Yes, I went and yes it was bad ass.

Granted we grew up on these movies and as a 9 year old, the Millennium Falcon was one of my most prized possessions, but the thrill these days is in the experience. The full orchestra, massive HD screens and a well coordinated narration through the saga is a must see event.

Needless to say, FanMail is really excited to be supporting this through our clients Another Planet Entertainment as it travels the world. Check out the tour dates, take the family and be ready to experience a really one of a kind concert event.

I stumbled across Michelle Bowles “5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010″  blog and had to share it with everyone! The blog discusses 5 tactics that will help any company’s email marketing efforts. If you are familiar with this blog, these tactics may seem familiar to you. In May 2009, we published a blog about Roadrunner’s social media pioneering. They are an excellent example of  a company that has utilized social media and email integration, as well as launching a full re-engagement strategy. (For more neat ways that our clients pioneer and utilize email marketing best practices, you should check out our video “Five Clients in Five Minutes”)

Bowles’s blog offers 5 ways to improve your email marketing:

1. Integrating Email With Social Media

-Using a blog to highlight content from an e-newsletter once or twice a month, inviting readers to download the full content via a landing page. Which reminds me, click on the blog homepage to get the full “Is Email Endangered?” white paper.

- Leveraging social media to offer different ways to interact with the subscriber– twitter feed promotions, rss feeds and a monthly newsletter

2. Focusing on Engaging Subscribers

-Personalize subject lines

-Incentivize click-throughs

-Make it as easy as possible for an email to be shared on social networks and forwarded

3. Re-engaging Inactive Subscribers

-Incentivize and create reasons to open the email ex, free trials or whitepapers

-create sense of urgency around an ending subscription

-segment inactive subscribers and cut back on the frequency of communications

4. Creating Viral Campaigns

-Instead of generic terms like “forward to a friend”, tailor them to a specific email/campaign (Ex. “Forward these tips for building credit to a colleague”)

-Make content available to everyone and easy to forward

-Vary the placement of share this links

5. A/B Testing and Optimizing Landing Pages

-Use this testing to find out the best response and layout for an email

I highly recommend that you read this article and utilize these tactics! We have found these techniques invaluable.

Over the summer, while on our family trip to Michigan, we listened to Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser which heralds a resounding cry against modern agribusiness, industrial food processing, meat processing and fast food culture. In the months since, our eating and consumption habits have changed and we are consistently more focused on locally grow, fresh, non-processed foods. You are what you eat.

So it was with great surprise that I found our FanMail client Wookiefoot recently released a video on the subject as well. It is so good, that I just had to share. Enjoy.

It is great coming back from Connections ‘09 and the A2IM Tech Day, having hung out with a plethora of great thinkers, marketers, innovators and friends and we’re inspired to reach for the next generation of direct-to-fan marketing tools and strategies. We are top-tier ExactTarget resellers in the entertainment vertical and have been hanging out with their team since they were a small five person startup. Now ExactTarget is 500 people strong, completely profitable and recently took $70 million in VC to innovate on new tools, expand their architecture and expand into Europe. They are a fantastic company.

Some of my highlights from Connections included hanging out with Morgan Stewart and talking about the convergence of email, social and mobile marketing, discovering some advanced data marketing strategies from my new friend Ami Packard from Expedia and presenting our Roadrunner Records Social Profile story in the entertainment and media showcase with our friend, Lauren Kufta, New Media Coordinator at Roadrunner Records. In addition, our team member Josiah Kaiser spoke at the Developer’s Track on the evolution of Live Capture and Mobile Automation.

Wow, what a week!

One of the things which really struck me was how far behind the music industry (in general) is on the sophistication spectrum from other industries.  There are organizations who really push the envelope, but, generally, the music industry is 2-5 years behind on direct email, SMS, voice and social strategies and implementation.

Yup, the music industry missed the boat.

And the travesty of it is that the music industry has the asset which every other industry covets… they have fans. They have people who actually care! Best Buy dreams of having the type of loyalty which is baked into the music industry.

Why is the industry behind the sophistication spectrum? Here is my take…

The Music Industry is Spoiled. - Or, at least, it has been. Because of the fan asset they haven’t been driven to innovate, strategize and do the work around really owning and engaging the life cycle of the fan until recently.

Who’s Job Is It? – In every other industry it is the MARKETER’S JOB to be in charge of customer acquisition, retention and growth. In the music industry it used to be the label’s job.  . .  that is what they do. . .  they sell. Now days? Well, now days, it is anybody’s guess. Is it the manager, the drummer, the label, the distributor, or the publicist? Who knows? Consequently, nobody has developed the skills and competency to do it well.

Bright Shiny Objects! - There has been fascination over the last decade for the music industry to run after the latest and greatest bright shiny object. Ring Tones, Mobile Fan Clubs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Reverb Nation and Topspin have all be heralded as the savior of the music business. These are all amazing and fascinating pieces to the fan engagement tool set. . . but they don’t constitute a holistic, strategic long-term-strategy for fan-relationship-management(FRM). They  don’t account for not learning the very basics of permission-based marketing.

Who Owns the Fan? – I find it fascinating that Artists have been writing into their riders that they also get a copy of the concert ticket buyer manifest complete with customer email address. It is fascinating because it places the value on the list, rather on than on the subscriber. It suggests that permission is sharable. . . that the promoter, artist and ticketing company should all be able to contact somebody just because the have access to the same database. . . without any real permission process. Yes, the music industry spams the fans more than any other industry out there.

There have been big moves across the major labels and promoters to initiate broad CRM based strategies and solutions and the managers and artists are certainly getting more savvy. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years and we certainly will be trying to be one of the leaders in the mix.

Below is the sophistication spectrum which we use to work with clients on understanding where they are and what their goals in revenue can be.

If you would like a more complete understanding of this chart visit the link below:

The Sophistication Matrix

A full copy of our slide deck is available for download here.

We are really looking forward to what the future holds here.

Hey, check out who is new to the FanMail family: Steel Train.

Steel Train, after spending most of the year recording a new c.d., is on tour with Hanson, hellogoodbye and Sherwood. (Remember those cute boys who were all mmmBOP-y. Well, they are all grown up indie rockers now.)

For a free mp3 from the un-released album, sign up for their email list. They are definitely worth checking out!

You can also see them live, which we highly recommend, in these cities.

One of our newest clients, Them Crooked Vultures, are something to write home to your Mom about. Not just because they are a SUPERgroup made up of drummer Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters), vocalist and guitarist Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), but because their marketing and email strategy is highly effective in growing their fans and subscriber list.

We are thrilled to announce the newest addition to the FanCentric Family… the venerable Foo Fighters.

Well folks, things have been busy. I don’t mean just normal busy, but really busy. The winds of change are in effect and everywhere pundits and experts and music geeks are shouting, “but you’ve got to have a relationship with your fans!” and “email works!, social networking works!, Communicate, communicate, build a fanbase” We are seeing first hand the success and revenue which properly executed direct to fan initiatives can drive. As our friend Ian recently said, ” The business is changing, artists have choice, and artists will find partners to help them get done what they need to.”

To that end we are thrilled to welcome new clients like DJ Shadow (yeah, I’m a huge fan), Beck, Cucu Diamantes, Sugar Ray and Bad Lieutenant and who have all launched new fan marketing campaigns to connect more closely with core fans.

One of the most exciting new clients in the mix is Them Crooked Vultures – a super group made up Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. The mystery around this group is only starting to become clear, so join their list to get the scoop.

Outside of the music space we are thrilled to present our new client Coach Pete Carroll. On top of being the well known coach for the USC Trojans, he is a inspired author, speaker, leader and mentor. His “Win Forever” philosophy has not only led the USC football team to win the last 74 of 83 games but is now the topic for an upcoming book, DVD and educational track. We are thrilled to be working with such a leader.

We have also been busy playing with new features which are helping our clients acquire, retain and grow their fan bases. Social Forward is a new feature which encourages your fans to pass on content from your emails.

Social Forward from David DeVore on Vimeo.

This really is the coolest thing since sliced bread since it vastly expands the ability of your content to be viral as well as your ability to track the reach of a message. Early indications are showing 80 times the pass around which normally happens from traditional Forward to a Friend. All the major social networks are supported and full tracking is available.

We also have a new user community, which looks to expand the knowledge and support which all clients have through 3sixty.

Highlights from our new community include:

• Home page: Topics of recent interest (for example : how to add web-collection forms to facebook). You can also find announcements, new feature highlights & navigation for the entire support desk

• Knowledge Base: Segmented support topics on an array of topics.  From the ‘Getting Started’ page to help jump start your new account to ‘Additional Software Tools’, the FanMail Knowledge Base is the place to find information, documentation, videos and much more on a vast array of topic
• Submit a problem or issue: Using the ‘Submit a request’ tab, you can create a ticket and a direct line of communication with our account management team.  Your ticket will be noted and work will begin immediately to answer your question.
• Track your support requests: You can log into the Knowledge Base to track the results of your submitted ticket.  Here you will see updates and notifications made by our account management team.

Lastly, we are seeing some massive early results through our text collect (also called Capture) technology which collects email addresses through SMS.

The Capture Package can help you:
•     Grow your list of mobile subscribers through Text Capture
•     Engage mobile subscribers through Voting and Keyword Response
•     Increase subscriber conversion from offline to online

Early indicators are showing that when this is executed correctly Text Collect can be one of the fastest list growth mechanisms out there. We we be excited to post some real case studies and results over the next few weeks.

Cheers!
David

One of FanMail’s newest clients, DJ Shadow, is featured in the upcoming release of FreeStyleGames and Activision’s DJ Hero!  Set for release in Oct ‘09, DJ Hero gives the player the opportunity to “spin and scratch more than 100 songs into unique mixes and become the life of the party.”
I love this new form of audience engagement.  Finally, I can be the DJ!
Go to the DJ Hero website to find out more.