you shouldn't be sending one. And reminders do not count. Telling people you're still on tour, or that your Kickstarter campaign is still in progress, or that your album, which came out last month, is getting good press, does not constitute news your fans will care about.
Keep Them Exclusive!
Try to keep the information you impart in your e-mails exclusive. If you are planning on announcing the release of a new album, don't just paste in the press release you sent to the newswires and blogs and call it a day. Tell them a story about how hard it was to make, or tell them about which kinds of bonus tracks they can look forward to hearing soon. Everybody opens e-mails that they think will contain secret, or special information, and it's on you to give your blasts that value.
