Why maintain an online presence? How to integrate different digital assets? Mailing lists and CRM. Tips for good CRM marketing. Direct to consumer.

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7. We want to increase the number of people engaging with you or the band
/ artist you represent. Increasingly, the main social tools and networks talk
to each other meaning that you can be efficient with your time - updating
fans or followers on their favorite network.
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8. The first thing we’ll do is look at two examples of embedding widgets that are
easily updatable in a neat way… Lets’ look at Flickr and YouTube

9. Flickr is good for house keeping images as well as sharing and allowing for
submission.

10. This will let you or your band / artist / fans / street team / etc – easily send images
that they have for immediate entry into your own Flickr account. This might be
useful for bands / artists to easily update their website gallery while on tour with
sneak peeks and behind the scenes shots. You could, of course, make the email
public for fans to submit images too. Where this is good is that you are not
requesting people to go to a certain spot to upload images – they can take a
picture at a concert and send it in right away – it would show minutes later.

11. If you are making the email public, you could think about using an email
forwarding script to forward on emails sent to an address of your choice – to your
Flickr account. In this case I have taken the unique email address that was
assigned to my account and setup an email forwarder – so now all emails sent to
‘submit@musicallywp.com’ get forwarded to the Flickr email and in turn show
within the Flickr account.
It would be easy to do a mailout or to do a Twitter post and the like, asking people
to contribute artwork or photos that they have from shows by emailing, for
example: pics@thebandname.com

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13. Once logged into YouTube, click on your own name at the top right than choose
‘Account’.
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14. Once inside your ‘Account’ click on ‘Mobile setup’ and you will see your own
unique submission email address. When submitting a video using email – the
subject line of your email becomes the video title.
Email forwarding does not work with YouTube as I have tried it… originally,
YouTube would give a good email based on your account name but due to
security and randomly submitted videos – they randomised the email address…
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22. You can post the html anywhere, in this case – we see a Wordpress page and
notice that I have selected ‘html’ in the red circle – as long as you are looking at
html code, then the two sets of generated code will paste in. Notice the yellow
boxes – the first is the html that our Flickr account gave us for an embedded
slideshow – the second is the code that YouTube gave us for the custom channel
player.

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24. The main (and most obvious) way to do this is to use a mothership
platform (usually your own site - but it can be one of the social networks) -
All of your written content gets posted once and then will show in full or as
snippets depending on their destination.
What powers this flow is RSS…
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25. A lot of services will ask for your RSS feed – your site might not produce an RSS
feed but most modern platforms will put out your content as a feed – such as
Wordpress, vBulletin, Joomla and the like. In many cases the feed URL that you
will get asked for is your site address with forward slash ‘feed’.
Also, web browsers will detect if an RSS feed is available and if there is one then
a button will show up in the address bar inside your browser – by clicking this,
you will be shown your RSS URL and feed. An example would be above, see the
RSS button on the right side of the address bar.
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26. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/ (Wordpress)
http://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/ (Wordpress)
http://twitterfeed.com/ (Blogs)
Twitter Feed can accept any RSS feed so you can feed your blog to Twitter. One
idea that I chose to do was to take a music community forum that I run – take the
RSS feed from that forum (that means all new threads) and have that feed into a
dedicated Twitter account. It increased visibility and with link backs within Twitter
to the relevant thread on my forum, people would often stumble on subjects that
they wanted to contribute to and click through to my site.
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27. Twitterfeed will let you schedule tweets, it will let you apply prefixes or suffixes to
each Tweet – and you can choose the amount of tweets it grabs and the
frequency at which it will update your Twitter.
This might be especially useful if you deal with an artist or band who aren’t great
at tweeting and you which to up the ante in this area...
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29. Twitter Tools goes further than Twitter Feed by being a two way street rather than
one way…
Twitter Tools are good for band / artists who tweet a lot – bringing Tweets into a
Wordpress site is a good way to create a searchable archive or digest of content.
Great way to control the flow of content between your site and Twitter…

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31. http://www.tweetboard.com
You apply by tweeting the creators and when you get clearance, you will get
tweeted a link to your own code that is to be placed in the footer of your site. Any
site at all can host this, you just need is access to the html.
Tweetboard allows you to operate a pop-out micro forum powered completely by
Twitter. The tab on the left side of the visitors browser can be clicked to bring the
forum or ‘board’ out or clicked to send it back in again. With any new messages
being flagged by a number. People can actually sign in and post from within the
board – meaning that in practice; people can converse through Twitter without
actually ever leaving your site.
Tweets that are done from the Tweetboard will show on the account holders
twitter feed and also include a link back to the site with the board automatically
popping out
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32. The bigger social networks and services will not require an RSS feed to talk to
each other – this is done through API and all you need to in this case is look in
the applications galleries of both Facebook and MySpace (for example) for apps
that synchronise your accounts. You can send info both ways between services
so for example, I have my Twitter account feed my MySpace page – but I do not
have my Twitter feed into my Facebook due to the different audiences and I want
to keep them separate in their nature.
Examples of account linking:
Search APPs /
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33. Taking things one step forward with regard linking accounts...
There are platforms that will let you publish content to as many social networks
as you please in one fell swoop: simultaneously. The point is that it will save you
having to log into individual accounts to post a status update.
Put simply, you post one update and it shows everywhere: on any network that
you have pre-selected. You would have to have setup your accounts with the
networks that you’d like to be included. So you enter your Facebook, Twitter,
MySpace, and Bebo account details (for example) into the service and from there
on in, you can update all of them with one post.

34. Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging web service that enables
users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously.
Making an update on Ping.fm pushes the update to a number of different social
websites at once. This allows individuals using multiple social networks to update
their status only once, without having to update it in all their social media
individually. Ping.fm groups services into three categories – status updates,
blogs, and micro-blogs – and updates can be sent to each group separately.
Ping is an open system so they offer their API out and as a result there are many
spinoff / plugins such as:
PINGFIRE.US :: which is a plugin for Firefox which let’s you send a ping
whenever you wish... It allows you to highlight text on a page.............. And click
‘ping’ – the selected text will be ping’s and spread to all of your social networks –
you could ping relevant text such as reviews or forum posts from the artist / band
forum.

35. ArtistData help artists publish information to a variety of destinations with a single
point of entry. www.artistdata.com
IT DIFFERS WITH the others that it is more suited to music and can interact with
music based services such as:
PUREVOLUME
FANBRIDGE
SONICBIDS
JAMBASE
MOJAM
BANDSINTOWN
BANDLOOP
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36. HelloTXT – a great platform for a ‘one update to all’ solution – takes things a step
further with the added feature via a service called Dial2Do – which will let you call
up a number and speak your update – as though you were telling someone – this
get’s automatically transcribed and passed via HelloTXT to all of your services:
blogs, and social networks.
A great way to have bands / artists update fans – they have no excuse now…
With HelloTxt you can post your status once and have it appear automatically on
all of your networks, allowing you to keep all of your friends up to date with ease.
It also lets you read your friends' updates from main microblogging and social
networks all at once.
You can update your status on the website, or using email or even from your
mobile phone. You can also embed photos and video right into your status
updates.

37. Don’t just use your Twitter feed as a dumping ground for your RSS feed or
headlines for your blog.
These are different media and each needs to be treated differently.
Play to the strengths of the medium and understand that your status updates /
Twitter posts need to be different
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38. • The convenience of these multi post platforms can be dangerous in the wrong
hands, it’s easy to be ‘trigger happy’ with the status updates.
• Good for boosters - promoting more immediate things such as a recent launch,
newly published content of note, and especially live online events.
• Remember that not everyone following/friending you in all of the various
networks are interested in the same things – or the same frequency of updates.

39. What does CRM actually stand for?
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40. Optimists might guess that CRM means Creating Richer Musicians, which is of
course something we all want.
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41. The official definition of CRM is Customer Relationship Management. It’s all
about developing a relationship with your customers that is as happy and
harmonious as the relationship between these two tanned toned lovers running
through the sea.
Outside the music industry, CRM means technology used to help a business to
* understand its consumers,
* identify its best customers,
* manage marketing campaigns and…
* encourage sales.
Pretty much every type of industry uses some form of eCRM, which can range
from the most basic mailing list all the way through to sophisticated software
systems that can do everything from predicting what customers are most likely to
defect or unsubscribe through to tracking and analysing the effectiveness of
marketing.
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42. But seeing as we’re talking about the record industry, wherever you hear the word
“customer”, or “consumer”, always substitute the phrase “music fan”.
Whether they happen to buy music or not, there’s still enormous value in
understanding as much as possible about music fans. Future business models
for the record industry are not going to be about selling product alone - they will
also be about growing audiences, knowing how to reach those audiences, and
figuring out how to profit from them.
This is something many other businesses figured out a long time ago.
Because CRM techniques are used across practically every business from
consumer goods to mobile, CRM is an enormous industry in its own right, worth
(according to one estimate from Forrester) roughly ten billion dollars more than
the entire global music industry. You’re constantly exposed to CRM, even when
you don’t realise it.
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43. And it needn’t be complex. To illustrate how simple CRM can be, even when you
receive a postcard from your dentist reminding you that you need a check-up,
that’s part of their CRM strategy.
Unfortunately for many years the mail-in insert was pretty much the best CRM
technique that labels had at their disposal. The advent of digital has changed
that.
E-CRM - meaning electronic CRM - allows us to use email, websites including
social networks, mobile and SMS among many other means of collecting
information and communicating.
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44. We’ve discussed what the C and the R in CRM is all about: the relationship with
the fans. But if you truly want to see the M in action - the marketing and
management of customer relationships - look no further than Amazon.
You’ve almost certainly used Amazon.
At some stage you’ve probably bought something there that you didn’t
expect to find, or didn’t even know you wanted.
If you’re a regular customer you’ll receive emails from Amazon informing you of
new items similar to those you purchased before. When you log in, you’ll be
informed of price changes on items you came close to purchasing, but previously
decided not to buy.
Amazon even makes customers their own personalised store with a tab on the
navigation (see “EMI’s Store”).

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47. CRM is not just about e-mail. Yes, e-mailing is certainly a huge part of
communicating with fans, but it’s just one of many ways that we can pick up
information about fans - including mobile, websites, social networks like,
Facebook, MySpace, even advanced ticket sales.

48. We understand that it’s difficult enough composing a mailshot, getting it approved
by management, and getting it sent off to the fanbase by Friday on the week
before release. But CRM is a research resource to be used right at the starting
blocks, not the final hurdle to leap over at the end of the race.

49. Segmentation is one of the key ways to turn the knowledge about fans into
something useful for your campaigns and strategies. This can be used at any
time, including right at the beginning of the campaign as a research technique, so
that you can find out how many of your fans are active and read every mail. Or
how many of those live in a certain part of the country.
Equally, segmentation is crucial to the ongoing process of communicating with
fans. The aim is to develop a sense of which fans are vaguely interested in an
act, which are core fans and which are likely to become superfans. You can then
mail to each segment appropriately. Fans who are only vaguely interested in an
artist will not want to be hassled regularly with offers encouraging them to act as
part of an online street team.

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51. EMI’s efforts in CRM are concentrated upon reaching out to fans, learning more
about who they are and maintaining a relationship with fans while communicating
to them in a way that is appropriate for each segment of the audience. Then,
finally, the label can identify the superfans who might become advocates on
behalf of artists.

52. In forming a relationship you’re asking something from fans even if it’s just their
time or attention.
It could be their money or even for them to help market you
So you need to be able to give in exchange for what they are giving
And you need to build trust so that occasionally you can take from them
The unsubscribe rate and the spam icon is a key indicator of this trust
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53. Don’t just email when it’s time to sell a product!
Keep a constant dialogue….
Aim for a monthly mail….
But for super-fans, the best way to develop and maintain a relationship is to keep
a consistent level of communication. Keane has a weekly newsletter, which can
be updated on the road, and encourages fans to send in their own videos, tour
photos and so on.
It’s not enough just to send pre-release information – that’s the old-fashioned
music business, that only reached out to fans when there was a physical product
to sell. Now you have to plan ways of keeping CRM rolling with updates between
releases.

54. The more you stimulate interaction - whether that be via email, the artist site,
social networking pages, user generated content, competitions - the more you will
generate opportunities to pick up data. This information can be used on an
ongoing basis to understand fans better, improve relationships with fans and
ultimately make better business decisions.

55. * Incentivise every third email
* Exclusives – first screening of a video, first stream of music
* Blog only for members of the newsletter
* Exclusive photos
* Free tracks
* Encourage users to upload their own video or images
* Provide an end date and inform all entrants of the winner
Sticky is a term used in the web world to describe content that you can’t help but want to get
involved in. Sticky content makes you want to come back. It’s addictive. It makes you want to
react. Coming up with sticky content is key to great eCRM communications. And use the content
as a way to stimulate further interaction from fans – the web is a conversational medium, not just a
one-way medium.
Fortunately labels are in a great position to come up with content that no-one else can match –
and this is where it can be useful to work with artist managers in advance.
Yes, free gifts are good. Exclusive photos, videos and audio is great – especially if it has obviously
been created with the fanbase in mind, such as when a band films themselves. Give artists,
managers or tour managers video cameras. Pre-record video interviews with artists and ensure
they record greetings for birthday, Christmas, thanks for voting and so on. Get fans to ask
questions on the band’s web forum and have bands answer them on a video.
The Beatles were doing this in the 60s with semi-comedy audio records created just for their
fanclub. But something members of the public tell us in our consumer research is that they really
value exclusive experiences that they can’t get anywhere else. Front row seats, meet-and-greets,
living room concerts, shopping trips. Get artists to sign anything and everything. Work with
managers and if necessary sponsors to create these experiences, which can provide fuel for
competitions, footage and content for future communications, and media opportunities. Pre-record
video interviews with artists and ensure they record greetings for birthday, Christmas, thanks for 55
voting and so on.

56. You need to be continually testing and re-testing, comparing the success of each
communication against the last in order to establish practices which work for
each artist. And they won’t necessarily be the same in each case.
On e-mailings, experiment with different subject lines, content text, positioning of
photos, tone and so on. You’ll be able to gain intelligence on what works for
different audiences by sending variations on the same mailing to different
segments of the fanbase at the same time, or by specially designing mailings for
specific segments and sending at a time aimed to appeal to that segment.
Remember it’s not all about what works for the label, and it’s not all about
sending at 4pm on the Friday before release. Experiment, adjust and use the
data to back up your decisions.

57. What’s more, in an era during which relationships with brands are becoming
increasingly important for the record industry, CRM data can be part of your
arsenal in instigating partnerships with brands.
By using CRM as a research tool you can tell which artists fit which brand
profiles, what the fan demographics of certain bands are, and convince brands
that by shacking up with one of your acts, they’re more likely to reach their
desired market.
Or use it as a fight-back against press or radio outlets who say that your track
doesn’t match their audience.
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58. In order to build a proper relationship with fans, you need to stay in regular
contact with them. This can be tough given that most artist campaigns are still
predicated around single and album cycles that may have big gaps in them. But
without regular communications, you won’t have an opportunity to improve upon
the message being delivered to fans.
The more you stimulate interaction - whether that be via email, the artist site,
social networking pages, user generated content, competitions - the more you will
generate opportunities to pick up data. This information can be used on an
ongoing basis to understand fans better, improve relationships with fans and
ultimately make better business decisions.
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59. Fans can be sent personalised messages when it’s their birthday. But seasons
and holidays – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas – all of
these can be opportunities to communicate, and they can be particularly effective
for cross-artist or genre mailings.
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60. Here’s a lovely touch – a mail that involves fans by keeping them updated with
the chart position and thanking them for their involvement. Even better if it can be
a personal thank you with a message or clip from the artist.
Thank-yous can also be used after a publicly-voted award, to inform fans but also
thank them for their support.
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61. DO NOT:
Send emails on someone else’s behalf using customer lists which they can’t
validate how clean the user list/s are.
Give data out to partners who will abuse the list.
DO:
Always double-opt consumers as soon as they sign up
Be extremely careful about sending to 3rd party lists through the eCRM tool
Initiate and maintain relationships with the major ISP’s and stay compliant with
their whitelist policies (your eCRM development team can help with this).
Although the eCRM system does run spam checks on the content of every email
sent out and will reject any mails that result in a high spam rating, when preparing
your email communcations:
DO:
Always send relevant content that relates to what the consumer signed up for at a
reasonable interval
DO NOT:
Use too many exclamation points or red type. Spam filters don’t like them.
Use the word “Free” in your copy too often or at all. Spam filters hate that word.
Send your communication overnight. Spammers often send their messages after
midnight and you don’t want your email to get lost in the morning clutter.
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62. Last-minute mails are a bad idea. Give consideration to the time at which you
send your mail, giving thought to the audience and any time differences that
might be involved. First thing Monday morning is generally regarded as a bad
time to send mails, but you need to judge for your particular fanbase based on
your own testing.
Email template – HTML spam test
Clear unsubscribe link
Users click on the early link
Bulletpoint the content at the top
Include links to downloadable content or purchasable items
Add your Facebook / Twitter links
Personalise it – you’re mailing just one person
Don’t enter reams of prose….save it for the blog
Link through to key articles in the email
Subject line – interesting without mention free
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64. I Contact

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68. When internet technologies first reared their heads, labels fought to obtain the
rights to artist sites, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
But in most cases neither artists nor labels properly exploited the potential of their
websites. A few bands such as Metallica have built strong communities around
their sites, but it was only when MySpace arrived, offering a really easy way for
bands to upload their music and for fans to check out new material, that things
really took off.
The negative consequence of this is that, along with sites like YouTube and
Facebook, MySpace can sometimes act as a secondary site for the artist – and
one not fully owned and controlled by the label or manager. Worse still there are
cases when multiple social networking profiles exist but are are expensive to
update, or not updated at all. This wastes time and money.
By putting the artist site at the centre of what we do it is possible to build a strong
CRM relationship with fans, but we can still syndicate content off to social
networks in order to keep them regularly-updated. The question is: how much of
our budgets should go to artist sites? The development of a website isn’t
inherently expensive – anyone can now get a high end blog for free – but it’s how
much attention is paid to making it truly original that can make the site costly.
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69. Digital Stores - http://www.digitalstores.co.uk
Core service is building and maintaining online stores for artists and brands.
Handle customer service, accounts, wholesale from distributors and
warehousing. Integrate with artists own website. Also offer marketing, SEO,
CMS, analytics services.
Upfront Direct - http://www.upfrontdirect.com
External online store hosting. No website integration. No more info available.
FanStar - http://www.fanstar.co.uk
Band website builder and CMS system. Comprehensive service package
including digital merchandising and warehousing, CRM tools and band
management tools and support. Restricted free service or £30 per month. Store
costs 12% of sales.
Backstreet International Merchandising - http://www.bsimerch.com
Merchandise design. Online merch shop design, hosting, build, warehousing,
fulfillment, customer service. World wide touring merch organization. Email
marketing.
Firebrand - http://firebrandlive.com/
Merch Design and production. E-store hosting and management, Tour
merchandise design and logistics. Licensing and brand extension.
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Sandbag - http://www.sandbag.uk.com/

70. Nimbit offers a widget that lets you sell music and merchandise on social
networks, but also a skinable storefront that can represent multiple artist.
Facebook, a new feature.
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71. Data Capture across all of the fan interaction
Instant Fan Statistics provided to the administrator
Open Architecture for rapid future application deployment
* Fully Featured web solution for the music industry
* Statistics
* Media Player
* GalleryDigital Store
* Phyiscal Store
* Shipping rates
* Stock Management System - including stock level alerts
* Order Process Flow
* BlogNews
* Forum
* Mulitiple Level Fan base
* Subscription models
* MySpace Integration
* Events Diary
* Comprehensive Discograhy
Artists using it: Mr Scruff, Chris Rea, MMF, Rodrigo y Gabriella, Raveonettes,
Inspiral Carpets, Features Artists Coalition, Post War Years, Mia Rose,
Vanguards, A Genuine Freak Show 71

72. Free...no really Free to use. If anything is sold through the store a 12%
commision is taken.
* Rapid Creation & Simplified Set Up (20 mins from nothing to Professional Band
Website)
* In line editing
* No IT skills required
* Edit from any browser
* Simple Fan Base Management
* The Band own and have access to the fan data
* Unlimited Email mail shots
* Twitter and Facebook auto updates
* Simple Direct to Consumer sales of music
* Ability to choose accessibility of music between members and website visitors
* Comments section across the website for members turning the site into a
members forum
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77. www.musically.com/blog
www.sandbofx.fm
www.aliadodigital.com
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78. Campaign support services:
Strategy
CRM and email tools
Digital housekeeping
Social networking updates
Search and online advertising
Mobile applications
Blogs and online PR outreach
Measuring campaign effectiveness
Contact Juan on
juan@musically.com, or
+44 (0)20 74204320
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