WRITE A GOOD SONG FIRST
Everything starts with your magical final product
☕️ Thanks for reading HEAVY METAL EMAIL! Think about becoming a paid subscriber, or at least buy me a cup of coffee via Ko-Fi, Venmo (@Seth-Werkheiser), Cash App ($ethwerkheiser), or PayPal. And / or support bands and gift me something from my Bandcamp Wishlist.
-SETH WERKHEISER
I don’t care what sort of team you got, what gear you roll onto stage, or who took your band photo - you still gotta write a good song.
Same goes for this email marketing thing - your 10,000 subscribers don’t count for much when no one is opening them.
Write better songs.
Send better emails.
Check your social media feeds - what gets more likes? The most comments?
Make a social media post the start of your next email, like Church Road Records did back in December:
Make sure your writing and imagery are a reflection of your creative spirit:
We can see this in the heavy metal world in terms of sameness - same looking websites and social media feeds.
For a genre with such imaginative artwork, tour posters, and shirt designs, we can be pretty bland when it comes to actually promoting these things in creative ways.
Putting it all together into an email shouldn’t be difficult, as you’ve got an archive of material to work with, content you posted on social media over the years.
Remember, not everyone who follows you on social media will see every post. Hell, people who subscribe to your email newsletter won’t open every email, either.
Re-purposing the content you’ve already posted means less time thinking about your next email newsletter, and gives you a jump on the creative process.
Work on writing great songs, and turn your best social media content into an email newsletter that people look forward to and want to open.
WEEKEND TASKS
Here’s four things you can do before Monday:
Have you started using an authenticator app with Twitter yet, or are you looking forward to losing access to your account?
Sign up for the email lists of five bands. Wait a month to ever get an actual email from them... it’s fun. Notice the ones you don’t like, or don’t get excited about. Do the opposite.
Oh, Spotify is making some bullshit AI DJ now, huh? I’m sure you could do better. Spend an hour less per day on social media and learn how to put together a mix, upload it to Mixcloud, then embed it on your site (like I do with my Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes).
All those track-by-track features you see on the music websites? Do the same thing, and put them on your own site. Now you’re building up your SEO which helps fans find your site (instead of those dumb lyrics sites).
LISTEN UP
This new album ‘nature morte’ from BIG|BRAVE came out this week and it’s a stunner.
Write me, fight me: seth@heavymetal.email
-SETH WERKHEISER