Multiple studies have shown that people will spend more time reading a webpage than they will an email. Think about it: whenever you see an email in your inbox that’s more than a couple paragraphs long, don’t your eyes immediately get tired? Delete!
Many DIY musicians (myself included) neglect their email list for weeks at a time and then try to cram three to five announcements into a single monthly or seasonal email newsletter. Bad, bad, bad habit! (Sound of ruler on wrist).
“Well, I’ll just put the most important news upfront,” this poor fool thinks. “This way, if my fans don’t read the whole thing they’ll at least read about my new album.”
Unfortunately, your fans probably won’t even read THAT far into your newsletter — because your five-paragraph email exhausted them from the start.
So here’s the very simple lesson: send out more frequent emails with less content (as little as a single news item per email).
As Shakespeare said, “brevity is the soul of wit.” The next time you want to announce a new album, an upcoming show, or a great review — write a punchy, engaging paragraph (or less) about ONE of those items, and then link folks to your website for more information. Your website is where you should go crazy with the details anyway, because THAT’S where your fans are more likely to stay focused on your content.
Test this strategy out and see if your click-through rates increase: one announcement per email (well ok, maybe you can sneak a second item into the P.S.), one email per week. Bam!
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Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.