A CD Baby artist recently offered one of her songs on cdbaby.com for free, and a bunch of people ended up downloading the track. She didn’t realize she’d get most of those peoples’ email addresses in return (some customers opt to remain anonymous) and wrote us saying “I feel like I should follow up, but I don’t want to do it the wrong way. What do I do?”
A great question. I thought I’d write a short article addressing this concern.
Whenever you have a sale on CD Baby:
- Log into your CD Baby members account.
- Click “Sales & Reports” in the top navigation bar.
- Click “Sales & Accounting.”
- Select “CD Baby Sales (ALL)” from the left-hand sidebar.
- Check out the customer info for recent sales.
- If recent customers provided an email address, write to them and say thanks.
- Extra credit: provide a link to bonus content (another free track, a PDF, an unlisted YouTube video, etc.) — and consider using Show.co to keep this bonus content “locked” behind an email or social gate.
- In your initial email (which hopefully sounds authentic and non-robotic) ask the customer if they’d like to be added to your email list to receive news about future releases, tour dates, etc.
- If they say yes, add them; if they say no or don’t respond, do NOT add them.
- For extra credit, ask them how they found your music on CD Baby. This could be good info for assessing the effectiveness of your promotions.
- Take notice of customer patterns. Maybe you’re huge in Belgium!
- Plan a tour of Belgium.
That’s about it. Be yourself. Be respectful. Show appreciation for their purchase. And cross your fingers and hope they join your email list!
Got any tips to add? Let me know in the comments.
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.