YES ! As the DJing landscape becomes more competitive understanding how to market and position yourself in that landscape is becoming increasingly important.
Becoming a DJ includes learning how to build your fan base, the sooner you get started the sooner it can grow. You see building relationships and keeping your fans engaged with what you are doing via email and other social media outlets is vital to those fans that want to take an interest in what you are doing.
To get started all you need to do is add a newsletter signup box to your Facebook and/or My Space pages. To encourage sign ups you could offer discounted entry into your gigs or even a free download of your latest mix CD.
Ideally, as the number of people signing up begins to rise you will need to use a professional email list management service, there are literally hundreds available but I would suggest using one of the free services such as mail chip, particularly in the beginning as you find your feet.
Using these professional email list management services allows you to track the action you are getting from you email broadcasts. You will know exactly how many people opened your emails and how many took the action that you wanted them to take such as downloading your latest mix CD or checking out your latest gigs flyer.
You will get more DJ gigs, guaranteed!
If you have a list of people you can communicate with and entice to your gigs to watch you play then the promoters are going to notice – after all the only thing promoters want is bums on seats (numbers through the door). It may seem slow going to begin with but once momentum starts to build who knows where it will end. It comes down to how good you are at getting people wanting to know what you are up to and wanting to hear your music!
Sending out a monthly CD mix to your list is a great way for your mix CD’s to become viral and start making their way into the right people’s hands, the more iPods, cars and mini disks etc your mixes start turning up on, the more exposure and more likely you will begin to get noticed.
Getting a lucky break can be difficult when starting out, you need to get off your hands and be pro active, if you put the time and effort into building an email list the rewards will be worth it. Always remember you create your own luck!
All serious DJ’s should be building email lists, not enough do, it seems only the smart few. DJing as a skill is only one aspect if you plan on becoming a professional DJ, learning how to inject and position yourself in the market is equally important.
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YES!
Social media is quickly passing common auto responder email lists, something like updates in your artist facebook group is way easier than writing emails and sending to your list.
It achieves the same thing and is more instant. The main concept of the above article is exactly the same though, build a fan base and connect with them
You could have both!
As your list grows tools become ever so important. I have huge lists of people but for the longest managing those lists has become too time consuming or too expensive. I eventually replaced my online email management through constant contact with a program loaded directly onto my own computer just because the cost per month for the amount of emails I had was hitting $180 per month. But I have to find a better program cause the program I have takes a good portion of the day (6hrs) to send out an email to over 28,000 contacts. I miss the ability to track the emails but the cost when your list grows that big becomes too much when you outsource your email marketing through online web based email companies.
In any case my email lists and phone lists of contacts have been extremely important in the success of my DJ Events and Mixtape CD releases.
- DJ Emir