CRM for Bands – turning fans into fanatics
Posted in CRM, Resources for Bands on September 23rd, 2009 by Alex
We want email!
Whether you like it or not, if you’re in a band (unsigned or otherwise), you are a business. You have ‘customers’ (the fans), you generate revenue (the 10 quid you made from that gig down your local) and have overheads (booze, guitar strings). It doesn’t matter how big or small you are. Not very rock n’ roll I know, but an unavoidable reality. I’ve spoken before about bands viewing themselves as small business; indeed in the changing music landscape, this is going to become more and more of a necessity. I’m aware that at some point you may be one of the lucky few to be offered a record deal, but in the meantime you still want to be packing out those gigs, selling merch and getting your music heard right?
So I’m going to spend a little time talking about your fans and how you engage them at the times you’re not screaming at them and jumping on their heads. The corporate world has this concept called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which relates to the management of customers or contacts and how you engage with them. It’s big business. Massive. The music industry uniformly sucks at it. It’s because they assume that they have the fans in a strangle hold – the fans want the music, they proved that by buying the last record, so all we have to do is make the new one and tell them about it. Well times are a changing folks. When a band’s new album is on the internet before most of the folks at the label heard it, then you need to look at engaging your ‘customers’ in the different way.
This aside, as an unsigned band, communicating well with your fanbase could make or brake you as a band. You’re reliant on them to buy your stuff, spread the word about your band and turn up to gigs. You probably can’t afford much advertising or PR, so you need to rely on your fanbase to help you stay afloat. If this is done well, not only will you create a base of well informed devotees (known as advocates in the business world) but you may even make a bit of money.
So what exactly am I on about? Well, those adoring faces in the front row getting kicks out of your mad skillz on your Les Paul have names, likes and dislikes, personalities. They also have emails addresses, Myspace/Facebook/Twitter accounts, money and a propensity to bang on about your band to anyone who will listen. The row back from there have all of the above but may be yet to be convinced about your band. The row behind them didn’t get your EP yet and only turned up because one of the kids in the front row keeps banging on about how good your band is.
These people have information, all of which can be used to help connect with them, to get them to help you, to sell more stuff to them. If you can get the email addresses of a quarter of the folks at that gig – say 25 people – you now have 25 direct lines into people’s lives to tell them about your next gig, your ace new t-shirt, your new record.
This all probably seems blindingly obvious, and you may already by doing this, or perhaps you’ve got a bunch of friends on Facebook. Let me tell you about that little collection of gold dust. Some big corporates will pay literally hundreds of pounds for a single email address. It’s depressingly common practise for companies to spend out £10 per contact!
You can get it free. Perhaps you need to give a little out (maybe a free mp3 download) but it’s worth it. If you collect 100 email addresses across 3 gigs, and send out emails to these folks, and get 3 t-shirt sales as a result, is it worth it? Hell yeah! Here’s what you have now:
- A few quid
- 3 walking adverts for your band
- The email addresses of 3 people who like your band enough to want to wear your shitty t-shirt!
Which is the more important of these outcomes? Number 3 of course! Next time you send out a bunch of email, you don’t spam these 3 about merch, you send them a link to download one of your new tracks and a free ticket to your next gig. Now what you have is someone who’s going to make damn sure they turn up at your next gig, proudly sporting your t-shirt, and bring all their mates.
This is a fairly facile example, but it illustrates how CRM works. I know a company that would personally deliver free laptop to their key advocates loaded with all the stuff they needed to do more of what they were doing.
There’s plenty of ways of doing this, but getting the basics right is important. If you get a bunch of contacts and proceed to spam them, then not only will they start to hate you, they’ll bitch about you to all their mates. If you treat all your fans as equal, then you’re missing a trick. If you do nothing at all, who’s to say they’ll ever give you a second thought?
In the following articles we’ll talk about ways to gather data, what we do with it, and how we manage different profiles of fan. These techniques and considerations should be built into the daily running of your band along with turning up for rehearsals, booking gigs and screwing groupies.
