| Another Great Marketing Dog Article Topic: E-mail Event Etiquette for Artists by Slash Coleman |
Just because someone has a drivers license doesn’t make them a good driver, does it? If you can pay
the fee and pass the test and your eye sight is relatively good, they let you drive. That doesn’t
necessarily make you a good driver or give you the insight to know when you may be irritating the hell
out of everyone on the road with that blinker that you refuse to turn off..
The same can be said of an e-mail account. Just because you’re an artist and you have a free e-mail
account, doesn’t mean you know how to use it without pissing off half the people your sending e-
mails to, does it? Along with classes for badparents, they should have classes for bad e-mailers.
E-mail Marketing
I switched to Internet marketing for my career about two years ago. This means I do about 90% of my
marketing via the Internet. The other 10% is still done through phone calls and faxes and snail mail.
For the most part, if I meet someone that doesn’t have an e-mail address, they won’t get invited to
one of my events and they won’t get updates on my career unless I happen to see them again. I just
rarely bother with snail mail anymore. Also, if there is a media source which only takes press releases
via the fax, I usually won’t bother. The Internet is faster and cheaper, but there are still some
important rules you need to follow in order to get the most out of it.... and to not piss peopl off.
Calling Strangers
If I don’t know you, I would probably never call you out of the blue and say, “Hey, I got your phone
number out of the phone book and I want to invite you to an event.” If you didn’t hang up on me,
you’d probably think I was crazy, right?
The same rule, for the most part, goes with e-mail invites too. If I don’t know you and you send me an
invite to your art opening, not only does it piss me off, but I’ll usually delete it. If your e-mail is longer
than one or two mouse scrolls, I’ll usually get so pissed off that I refer all future e-mails from you to my
Spam folder and then e-mail you back with “How did you get my e-mail?” With that said, never borrow
someones "cc" list. Bad Bad e-mailer!
It’s what, it’s what, it’s what you want....
Have you ever heard it’s not what you say, but how you say it? Well, the same holds true for an
invitation - whether it’s to a book signing, an art opening, a theater event or a band performance. It
doesn’t matter if you’re inviting someone to a free performance with free food and booze, if you don’t
send it out the right way, chances are the intention of packing the house with your invitation is all for
naught.
If you really want me to come to your event, send me out a written invitation a month before the
event with an RSVP date on it and then call me two weeks before the event. There’s still some magic
to be said for the traditional way wedding and barmitzva invitations are sent out.
Style Weekly will send out a post card for their art parties with an RSVP date on them. They follow up
each card with a personal phone call two weeks before the event….talk about feeling special. After
that kind of treatment, how can you not say,Yes?"
If a good turn out is important to you, anything less than what Style does (besides the law of
percentages) will work against you. The truth is, since the onslaught of e-mail, anything via snail
mail (in writing) carries a certain special delightful quality to it, including thank you notes to the press
(see my article on "How to thank the Press") With a snail mail invite, I’ll consult my calendar just
because someone bothered enough to write something personal to me, put a stamp on it, and put it
in the mailbox.
With that said, let the Style Weekly invite be the measuring stick that you place your e-vite invitations
up against. The problem, though, is most of us artists don’t have the budget that Style Weekly does. I
know I don’t, that’s why I turned to Internet marketing. Send out two hundred invites in the mail with a
stamp on each one and you’re talking a good chunk of change, especially if you’re holding events on
a regular basis. So, for now, until you can hire a staff and until you’re famous enough to have super
duper marketing budget…e-mail it is.
The Law of Percentages
With snail mail or e-mail, the first rule of the road that you should write on a post-it and tape up right
beside your calendar is "3% is the Rule". You can count on getting a 3% response rate to any event
you invite people to or to any product your trying to sell. That means if you send out 300 invitations
to your mailing list letting them know that you have new band t-shirts for sale, you’ll probably only
make three sales. Don’t be discouraged. That’s just the way the law of percentage works and that’s
why big business will buy a huge database of names – it increases their chances for success. Say you
have a list of 3,000 contacts and you send out your new t-shirt announcements….now we’re talking
300 t-shirt sales instead of 3. Increase that database to 30,000 or more and you can see how the law
of percentages will work in your favor. That’s why a lot of business send out coupons in those blue
Val-pack envelopes. It’s all about the law of percentages.
Now one thing you can do to increase your chances of having a better than 3% response is to make
sure your database of contacts is the definite target market you are trying to reach. In my e-mail
contact list I have a diverse demographic of contacts that fall under a huge number categories from
high school students in Virginia to massage clients in Oregon to theater contacts in Massachusetts. If
I’m having a local event at a bar in my hometown does it make sense to send out an e-mail to my
high school contacts or even my contacts in Oregon? Maybe, maybe not. What I’m saying is that the
more specific you can be in planning who you are trying to reach with your event, the better off you’ll
be in reaching those people. I may send out a special e-vite to the high school students asking them
to let their parents and teachers know about the event or I may ask my Oregon contacts to spread the
word to any locals in my area they know who may be interested. In these special cases, I won’t send
out a bulk e-mail. I’ll send out an individual request to each. If you want to ensure your success in this
case, there’s no way around it.
To Bulk or not to Bulk
If you're sending out the same e-mail to a lot of your contacts, chances are, unless you are paying for
your e-mail account, you won’t have the option to personalize every e-mail with a “mail merge” type
letter. That leaves you with three options.
• Hand type the contact name in every e-mail and send each one separately
• Put all your contact addresses in the CC section and send it to everyone.
• Put all of your contacts in the BCC section and send it to yourself.
How you handle this will greatly effect the success of the outcome for your event.
To CC or BC that is the question:
You’ll increase your chances for good attendance or a good response to a special product you’re
selling if you send out a personal e-mail to each of your contacts. For my local events, I’ve got a
contact database of over 1,000 contacts and although it does take some time to send a personal e-
mail out to each one, it’s worth it. I'm making my living here, after all! Honestly, I won’t do it for every
show or event because when I have a couple shows in a row, I’m too exhausted to do it. But I can
usually see the outcome as a result of my laziness and it’s not good. I look at it this way; a ticket for
my show costs ten bucks.
Even if I send out five personal e-mail requests to my list each hour, which is ridiculously slow, and
only one of those five buys a ticket, I’m making ten bucks an hour. If you want a good response, I
suggest you be as personal as you can. Your effort will return to you tenfold.
BCC means blind carbon copy. It means I’m sending the same e-mail out to a bunch of people but
they won’t be able to see everyone’s address. When I don’t have the time to send out a personal e-
mail request, I’ll send out a bulk e-mail, addressed to myself, with all my contacts in the BCC line.
This means when you get my e-mail, you’ll see my address in the “to:” section and it will look like I
forwarded the e-mail to you. In other words, you won’t be able to see any of the other 500 contacts
addresses who received my email.
The draw back to the BCC is that a large percentage of your e-mails will end up in Spam folders and
won’t get read. Unfortunately, that’s the price you pay for being lazy. So, my advice is to either
personalize an e-mail request or bulk it with a BCC. There’s no other reason to do it any other way. If
you don’t know about the BCC, please learn about it. For lack of better words, if you don’t do it this
way, you’re not an artist…you’re a loser.
The final option is the CC, which means Carbon Copy. Listen, unless your conducting some business
and you need to send the same message to three or four contacts, don’t put more than one address in
the CC section of your e-mail. I’m still blown away by the number of artists out there sending me their
entire contact list every time they send me an invitation. First, it blatantly tells me that I’m not that
important. Secondly, and the worst part of it is, other artists, thinking they can capitalize on the free e-
mail list will copy all the addresses and send future invites to your contacts which have suddenly
become their new contacts by default. . As I said before, do this and you’ll likely piss off almost all of
your new contacts. Bad, bad e-mailer!
Resuscitating a Dead List
Let’s face it, if the only time you interact with me is when you want something, you are training me
to see our relationship as very one sided. So, sending a personal note to everyone on your e-mail list
at least once a year goes a long way to make your list one that will work for you when you need it to,
rather than against you. Even a one liner like, “Hey haven’t talked to you in a while, what have you
been up to?” will help. This is especially important when you have contacts like I do that are divided
by geographical regions. Idon’t want those contacts in Maine to forget about me, because when my
tour takes me up there, I depend on at least a few of my closet contacts to spread the word for me.
Truth be told, I have a lot of performer friends who send me a bulk e-mail about once every two
months. Sometimes I’ll delete them; occasionally I’ll skim them to see what they are up to. It depends
on my mood. Most of them don’t send me anything personal until I send something to them. It feels
good to make contact every now and then. I get hungry for it. If you don’t have an appetite for it, get
one. It can make the difference between a slow career and one that rockets to the top.
the fee and pass the test and your eye sight is relatively good, they let you drive. That doesn’t
necessarily make you a good driver or give you the insight to know when you may be irritating the hell
out of everyone on the road with that blinker that you refuse to turn off..
The same can be said of an e-mail account. Just because you’re an artist and you have a free e-mail
account, doesn’t mean you know how to use it without pissing off half the people your sending e-
mails to, does it? Along with classes for badparents, they should have classes for bad e-mailers.
E-mail Marketing
I switched to Internet marketing for my career about two years ago. This means I do about 90% of my
marketing via the Internet. The other 10% is still done through phone calls and faxes and snail mail.
For the most part, if I meet someone that doesn’t have an e-mail address, they won’t get invited to
one of my events and they won’t get updates on my career unless I happen to see them again. I just
rarely bother with snail mail anymore. Also, if there is a media source which only takes press releases
via the fax, I usually won’t bother. The Internet is faster and cheaper, but there are still some
important rules you need to follow in order to get the most out of it.... and to not piss peopl off.
Calling Strangers
If I don’t know you, I would probably never call you out of the blue and say, “Hey, I got your phone
number out of the phone book and I want to invite you to an event.” If you didn’t hang up on me,
you’d probably think I was crazy, right?
The same rule, for the most part, goes with e-mail invites too. If I don’t know you and you send me an
invite to your art opening, not only does it piss me off, but I’ll usually delete it. If your e-mail is longer
than one or two mouse scrolls, I’ll usually get so pissed off that I refer all future e-mails from you to my
Spam folder and then e-mail you back with “How did you get my e-mail?” With that said, never borrow
someones "cc" list. Bad Bad e-mailer!
It’s what, it’s what, it’s what you want....
Have you ever heard it’s not what you say, but how you say it? Well, the same holds true for an
invitation - whether it’s to a book signing, an art opening, a theater event or a band performance. It
doesn’t matter if you’re inviting someone to a free performance with free food and booze, if you don’t
send it out the right way, chances are the intention of packing the house with your invitation is all for
naught.
If you really want me to come to your event, send me out a written invitation a month before the
event with an RSVP date on it and then call me two weeks before the event. There’s still some magic
to be said for the traditional way wedding and barmitzva invitations are sent out.
Style Weekly will send out a post card for their art parties with an RSVP date on them. They follow up
each card with a personal phone call two weeks before the event….talk about feeling special. After
that kind of treatment, how can you not say,Yes?"
If a good turn out is important to you, anything less than what Style does (besides the law of
percentages) will work against you. The truth is, since the onslaught of e-mail, anything via snail
mail (in writing) carries a certain special delightful quality to it, including thank you notes to the press
(see my article on "How to thank the Press") With a snail mail invite, I’ll consult my calendar just
because someone bothered enough to write something personal to me, put a stamp on it, and put it
in the mailbox.
With that said, let the Style Weekly invite be the measuring stick that you place your e-vite invitations
up against. The problem, though, is most of us artists don’t have the budget that Style Weekly does. I
know I don’t, that’s why I turned to Internet marketing. Send out two hundred invites in the mail with a
stamp on each one and you’re talking a good chunk of change, especially if you’re holding events on
a regular basis. So, for now, until you can hire a staff and until you’re famous enough to have super
duper marketing budget…e-mail it is.
The Law of Percentages
With snail mail or e-mail, the first rule of the road that you should write on a post-it and tape up right
beside your calendar is "3% is the Rule". You can count on getting a 3% response rate to any event
you invite people to or to any product your trying to sell. That means if you send out 300 invitations
to your mailing list letting them know that you have new band t-shirts for sale, you’ll probably only
make three sales. Don’t be discouraged. That’s just the way the law of percentage works and that’s
why big business will buy a huge database of names – it increases their chances for success. Say you
have a list of 3,000 contacts and you send out your new t-shirt announcements….now we’re talking
300 t-shirt sales instead of 3. Increase that database to 30,000 or more and you can see how the law
of percentages will work in your favor. That’s why a lot of business send out coupons in those blue
Val-pack envelopes. It’s all about the law of percentages.
Now one thing you can do to increase your chances of having a better than 3% response is to make
sure your database of contacts is the definite target market you are trying to reach. In my e-mail
contact list I have a diverse demographic of contacts that fall under a huge number categories from
high school students in Virginia to massage clients in Oregon to theater contacts in Massachusetts. If
I’m having a local event at a bar in my hometown does it make sense to send out an e-mail to my
high school contacts or even my contacts in Oregon? Maybe, maybe not. What I’m saying is that the
more specific you can be in planning who you are trying to reach with your event, the better off you’ll
be in reaching those people. I may send out a special e-vite to the high school students asking them
to let their parents and teachers know about the event or I may ask my Oregon contacts to spread the
word to any locals in my area they know who may be interested. In these special cases, I won’t send
out a bulk e-mail. I’ll send out an individual request to each. If you want to ensure your success in this
case, there’s no way around it.
To Bulk or not to Bulk
If you're sending out the same e-mail to a lot of your contacts, chances are, unless you are paying for
your e-mail account, you won’t have the option to personalize every e-mail with a “mail merge” type
letter. That leaves you with three options.
• Hand type the contact name in every e-mail and send each one separately
• Put all your contact addresses in the CC section and send it to everyone.
• Put all of your contacts in the BCC section and send it to yourself.
How you handle this will greatly effect the success of the outcome for your event.
To CC or BC that is the question:
You’ll increase your chances for good attendance or a good response to a special product you’re
selling if you send out a personal e-mail to each of your contacts. For my local events, I’ve got a
contact database of over 1,000 contacts and although it does take some time to send a personal e-
mail out to each one, it’s worth it. I'm making my living here, after all! Honestly, I won’t do it for every
show or event because when I have a couple shows in a row, I’m too exhausted to do it. But I can
usually see the outcome as a result of my laziness and it’s not good. I look at it this way; a ticket for
my show costs ten bucks.
Even if I send out five personal e-mail requests to my list each hour, which is ridiculously slow, and
only one of those five buys a ticket, I’m making ten bucks an hour. If you want a good response, I
suggest you be as personal as you can. Your effort will return to you tenfold.
BCC means blind carbon copy. It means I’m sending the same e-mail out to a bunch of people but
they won’t be able to see everyone’s address. When I don’t have the time to send out a personal e-
mail request, I’ll send out a bulk e-mail, addressed to myself, with all my contacts in the BCC line.
This means when you get my e-mail, you’ll see my address in the “to:” section and it will look like I
forwarded the e-mail to you. In other words, you won’t be able to see any of the other 500 contacts
addresses who received my email.
The draw back to the BCC is that a large percentage of your e-mails will end up in Spam folders and
won’t get read. Unfortunately, that’s the price you pay for being lazy. So, my advice is to either
personalize an e-mail request or bulk it with a BCC. There’s no other reason to do it any other way. If
you don’t know about the BCC, please learn about it. For lack of better words, if you don’t do it this
way, you’re not an artist…you’re a loser.
The final option is the CC, which means Carbon Copy. Listen, unless your conducting some business
and you need to send the same message to three or four contacts, don’t put more than one address in
the CC section of your e-mail. I’m still blown away by the number of artists out there sending me their
entire contact list every time they send me an invitation. First, it blatantly tells me that I’m not that
important. Secondly, and the worst part of it is, other artists, thinking they can capitalize on the free e-
mail list will copy all the addresses and send future invites to your contacts which have suddenly
become their new contacts by default. . As I said before, do this and you’ll likely piss off almost all of
your new contacts. Bad, bad e-mailer!
Resuscitating a Dead List
Let’s face it, if the only time you interact with me is when you want something, you are training me
to see our relationship as very one sided. So, sending a personal note to everyone on your e-mail list
at least once a year goes a long way to make your list one that will work for you when you need it to,
rather than against you. Even a one liner like, “Hey haven’t talked to you in a while, what have you
been up to?” will help. This is especially important when you have contacts like I do that are divided
by geographical regions. Idon’t want those contacts in Maine to forget about me, because when my
tour takes me up there, I depend on at least a few of my closet contacts to spread the word for me.
Truth be told, I have a lot of performer friends who send me a bulk e-mail about once every two
months. Sometimes I’ll delete them; occasionally I’ll skim them to see what they are up to. It depends
on my mood. Most of them don’t send me anything personal until I send something to them. It feels
good to make contact every now and then. I get hungry for it. If you don’t have an appetite for it, get
one. It can make the difference between a slow career and one that rockets to the top.
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If you feel like you've been
spinning your wheels with your art
career, this book will give you
practical steps to make changes
that you will see instantly >more
spinning your wheels with your art
career, this book will give you
practical steps to make changes
that you will see instantly >more
| © Slash Coleman 2006 |
