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Hey Reader,

If you're worried about coming across as spammy to your fans, it probably means you're already sending them spammy emails.

Doesn't matter whether an artist has a huge label team behind them or if they're in DIY indie mode...Artists at all different levels have this major fear of not wanting to bother their subscribers. And they think the best way to avoid doing that is to email them as little as possible.

That usually means that when they do have something to sell or promote, they end up promoting everything all at once in the same email.

And like I said, this isn't just indie artists...

I was on a call with a label team the other day. They asked me to look over an album release day email aaaand much to my chagrin, there were three different calls-to-action baked in:

• One to go stream the album
• One to pre-order the physical version of the record, (because the vinyl's coming out a month later)
• And the third -- to go watch the music video for the focus single also coming out that day

So, of course, my first recommendation was to limit the email to one call-to-action -- and instead, break it up into multiple emails that would go out over the course of a couple weeks to keep the album top of mind beyond release day.

And if you're new around here, the reason I harp on limiting things to one CTA so much is because when you put too many calls-to-action in an email, you create confusion. You split people's attention. And then they end up clicking on nothing.

A good rule of thumb: if a call-to-action feels too important to leave out, that probably means it deserves its own email.

When I pointed that out to the label team, they were a little nervous and pushed back some. They were worried it was going to come across as spammy to send multiple emails.

I pointed out that the emails were only going to be spammy if they made them that way. That instead of sending something as noisy as a coffee shop bulletin board with ALLLLL of the different things going on around the album, they could send short, personal messages in the artist's voice about each thing the artist is excited to share. That each touchpoint became a different invitation to step a little deeper into the world they were building around the album.

And if you're an artist whose skin crawls when you think about sending too many emails to your fans, I want to encourage you to really take a hard look at what kinds of emails you're sending...

Ask yourself:

Am I only communicating when I want something from them?

This is a huge paradigm shift for most artists: the idea of sending an email to your list with a simple personal update or insight when you have nothing to promote.

But if you can make the leap from just treating email like a promotional channel, and instead start using it as a relationship building tool...

Everything changes.

One of the easiest ways to start making your emails feel less spammy and more personal is instead of addressing your entire list -- "hey guys" --write to ONE fan.

There's actual research behind this... A 2017 study out of the Journal of Interactive Marketing found that brands using "you" language instead of talking to their audience as a group saw a real jump in how connected people felt to the message. The reason is because when you write the word "you," it triggers the reader's brain to insert themselves into the sentence. And if you're writing to them in the same energy as you'd write to a friend, that's going to change their experience as a subscriber significantly for the better.

So next time you sit down to write, don't picture your whole list. Picture one person. On their couch, phone in hand, reading something that feels like it was written just for them.

Hope that helps,

P.S. Did this bring up any questions for you? Do me a favor, hit reply and let me know. I'm so curious to understand where you're stuck so I know exactly how to help you.

P.S.S. The label team did end up taking my advice, btw.  😉🤘🏻