How to build your customer list?
Why should you build your customer list?
We’re going to answer both today.
The reason why is you have to own the information.
Simply put; if you don’t own it somebody else does.
Whomever owns the information controls the information.
Huh?
Yeah, those 10,000 fans that you busted your butt to locate and connect with on your Facebook page belong to Facebook, not you.
Even if you paid Facebook to help you reach them, they’re not yours.
Because Facebook owns the information they do whatever or charge whatever and whenever they want to allow you access.
Oh, and you trust them to ensure that your message is actually getting to those followers and some random accounts from a crappy click farm.
Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, Snapchat, YouTube, and every other platform will behave in exactly the same way.
Here’s a real example:
In December of 2013 Daredevil Production was marketing for Collin Raye who is 90’s country music star with 24 top 10 hits, 16 #1’s and over 8 million records sold.
At that time, Collin’s Facebook page had 118,000 likes. We were promoting his latest release (while producing the new one) and needed to ramp up the activity on his Facebook page prior to a CTA (Call To Action) post advising people to purchase.
In 2013, Facebook had something called “Edge Rank†which was an algorithm that essentially filtered all posts by popularity and relevance to the user. This means that your Mom will probably see every one of your posts and the people you interact with less would need to rank as more popular to get their message to appear on your feed.
Like Collin Raye.
We devised a guitar giveaway contest that was designed to create massive amounts of comment activity in a very short time.
We ran the contest and we received over 100,000 comments in 1 hour on Collin’s page. (This meant more people would organically see the next post which announced the sale of the new release. Make sense?)
Raging success!
We replicated this exact same contest with 3 other country music starts in October of 2014.
Jamie O’Neal had around 13,000 likes on her page and we garnered about 13,000 comments in 1 hour with the contest.
Andy Griggs had about 45,000 likes we got about 45,000 comments in one hour.
Ty Herndon was the biggest of the three with 67,000 likes on his page and, you guessed it, we summoned around 67,000 comments in 1 hour.
FYI, I don’t have a clue why there is a correlation between the amount of likes and the amount of comments in 1 hour, but there was; four times in a row.
Fast forward to February of 2015 and we get a super exciting opportunity! Tracy Lawrence with 1.1 million likes on his page.
Can you imagine where my head was at?
This is news! 1 million comments in 1 hour is NEWS!
Hell, even if we failed miserably and only got 500,000 comments that’s still news, man. That would have blown my company up.
Facebook went public, changed the rules, and we only got 50,000 comments.
Tracy and his team worked HARD and SMART identifying and connecting with those 1.1 million fans but, like every other person on FB, they had zero control and would have to pay to reach them.
Get it?
The way around the system is to be collecting contact data, RELIGIOUSLY, the entire time you’re connecting, so you can reach your following whenever you want and as often as you want.
The frequency costs money on Facebook.
The frequency is free on your list.
Don’t hate on Facebook either. They’re a company they need to make money. They have an awesome platform that allows an incredible capability of targeting, connection, and communication. It’s worth it.
But why pay more than once per fan?
That’s the why you build your list.
Here’s 5 ideas on how to build your list.
There are many ways to constantly improve your list. The most important takeaway is that you’re constantly asking, “How can I get more people on my list?â€
If you you’re asking the right questions, your subconscious will reward you.
First you’ll need to set up some relatively simple technology to capture these contacts.
- Squeeze Page – If you’re not familiar with the name, you’re definitely familiar with the technology. This is where you offer something of value (like a free song, or in my case a free Twitter book) in exchange for their email address. If you want to see what a squeeze page looks like you can peek in at GiftFrombailey.com, GiftFromAbbey.com, GiftFromTony.com, GiftFromAlora.com, and GiftFromJohnny.com
Notice a common thread?
A common look?
It’s because they work. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
- Text Capture – Text capture works really well too, especially for live shows. There are many competitors, we like Call Loop. It only costs $10/month for a key word. If you text BAILEY to 38470 you’ll get to download a free song and we get your phone number.
You can opt out of both of these technologies at any time. So step one is get the information and step two is make sure you have some content ready to keep them interested.
Get it?
Here are some killer strategies to get them to actually sign up.
- Live Show Merch Table Sign In – Have a computer on the merch table by the person who is watching your merch for those who don’t have a device. (Don’t forget you’ll need WiFi somehow…make it happen)
If you don’t have a merch table make one.
If you don’t have a person, find one.
Go to the bar owner and tell her that you’re intelligently building your contact list which will help both of you to improve the draw moving forward as you’ll be able to contact these people directly to inform them that you’re coming back to her bar.
Ask her if she’d be willing to put up a $25 bar tab to a winner that you’d randomly pick from a list of people who signed up that night.
FYI, every time an artist has followed my instructions on this, the bar owner DOUBLED the amount to $50. Remember this is NOT $25 or $50 dollars cash from the bar as $25 worth of booze only costs a couple bucks to the bar. It IS worth $25-$50 dollars to the fan.
Get it?
Remember, everyone is a winner because they ALL get a free song for participating, but the people who stick around till the last song have a chance to either drink for free or put a nice dent in their bar tab.
But they have to sign up to win.
Can’t win if you don’t play.
This will work if you SELL IT from the stage.
“Who likes FREE MUSIC?? If you like free music, get your cell phones up in the air!! Go to GiftFromJohnny.com and get your free song from us as a THANK YOU for coming out tonight. All you have to do is tell us where to send it. BTW, if you do it RIGHT NOW I’m going to pick a name at the end of the night and that lucky person will get a $25 bar tab so if you like free music AND you like to drink, this is perfect for you!â€
This same idea works with the text capture too.
We had Bailey James do this at her first show, which was to 730 middle school kids, not all of whom had devices, not all of whom brought their device, and we got 150 contacts. Abbey Cone did it in Texas at a High School and got 400 phone numbers in 5 minutes.
- Recurring Twitter (Social Media) Posts – If you’re Tweeting like you’re supposed to (at least 14-24 Tweets per day) you have room every 3rd or 4th Tweet to THANK THEM for following. Because your #Grateful or #Blessed to have them, here’s a free download of our single. #YOUROCK.
These will create a slow, steady trickle that builds up over time and increases as you grow your reach on Twitter.
- Interview Benevolence – In the case of a Squeeze Page, you are NOT plugging anything, rather you are Santa Clause, grateful for the interview, interviewer, listeners, readers, community, etc., and want to offer them a free song as a “thank youâ€, or a favor, or out of respect, etc.
We did this with a killer indie rock band called 7Horse (who’s song “Meth Lab Zoso Sticker†was the theme song for Scorcese’s Wolf of Wall Street). They were able to secure an interview on Adam Carolla’s podcast. We assembled the squeeze page, Joey and Phil mentioned it twice, before and after they performed a live song. We got around 800 email contacts in 24-48 hours.
Every radio, print, podcast, and TV interview better have a mention of the squeeze page.
If you’re always thinking, how can I get these people to opt in? You’ll figure it out.
Then you’d better hit me up on social media and let me know what you came up with!
- YouTube Annotations – If you’re posting regular weekly videos on YouTube then annotate each video informing consumers that you’re appreciative of them watching the videos so here’s a free download right now. Bailey’s email list has grown significantly over 18 months using this method alone (she hasn’t toured yet).
- Social Media Bios – Screw your webpage, screw your store (you don’t have enough of a relationship yet to ask for money) and put your squeeze page link up on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Listen, I know you don’t get all of this right now. You don’t have to. Just get that list started. It’s MISSION CRITICAL
The money is in the list. I promise.
Every time we send out an email to Bailey’s list, we get sales.
Period.
What have you got to lose?
Stay
In
Tune.