Putting on a successful live performance takes a lot of hard work and preparation. Booking your gig and rehearsing your set are important, but they’re only half the battle. Perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle is promotion. How do you get people to attend your show?

In a previous article, I talked about how to grow your band’s email list. In this article, I’ll cover how to capitalize on those efforts by crafting and sending emails effectively.

It’s important to consider both the content and the timing of your email blasts. It has been my experience that a two-email approach for an upcoming gig works best. The first is an announcement email, meant to plant the seed and mark the approaching date on the calendar. The second email is a last-minute reminder, meant to catch the folks who might make a game-time decision to attending your show. Here’s how these two emails break down:

Email #1: Plant the Seed

The first email is to be used to officially announce the show. This should be sent no sooner than two to three weeks before the date of your show. The purpose of this email is to plant the seed in the minds of your recipients. It marks a mental spot in their upcoming calendar of “things to do”. Include all of the necessary information: The venue, your set time, street address, cover charge. A nice touch is to add a link to a Google map of the location.

Obviously, you’ll want to add a bit more to it. Entice your fans to make the effort to come out. Use your own personal style to keep the message positive, uplifting and exciting. Feel free to be casual and conversational, even a bit personal. You want to create that sense of intimacy with your following. You don’t want to come off sounding like a corporate mass-email blast promoting a product.  Of course, you are promoting something.  Your music.

Include your website or myspace link at the end of the email. Not all of your subscribers are familiar with your music. They might not even remember signing up for your newsletter. Give your recipients a quick and easy way to go check out your tunes online before making the decision to come see you live. You might also include a link to the facebook event you created for this gig (more on using social media to promote your gig in an upcoming article).

Email #2: Lock it Down

The second email is a quick reminder about your show. Re-state the essential show info (venue, address, and time) along with a very brief message. Don’t use the same text from your first email. This will come off as borderline spam. Keep it casual, fun, and again, enticing.

Send your second email sometime during the week of the show. If it’s a weekend gig, send it early in the day on Wednesday. Catch your audience right when they’re beginning to plan their weekend. Maybe they have a date and they’re looking for something fun to do- like catch a live band! Or they have friends coming in from out of town looking for a raging night out in your city. This email just filled their need for that awesome “thing to do” this weekend.

Don’t Over Do It

Remember, people are very fickle about their email preferences. You don’t want to risk losing subscribers by sending too many emails. As a rule of thumb, You should never send more than one email in any two week period. Pack enough interest and purpose into each message so that each one is a welcomed delivery in your fans inbox.

If you have a packed schedule of upcoming gigs, you might want to consider promoting several gigs in one email, or pack an entire leg of a tour into one or two emails.

Keep it interesting and mix it up. Don’t re-use email content. Always take the time to add a unique twist to your message and tone so that each email has a fresh feel to it.

Over to You

How do you use email for your promotional efforts?

One of the hardest things for an artist or band to do when they’re just starting out is to grow your initial following. You can only rely on bugging your friends and family to come out to your shows for so long.

Growing your email list is crucial to securing and keeping a following. It’s the most effective way to communicate directly with the people who make gigging and recording worthwhile.  In this article, I will talk about ways to increase your email subscriber count.  Be sure to check out the next article in this series, where I discuss the most effective ways to craft and send out your promotional emails.

There are several ways to gain new subscribers to your email list.

The first and best method is to promote your mailing list at all of your gigs. Mention it at least once while you’re on stage. Place lists with pens throughout the venue – near the stage, at the bar, at the door.  Be sure to provide a dark ball-point pen that writes well!  I have made the mistake in the past of using a pen that’s running out, or a sharpie marker only to find a list full of addresses that I can’t read!

Ideally, you should have somebody walking around with a sign-up list while you’re on stage.  If people are enjoying your set, they’re more likely to offer their contact info.  But they have short memories!  You can’t expect many first-time listeners to sign up for your list an hour or two after you get off-stage.  They’re already wrapped up in the band that came on after you, or they have left the bar and moved on with their bar crawl.

If you’re rolling solo, and don’t have a girlfriend or buddy to help you out with the leg-work during your live set, then you must get out there and promote your list yourself.  Do this immediately after wrapping up your set, so you are still fresh in people’s minds.  This is not the time to be shy.  Be friendly and outgoing and politely ask the people who watched you play if they’d like to offer their email address.  If they decline, you must respect their decision and simply move on.

In addition to grabbing email subscribers at your shows, you should have an email sign-up form on your website, Myspace page, Facebook profile, and all of your online social networking tools.  There are lots of easy ways to implement this.  I will write about this in depth in a future article.  For now, try Googling to find an email sign-up widget to place in your myspace profile (or contact me directly for web design inquiries).

You might also consider using a service such as iContact.com or aweber.com for managing your email list, adding sign-up forms, sending and tracking email blasts.  These are very powerful tools and they’re quite easy to use.

Get creative by adding incentives to signup for the mailing list.  If you’re promoting an album or EP, you might want to offer a few of the tracks as free downloads to those who enter their email address.  At your shows, offer a free sticker or other merch for signing up.

The next article in this series focuses on how to use your email newletter effectively.

I now turn it over to you – Which methods for growing your email list have worked for you?  Share your ideas in the comments!