Every now and then we work in industries that market a little differently. The music industry is one of those industries.

When the vast majority of your audience is using social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s not too difficult to measure campaign success. You look at your social posts, use UTM parameters, or measure lead acquisition to conversion journeys. Simple right?

But when you throw in additional platforms like Spotify and Pandora… what the hell do you do?

Yes, there are some social listening tools that can provide data and insights. But being able to use data to find the next big artist or sound, isn’t enough today.

Record Label and Music Industry marketers need tools that allow them to automate the marketing process, and drive artist awareness.

Marketing Campaign Examples for Record Labels

Whenever we look at marketing campaigns, we focus on the buyer’s journey. In the case of record labels, we look at the fan’s journey.

The main question we ask is… “How can we take a fan’s behavior and turn it into revenue.”

We recently started using a tool called AppreciationEngine. It allows us to analyze and measure fan interactions with different artists and start building campaigns. It is the first true marketing automation platform that we were able to find for the music industry.

Now, back to fan behavior. Each time one of your artist’s fans interacts on one of your artists facebook page or plays one of their songs on Spotify, you can segment and automatically message them.

For example, as your artist’s fan is listening to their latest hit on Spotify, you can automatically message them letting them know about show schedules, new album drops, or similar songs.

A sample campaign would look like this:

Fan likes your artist’s page. The fan then listens to a song on Spotify.

Your marketing automation tool, adds them to a segment based on the artist. The list segment would be called something along the lines of “Fan of X.”

Once the fan is added to this segment, they then automatically enter an email campaign.

Email 1: This would be the initial email in the marketing campaign. We’d recommend using something that reiterates the song they just listened to and provides something of immediate value to them. Something like…

You just listened to “Song by X” here are some more songs by that artist that you might like.

You could then followup Email 1 with something that generates more buy-in and investment in your artists brand.

Such as a playlist compiled by your artist’s inspirations or other songs that include your other artists.

Then with email 3, you can tell them about different merchandise, shows, or something to push this artist.

After you’ve tried to generate revenue from your artist, you can then temper it down a bit. Maybe introduce them to more artists from your label that they might find interesting?

You can keep building out the sequence and iterating based on performance. But bottom line, marketing automation is an absolute must.

Marketing automation is awesome but you really need the power of segmentation to get the most from it.

Segmentation is the backbone of all marketing and especially marketing automation. This is universal across all industries, especially for record labels and the music industry. Finding ways to turn your fans into revenue or helping them find the next big sound should be at the crux of your digital marketing. And segmentation is how you get there.

Here are some cool stats from MailChimp:

Segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns.

Click-throughs are 100.95% higher in segmented email campaigns than non-segmented campaigns.

Building Marketing Campaigns Through Fan Segmentation

As we mentioned, segmentation is the key to all of this. So what are the best ways to build out fan segmentation?

I think there are a few key ways of looking at it.

You can drill it down to two levels at the simplest.

A Segment based on Artist

and

A Segment based on Genre.

Why are these two segments important?

I was tempted to throw in location as a segment as well, but the above seemed a little better and you can adjust automated campaigns based on dynamic criteria for fan location as well.

But these are important because “Artist” segments allow you to automate messaging to fans based on that specific artist they were originally interested in, push products, music, tours, that are directly related to the artist of interest.

You’ll see your highest conversion rates through that segment.

As a secondary segment, you’ll want to choose Genre.

This gives you the ability to push other similar artists/songs in that genre. This will allow you to start cross-selling your fans to other artists from your record label, giving your other artists more awareness and a greater audience.

If you’re not currently segmenting your audience you’re seriously missing out.

Segmenting can provide you with better revenue channels as well as greater insight into your audience.

If you’d like to learn more about segmentation or the tools we’ve used to help record labels generate higher revenue and fan engagement, then let me know. My email is ronny@digital-astronauts.com.