10 Questions Every Artist Should Ask A Promoter Before Paying For An E-Blast
If you’re a musician, there is a good chance that promoters are offering you all kinds of marketing opportunities , right now. You’ve heard the pitches before. “I can get you in front of 50,000 people if you give me $1000.” “If your serious about your career you should invest in yourself. “ Now, we are not here to say if these promoters are legit or not. And we are not saying you shouldn’t invest in yourself. But we are here to help you get the most for your money ,when it comes to digital marketing. In particular we are here to talk about E-Blast. Every artist gets offered an e-blast campaign at one time or another, and we want to make sure you don’t getripped off.Therefore, we have put together a list of 10 things you should ask before paying for an e-blast campaign. Lets dive in.
Questions 1: Who Are You Sending An E-Blast To
As an artist paying for marketing service you want to be very specific about who you are sending your music to. Therefore ask the promoter about the demographics and interest of their target audience. This will immediately tell if you the promoter can help you or not. You would hate to spend hundreds of dollars sending your music to someone who doesn’t care for your genre of music.
Question 2: How Often Do You Update Your Mailing List
As most artist don’t know, most promoters don’t clean their e-mail list. In other words, they don’’t spend enough time checking to see if the emails on their list are valid, or if their recipients have put them in the spam folder. As an artist this is crucial, because you don’t want to pay to send thousands of e-mails out and they don’t reach anyone. Even worst, all of your e-mails are sent back to you with errors.
Question 3: What days and times do you send out E-Blast
The timing of an e-blast is very important. Just imagine how many people would get your new song if your e-blast went out at 12 AM on Monday. No one is checking their e-mail, therefore you missed your window of opportunity to reach your target audience. With this in mind, ask the promoter what days they are going to send out the e-blast , and what time. And ask them if they take any time optimizing their e-blast to reach their target audience.
Question 4: What is your E-Mail Open Rate
This our favorite question to ask. Obviously if no one opens your e-mail, no one is going to get your music. Therefore, you want to ask the promoter what is your open rate. If they can’t answer this question, that means they are not fit to help you with your digital marketing campaign. Granted, you are rarely going to find a company with a 100% open rate, but someone has to be opening it, for it to be worth you paying for it. I’m very sure you could send out e-mails to a bunch of people who wont open it on your own. That is why we are having this discussion.
5. How many people click your E-Mails
Next, you want to ask the promoter about the click through rate. If people are opening the promoters e-mails and not clicking on any links there is a serious problem. Especially if they are sending an e-blast out to 50,000 people or more. You may even be able to ask them for reports to prove their click through rate.
6. How Do You Avoid The Spam Filters
This might be the most important question you could ask. When emails go out, some of them automatically hit a persons spam folder because of a variety of factors. If the Promoter doesn’t have an answer, this is not the person who should be helping you with your music career. Trust us. If they don’t know how to get pass the spam filters your music will never see the light of day.
7. What are you doing to make us stand out from the competition
Obviously we don’t have to have to tell you how important it is to stand out in this industry. Therefore, if you’re email doesn’t stand out from the millions of e-mails out there, your e-mail is never going to get opened. When you choose to work with a promoter on an e-mail marketing campaign make sure that they are good at writing content, and maybe even programming.
8. What is the bounce rate
You can use the word bounce rate to see if they are really e-mail marketers or if they are just trying to take your money. But this question asks promoters, “How many people open the email, and never click anything and leave immediately.
9. Who Is Your E-Mail Service Provider
As far as e-mail service providers , you want to know this information so that you can check the score. If they send e-blast from their personal e-mail there is a chance they will end up getting blocked by their recipients. However if a promoter uses a email service provider such as mailchimp, salesforce, or something else, you maybe in good hands. These brands are helpful because they have a high deliverability rate.
10. Are The E-mail Blast Compatible with Mobile Devices
Finally, is the e-mail compatible with mobile devices. People are on the go, and they need something they can open and read in seconds.