3: zero to one your email list
how do you get people on an email list?
answer: you have to ask them to join
In the last entry, the practical section says to create an email sign-up landing page using a ConvertKit tool. The best would be to create a sign-up page on your own website, but ConvertKit works for now. With one of those setups, the next step is to invite people to join. But who?
you have contacts
You have a phone and email account that is chock-a-block full of folks. Most of these folks are acquainted with you. And plenty of them would love to stay in the loop on your music career.
the clean way to do this
The basic concept is to send people an invitation to join with a link to take them to the sign-up landing page.
mail merge
You need to send a lot of people the same email. While putting everyone into a BCC line of an email might work, I did not do that. I went a slightly fancier route and used a classic thing called mail merge.
Luckily Google has made mail merge simple. With Gmail and Google Sheets, you can send the same email to a lot of people. You can even make it custom, like add their individual names. Learn how.
my early mistakes
At first, I sent out an epic of an email explaining everything and why. Complete with images and a dozen links. Not surprisingly, nobody signed up for my email list. See the first email.
three-lines and one-link
Later with the advice of my oldest cousin, I created an email loosely following the guide: three-lines and one-link. This minimal approach gives the catchy headline of what you are doing plus an invitation to sign-up for your email list.
my much more successful email
Subject: Hey First name. -Ben Brown
Hello First name,
You’re super busy and probably haven’t heard anything about my little underground project, but for the past two years, I’ve lovingly poured work into helping broke musician friends “make it” online. If you’d like to learn more about what we’re doing together–may I invite you to enter your email on this page howmbase.com/ben. I hate sending emails so don’t expect a lot of them.
Cheers,
Ben Brown
I sent this email to around 50 people—family, friends, co-workers, and alumni. All from my phone and email contacts.
the practicals
Craft a three-line and one-link email inviting people to your sign-up landing page. Open up your contacts and go down the list identifying anyone who might like to know what you are up to. Move those folks into a new group of possible mailers. Be brave. Take a few risks. Send your email invitation to everyone using mail merge.
Next entry will go over how to send this invitation over text messaging so you can invite the possible mailers you only have a phone number for.
resources and references
- My unsuccessful email.
- Instructions on using Google for mail merge.
- A video I made with megs going over how to mail merge.
- My sign-up landing page on a Squarespace website.
My oldest cousin works for a company that helps businesses with email and text marketing.