Musicians: 15 Ways To Grow Your Email List

Email is arguably the greatest tool for generating an income from your music. 

However, you first have to get your fans to join your email list. 

In this article, I'll cover 15 ways you can build your email list...

But first, why is email so important?

What Is An Email List & Why You Need One

Email? Isn't that so 2010? 

Not in the slightest. 

Any digital marketer with a half a brain will tell you the first place to start when growing a business is by building an email list. And if you are trying to grow your music career, then you are by default looking to build a business. 

You NEED an email list. It's not negotiable. 

Here are some quick stats on why you need an email list:

Okay, with that in mind, let's dig into how you can grow your list...

1. Trade Something Of Value For Email Addresses

The best way to get people to join your email list is to offer them something of value in exchange. 

I call this thing you giveaway a "fan magnet".

This could be several things, including:

In order to deliver this free fan magnet automatically, you'll need an email service provider tool like ConvertKit, which is what I use. 

This tool enables you to easily create forms where people can give you their email address, and then automatically receive the fan magnet. 

2. Reach Out To Friends & Family

A simple way to get the ball rolling is to simply reach out to people individually and see if they would be interested in receiving free music and behind-scenes-content from you. 

You can reach out to friends and family, but also your social media followers. 

By the way, if you want help growing your email list from 0 to 100 subscribers in just 3 days...

Then click the button below to join my free email challenge.

If you send valuable content in your emails, and aren't just selling to your list...

Then people will be more likely to join, stay, and share it with other people. 

70-80% of the time, you want to be emailing your list updates about you and your music, including sneak peaks, behind-the-scenes, and exclusive content. 

If you want help knowing what to email your list, then just grab my free email playbook below.

4. Add A Form On Every Page Of Your Website

At either the top or bottom (or both) of every page on my band website, I have a form where visitors can opt-in to my email list. 

This is because the more times someone sees an offer, the more likely they are to take you up on that offer. 

The first time they see it they might not thinking anything of it. But the more they see it, the more they will start to consider until they finally decide...

"What the heck, I want that free song!"

Again, if you want a simple way to do this, you can use the forms that ConvertKit allows you to create.

5. Create a Landing Page

A "landing page" in internet marketing terms is just a page on a website that you send people (traffic) to. 

You can send people there through an ad, or just by sharing a link to it on social media.

With this particular page, we only want to give visitors two options.

1. Opt-in, or
2. Leave

By limiting their options, you're increasing the chances that your visitors will actually opt-in. 

Also, you'll want this page to offer your "fan magnet" that you created in tip #1. 

Here is what my page looks like:

Once you have your page, you now have an easy way to get people on your email list.

Just share this page around the internet, or even drive traffic to it through ads.

6. Collect Email Addresses With Bandcamp

If you give away a song for free on Bandcamp, you will collect the email addresses of everyone who signs up for that song. 

Don't waste these email addresses!

These are people who actually raised their hands and said, "I like your music!"

So be sure to import these subscribers into ConvertKit or whatever email service provider tool you are using. 

By the way, if you want help importing your subscribers, just check out this tutorial.

I personally don't tour or do gigs, but if you do, then be sure to have a sign-up sheet where people can sign-up for your email list. 

To further incentivize people to sign-up, you could even offer a giveaway for a piece of merch at the end of the show, and everyone who joins your sign-up list gets a random chance of winning. 

You should definitely be promoting your landing page/fan magnet on social media so you can get people to join your list. 

There are several different places where you can promote your email list on social media...

In Your Bios

In all of your social media profile bios, you should include a link to your free song or songs. 

This is the #1 action you want your followers to take next. 

You don't want to just send them to your shop or Spotify because even if they do click through, that's it. 

There's no guarantee they will see your call to action again, or even another one of your social media posts because organic reach is so low.

However, if they are on your email list, you can promote to them again and again. 

In Your Feeds

As you go about posting content to your social media accounts, don't forget to offer your free song and request people to join your list!

You can also switch up your "fan magnet" or create multiple fan magnets in order to appeal to the most people and get more of your followers to sign-up. 

In Your Videos

If you're creating videos for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, don't forget to tell people about your fan magnet so they can go sign up!

10. Blog, Podcast, or YouTube

You can also create content around a top that isn't directly related to your music in the form of blog posts, a podcast, or Youtube videos. 

It's idea if the audience that would be attracted to that content would also be interested in your music. 

A great example of this is Ruslan KD, a Christian Rapper. 

On his YouTube channel, he makes a lot of videos educating Christians and reacting to current events and culture. 

Sure, not everyone who watches his videos might also be interested in his music, but he's still gaining a lot of exposure for his music as his YouTube channel has grown to over 100,000 subscribers.

12. Add An Exit Pop-Up To Your Site

Another thing you can do to grow your email list is add an exit pop-up to your site with a tool like Thrive Leads.

An exit pop-up will display an opt-in box when a visitor to your site moves their cursor off the window (meaning, as they're about to leave/exit). 

This way, you don't interrupt their browsing experience, but as they're going to leave, you can still potentially get their email address.

13. Run A Giveaway

You can also use a free tool like KingSumo to run a giveaway.

KingSumo makes it so that everyone who wants to enter the giveaway has to enter their email (boom!). 

You can rapidly grow your email list with a giveaway, and you don't even have to give away anything that expensive. 

You can also set it up so that those who enter gain extra entries in the giveaway for completing activities like following you on social media, or streaming your music on Spotify.

So not only would you be building your email list, but your social media and Spotify following as well.

14. Trade Emails With Another Artist or Band

Now, you can't literally trade emails, as this violates spam laws, and just isn't ethical. 

But you can work out a deal with another artist or band you like where you write up an email promoting them to your list, and they do the same for you to their list. 

This way, you're both promoting each other to each other's email lists, and growing your list by tapping into an audience of similar listeners.

This was a strategy I used to quickly build most of my email list.

You simply run an ad to one of your music videos or lyric videos playing a clip of your song, and then you tell people to click the button to download the full song for free.

From there, you just have to get your targeting down so you are putting the ad in front of the right audience of people. Meaning, the people who are going to be the most likely to love your music. 

The cool thing is once you've build up your email list, you can actually import this list into Facebook, and then when you run ads, you can put it in front of people who are similar to the people who are ALREADY on your list!

This means you can cut costs and get lots of potential superfans joining your list.

How To Create Superfans

Now you know how to build your email list, but building your list is just one step in the process to creating superfans.

Remember, a superfan is someone who will buy at least $100 worth of product or service from you. This could mean buying your new album, a T-shirt or two, and joining your fanclub/membership.

You only need 1,000 true superfans to make a 6-figure income from your music. 

But how do you create superfans?

Well, I outline the 7-step process for creating superfans in my free "Fan-Building Formula" guide that you can download below. 

I hope you got value from this post on how to grow your email list as a music artist.

If so, feel free to share, and let me know in the comments below...

What other questions do you have about email marketing?