Follow Up #5 Interval - 12 days

Subject: Silas Dogan on Skydog's Red Dirt Radio

How's it goin! Hope all is right as rain, fine as frog hair,
your days are short and your nights are long!

We got a bit of good news. The two songs you got as  free
downloads when you signed up are being featured on the biggest
Red Dirt Radio show in the country,
Skydog's Red Dirt Radio on Live365.com

"White Lines" 
made #8 on the Hot Charts for the week 10/27/2011

"Don't Worry (I'm Just Stoned)"
is in the top 30 for October 2011

http://www.live365.com/index.live

Joe Clem aka "Skydog" said he really likes these tunes and
ask us to send more, so who are we to say no??
I don't think so LOL

This is one the biggest breaks for us
yet and we'll be submitting the rest of the songs off the
WHITE - LINES Album over the next few weeks. WOW we are
really stoked!!

And just think, you were right here with us when all began,
Thank You!!

So if would do us and yourself a favor and tune in to
Skydog's Red Dirt Radio

http://www.live365.com/index.live

And rate our songs and the other Artists on the program.
We'd really appreciate it 😉
If you not familiar with this station you are going to find
a lot of great new music you will not find on the
regular radio.

But they do play some National Artists songs
that won't be on the dial either like Kid Rock, Jamey Johnson,
Randy Houser, Jackyl and the late Toy Caldwell, founding
member of The Marshall Tucker Band.

We're in some pretty good company if I do say so myself!
 
Southern Rock / Red Dirt....real music is back!!

The New CD "White Lines" is Here!
We have a Christmas special to celebrate the Holidays
Get a "Don't Worry" T shirt and the CD
For only $20.00 bucks
There are only 35 of these packages left
Offer ends 12/25/2011
Click here to get yours:

Click Here http://www.music.silasdogan.com

Enter your exclusive discount code: holidays

Merry Christmas!!

Dave Barnett & The Silas Dogan Band

Hi Dave,

I glanced through your series and have some feedback that you may be able to use.

Email #2 - Way too many things to click on in my opinion. Ideally you should promote a single link per email - the more links you promote the more you potentially overwhelm the reader.

General comments on the rest:

Length of emails - I personally would avoid sending too lengthy of an email. Keep it focused on a particular topic with a single link that you're promoting (see my first point above).

WIIFM? Always ask yourself What's In It For Me (from the perspective of the reader). Yes - you're excited about your new website, but are they? Do they care about pet photos? Maybe they do if they found you via a pet forum (this can be tracked and you can build a specific campaign and list around this) but otherwise they might not care at all about it and will tune you out - and maybe future emails as well.

Date sensitivity - Your auto responder has information from the recent past (October 2011) that is dated and will make the fact that your emails are automated far more apparent and potentially turn off the reader. Including dates is great if you're broadcasting to your list, but the auto responder stuff should be 'evergreen' - remaining relevant for months or years at a time.

Some pointers - again, keep the emails concise. If you want to really go into detail on something you can send them to a blog post on your website or create a newsletter in PDF format that they can read or print out and take with them. Don't try to squeeze a lot of different stuff into your emails and they'll instantly become more focused and hold the attention longer.

If possible, tell a story. This is part of what Steve was talking about before. Is there a story about the website? Is there a story about why you're sharing animal photos on your website? Song-writers are story tellers, and musicians often have funny stories from the road that people love to hear. I think this is again what Steve was talking about with 'having a conversation' with someone at a bar or on the phone.

Would you talk about how many hours you spent learning the major and minor scales when you first started out? All the blisters you had? The time you needed to replace a string on your guitar and your favourite brand was sold out?

Or would you tell the story about the time that the van broke down on the way to the gig and you had to hitchhike the rest of the way? Or the one about how the power went out in the middle of your set and you had to play acoustic while surrounded by audience members holding candles?  --- I think these stories I just mentioned are the kind you'd tell if you were face to face with someone who was interested in what you do, you'd want to share the entertaining stuff. If you can mimic that with email - you'll be on your way to engaging your audience on auto pilot.

I'm not an expert by any stretch, and we're all learning here - but hopefully some of this can help you out with your sequence.

Best of luck Dave.

Dave Barnett said:

Thanks Mike (We don't have animal pictures?) I guess I don't communicate very well, anyways sounds like I need to start all over again or hire someone to do it

Hey Dave - my bad. I looked at your email #3 and saw pictures and then later on where it mentioned the band interests, I somehow linked the two together.

Also, I don't think you need to scrap the whole thing. Nobody is perfect and aiming for perfection is a sure way to achieve absolutely nothing. Perfection isn't attainable, but progress is. It's better to have something in place and adjust as you go and improve over time rather than wait for something to be perfect.

Secondly, hiring someone to write your emails is only guaranteed to cost you money. Copy writers charge a lot of money and they're at the disadvantage of not necessarily knowing much about your band, image, music, personalities that you already have an intimate knowledge of. They need to get into the right head space and then apply their forumula (like A.I.D.A) and hopefully get something that works better.

At the end of the day, your success will be determined by your subscribers; not by what I or anybody else says.

What you can do is work with what you have, and then pay attention to your open rates and unsubscribe rates.

• If you see a high percentage of people opening or not opening a particular email - take a good look at it and see if you can figure out what might be contributing to it.
• If you have an email with a lot of links and you see that there are very few clicks, try getting rid of some and see if your click through increases (I think they will).

There's a saying that goes: Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I think that even a 'broken' (i.e. a not-perfect) auto responder sequence is still going to be much better than having zero follow up with your audience.

The bottom line is - you can do this Dave, just keep at it and tweak as you go.

Dave Barnett said:

Follow Up #2 Interval – 4 days

Subject: Hey {!firstname}, Here's another song for you

Hey there {!firstname}
We wanted to take a minute and
Thank you again for being a
Fan of The Silas Dogan Band

Download "Stand My Ground" here:
http://www.silasdogan.net/stan.....ground.zip

This song was written as a Tribute to the
Late Great Stevie Ray Vaughan.
It also shows our diversity as music creators.
As you can see by now our music is a mix of
Outlaw Country, Classic Rock and Blues.
Some would say "Southern Rock"
and others call it "Red Dirt"

Either way we hope you are enjoying the tunes.
Here is your download link:

http://www.silasdogan.net/stan.....ground.zip

Oh, by the way, This song featured in an Irish documentary
"The Grassmen"

Join us on FaceBook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/.....2539352298

And Twitter Tweets by SilasDoganBand

Thanks again and we'll talk to you soon
Dave, Mark, Gary and Julio

Remeber to add us to your email White List

LOL, yeah I can't afford to pay someone else to do worse work than me

Here's what I re wrote for email #2 (thanks for the help and encouragement Mike! I just gotta think of it as like rewriting a song, which is what I do a lot)

Subject: Hey {!firstname}, Is that Jimi Hendrix?

Hey there {!firstname}
We have another download for you!

This song was written as a Tribute to the
Late Great Stevie Ray Vaughan

As a guitar player I was really inspired by this guy.
The first time I heard SRV was through a friend of mine that
knew I was a huge Jimi Hendrix fan. So he popped a cassette
tape into his player and asked me who I thought it was.
The song was VooDoo Child. I remember looking at him like
"What are you trying to pull here?"
I said "Of course it's Hendrix, but wait, this must be some
unreleased version, I don't remember the guitar solo sounding
like that..Wow, that's good!"
He had a good laugh and he had turned me on to a new
Artist he knew I was gonna love. I must have listened to that
tape a hundred times over the next week.
So I wanted to share this song from our "White Lines"
CD with you today.
Here's the download link:

http://www.silasdogan.net/stan.....ground.zip

Oh, by the way, this song is featured in an Irish Documentary
"The Grassmen." They are going to send me a link to their
YouTube channel when it's done, I'll make sure to pass that
along to you when I get it.

Join us on FaceBook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/.....2539352298

Thanks again and we'll talk to you soon
Dave, Mark, Gary and Julio

Remember to add us to your email White List

Thanks John, I'll take your advice, hell, I'm happy to get all the advice I have been getting. If I'm doing something "wrong" I want to know about it. Mike also suggested the fewer links the better so that's a pretty good indicator.

I still have the other auto response messages to work on. I figure I should work on them here in the forum where I can get help right? And the answers I get should help someone else. I know I think out loud "man I suck at this" my apologies but I figure other people may feel that way too from time to time, but that's part of working through it, at least it is for for me.

Onward: To be interesting I also have to be interested in the person reading my message. That's kind of hard to do when I don't really know anything about the people I'm taking to. Any tips on getting that mind set or approach would be helpful to me. Speaking in general but making it feel like I'm addressing each individual.

A point was made in my first email on this discussion that the email was all about me, I agree, and I wonder if this email too is more about me than them? Or is the story enough to make a reader feel "included"?

Thanks for your patience

This is my new follow up email #4. This one is where I directly ask / offer someone to buy

I'd appreciate any feedback, I'm still using a story but then going right to the pitch in closing. Thanks

Subject: Did we blow the roof off that place?

Hey there {!firstname}
How's it goin today? Hope all is well

A few months ago we were doing a show when a huge
thunderstorm rolled through and knocked out the power just
as we were about to finish our set.
At first we were bummed out because we had a packed house
and we could do no wrong. We were really in the zone.

The rain was pouring down in buckets and the lightning flashes
were lighting up the club like a slow strobe light.
But that didn't stop the audience. A woman in the crowd started
clapping her hands and singing "Give me the beat boys and free
my soul, I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away"
Our guitar player Mark Roberts knew the words to the verses
so he started singing with her and the next thing we knew the
whole place was singing along and clapping their hands too!

We spent the rest of the night singing songs in the dark til
the place closed. When we went outside the storm had eased and
that's when we realized the roof from the building next door
had been blown off! A few cars had been damaged and the parking
lot was a mess, but thankfully no one was injured.

That was one of our most memorable gigs without a doubt.
For weeks after that everyone was saying "Man, you guys
blew the roof off that place!" Good times for sure 😀

We have a Holiday Special just for you
Get the new CD "White Lines" and a "Don't Worry"
T-Shirt for just $20.00 
This offer is available only to you, our Fans

Click Here http://music.silasdogan.com
Then enter the
Discount code: holidays
This offer ends 12/25/2011
Thank you
Dave and The Silas Dogan Band

Thanks to Mike, Steve and John and this forum! It's what I needed to "get my mind right" (Cool Hand Luke lol)

I'm glad to see this discussion will help other folks out Annie..thanks, I'd love to read your stories, let me know