Text Message Marketing For Bands And Musicians
At the heart of Music Marketing Manifesto is the concept of what is often called “direct response marketing”. Direct response marketing is a form of marketing designed to solicit a direct response which is specific and quantifiable.
My preferred method of soliciting that response is via email. It’s cheap, easy, scalable and effective.
If you’re a Music Marketing Manifesto member, or if you have even gone through any of my free training, then you know what a big fan I am of companies like Aweber. I’m not going to beat the point into the ground, but if you are not using a reputable autoresponder company then you are almost certainly experiencing a deliverability rate that is not as good as it could be.
If you’re not familiar with Autoresponders then you can learn more about the company I use here.
I’ll talk about why Aweber is relevant to text messaging in a sec.
With that out of the way, text messaging, or more specifically “mobile marketing” is an emerging platform that can’t be ignored. Furthermore, in many respects it’s the perfect medium for musicians.
Perhaps the most significant factor with text messaging is that the open rate of each message is nearly 100%. After all, who doesn’t click the tab on their phone when a message comes in.
Email on the other hand is another story. Open rates tend to average between 10% – 40%. That’s a significant portion of our hard won leads who are not even bothering to read our emails.
Another great thing about text messaging is that it’s a great way to alert people instantly about real time events such as live shows, album releases and special promotions. Furthermore, it’s a relatively new medium which offers a lot of opportunities for those of us who get involved now.
But of course I can hear a lot of you asking… wait a second, first you tell me how important email is, now you’re saying it’s all about text messaging. What’s the deal dude?”
Well, the reality is that both are important. Email marketing is still king in terms of driving people to product offers. But text messaging offers some unique opportunities when it comes to promoting specific events.
This gets into some of the psychological aspects of marketing but another thing worth mentioning here is that connecting with your prospects in multiple mediums can really enhance the relationship. But I digress…
So how can you integrate mobile marketing into your existing email marketing campaign?
!
There’s a pretty cool new service named Call Loop. Thankfully Call Loop Integrates directly with Aweber.
What that means is that you can simply add a field to your opt in form (click of a button) and provide people with the option of including their cell phone numbers. Aweber communicates behind the scenes with Call Loop and when someone signs up to your mailing list they are simultaneously signed up to your call loop text message list.
Call Loop itself functions very similarly to Aweber in that once someone signs up they are entered into your text message autoresponder series and you can send them preprogrammed text messages set to any interval you want. You can of course also send out real time messages which is where the real value is for something like mobile marketing.
Another nice thing about Call Loop is that it’s a free to sign up. You pay only .05 cents for the messages you send. I think a lot of musicians on a tight budget will appreciate that.
I have only recently signed up with Call Loop, so I’m still testing the service out. It’s just a nice, simple and cheap solution that I thought was worth passing on. There are certainly other SMS marketing solutions out there however when I emailed the owner of the company I heard back within 15minutes and he offered me his cell phone number. So you gotta love that.
To create a free account with call loop click here >>>
To illustrate how this works, here’s what I want you to do now…
Enter your name, email and cell phone number in the fields below. In a few days I’ll text you a special invitation to a free webinar I’ll be holding on even more ways to use text messaging to promote your music.
This is something you want to get in on now before everyone is doing it.
Enter your digits now to get the invite.
Mobile marketing is something that is honestly very new to me. I’m testing a number of things as we speak and will share info as I get it but I’m finding the possibilities to be very intriguing.
Help me brain storm some ideas…
If you have any experience using text messaging to sell albums or promote events, I want to hear’em. If you have any questions about the process or other aspects of mobile marketing I want to hear those as well.
Ciao for now.
– John
12 Comments
-
[…] Text Message Marketing For Bands And Musicians With Call Loop Learn how to use Call Loop to promote your band or music with text message marketing Text messaging is a great way to get the message out about live shows or album releases. […]
-
[…] Read Jon’s post here. […]
John,
I am completely Oszjaca-ed up! I’ve been loving reading your posts, the Manifesto….everything!
I wanted to share my thought about the texting. I get texts from bands inviting me to their show and I feel it really invades my privacy. I signed up for their email list, their FB fanpage, etc so I could know when to see them. The texts (without my solicitation or permission) do not feel good to me.
Thanks for sharing all of your hardwork John. I’m a new fan!
Warmly.
Thanks Kat,
I’m stoked to hear that you’re diggin’ the content.
Any kind of marketing without permission is absolutely annoying and invasive. It’s also illegal. The only kind of text message marketing I personally engage in or teach, is PERMISSION based marketing with an opt out option in every message. I hope that helps clarify things. Thanks for the comment.
Yes! You are awesome!
Music promotion through text message it sounds cool.I have heard about this method first time.I hope that it proves to be a good method for music promotion.
Hey Steve,
Wow. “Come to our show or I’ll rape you”??? That might win the prize for worst sales copy ever, LOL.
Haha… yeah. Must have been their “Shock n’ Awe” campaign. I don’t think I’ve been to one of their shows since. They should have split tested it with…
“Discover The Secret To Not Getting Raped By Spending Five Bucks At This ‘Secret’ Place That Anyone Can Find!”
It actually wasn’t the band members themselves who sent the text, rather it was someone who was ‘managing’ them. Reflects poorly on the band though. I believe they were promptly sacked.
That’s too funny.
Totally… I may have over-shot my point. Services like these are great for responsible marketers. I have certain services that I prefer texts from. The optin part of this is def what will make it effective. Just try to avoid sending, “come to our show or we will rape you.” I actually got that text from a band once… no kidding.
Another great post. Just signed up to Call Loop. Looks pretty cool. Great job!
I was searching for info on how to do this yesterday. Good stuff. Thanks.