In the spirit of International Women’s Day, we wanted to pay a homage to women who are pushing the innovation needle in the Music Industry. They are ahead of the curve and use new media and multi-channel marketing to build their brands. Follow these forward thinking women to pick up some great advice on how to best integrate social, mobile, sites, and email.

Lauren Kufta- New Media Direct Marketing Manager, Roadrunner Records- Lauren and Roadrunner have done an amazing job on all their touchpoints. They have compelling and different content for their fans and for each artist they represent. What makes them highly successful is how they leverage their online community to get full profile information on their email subscribers. From this data she segments based on location, favorite artist(s) & preferences and builds emails catering to the individual interests of her subscribers. Her drive for relevancy makes her program highly successful.

Joyce Szudzik- VP Digital Marketing, AEG Live- Joyce leads a team of designers, developers, editors, database managers, social community specialists, and promotional experts to maximize ticket sales and achieve branding goals. Promoting shows across every major market and tours everywhere, like Bon Jovi, is not an easy job and she does it extremely well. She drives ticket sales with innovative online marketing strategies & email sophistiation and relevance, treating each subscriber like an individual fan. @JoyceSays

SuzAnn Brantner- Department Head of Physical and Digital Distribution of Content, William Morris Endeavor- SuzAnn works with clients including Steve Martin, Metric and Ice Cube. She runs the ‘Self Serve’ division within the agency where she works with clients to provide new ways to distribute their content while maximizing profits and maintaining control of their rights. She is very knowledgeable in digital marketing and her influence has shown very fruitful for my bands.

Katie Fox-Marketing Technologist & PR Strategist/Co-Founder, Blooming Footprint- Katie is the Co-Founder of the Denver Marketing and PR consultancy firm Blooming Footprint. Her innovative ideas help “brands grow” on and offline. She is forward thinking and uses social media, web,  pr and great design to help bands, artists and labels to grow, engage and monitor their brand presence. @BloomgFootprint

Marisol Segal-Partner & Business Development at Rdi0 & Co-founder/Head of Marketing at Flux Summit-  Marisol Segal is a digital strategist and marketing maven with more than 20 years experience in the music industry. She is a savvy, email marketer and has been a big innovater in new media. @rdio

Madalyn Sklar- Founder of GoGirlsMusic.com- Madalyn has been helping independent bands for over 15 years. She is very forward thinking and has helped many bands improve their branding and reach. She is a social media consultant, music business coach, blogger and author who works with a wide range of businesses helping them grasp the social media phenomenon and use it to their advantage. I started GoGirls 15+ years ago and I would prefer you link my @madalynsklar or @gogirlsmusic

Corey Denis- Founder at Not Shocking, LLC- Cory has been pioneering digital music marketing for twelve years using everything from early ListServs & phpbb forums to social networks and MMORPGs. In the past, she worked for IODA  where she helped create and market IODA Promonet™, a promotional distribution platform that allows a member base of thousands of blogs, podcasts and online media outlets to access pre-cleared MP3s and marketing assets with the goal of generating hype and driving sales. @coreythrace

Ariel Hyatt- President at Ariel Publicity & Cyber PR-Ariel has spoken at SXSW (Interactive and Music), CMJ, ASCAP’s I Create Music, The Future of Music, Canadian Music Week, APRA’s Song Summit (Sydney), You Are In Control (Reykjavik), The ECMAs, NARAS, and The Taxi Road Rally. She sits on the board of Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, SoundCtrl, and The New Music Seminar and has helped over 1,500 bands find publicity. She is a marketing guru and her publicity success is outstanding. @cyberpr

Also, keep up with me, Lauren Kaplan-Reed, @lmeanslauren and our company @fancentric. Lots of good tips and tricks for interactive marketing and the music industry.

According to ExactTarget‘s Subscribers, Fans and Followers Report #8, The Social Breakup, there are several reasons subscribers unsubscribe from an email list.  The top 4 reasons for unsubscribes are simple to address in your email marketing efforts.  If you can counter these 4 obstacles, you can keep subscribers happy, and keep them on your list.  So, below are my recommendations for avoiding these pitfalls.

#1  Emails came too frequently

The general rule of thumb for a typical newsletter send is one per month.  But each case is unique.  If you have a deeply engaged culture of fans, they may want to hear more frequent updates.  This is typical of a label that caters to a genre, and therefore tends to build a large culture around their brand.  When you have 20 bands on your label, all metal and hard rock, your fans are going to be more open to receiving frequent updates, because the messages may have to do with several different acts or events.

#2  The content became repetitive or boring over time

Fans want interesting, engaging content.  If your email messages are a constant sales pitch, or the same barely interesting update about the new merch item in the store this month, your subscribers will get bored.  And they will leave.  Sometimes this starts with the band and their team’s ability to constantly generate new, interesting content.  Other times, its a matter of understanding the fans’ perspective, and trying things that will elicit a response.  Contests, user generated content, and special offers are all ways to get and keep your fans’ attention.

#3  I receive too many emails ad needed to get off some lists

Pretty much a nicer way of saying #1 and #2.  Don’t send too often and don’t bore me with uninteresting content.  If they are really happy with your messages, they’ll make room for them in their crowded inbox.  Moving on…

#4  The content wasn’t relevant to me from the start

This is where segmentation comes in.  No matter how you do it, you are going to need information about your subscribers.  It can be more advanced data, like past purchase data, or just simple information the subscriber has provided to your organization.  When subscribers opt-in you are presented with your best opportunity to collect valuable data.  So ask them for it!  Geographic data is useful to just about any organization.  Geotargeting gives us the ability to target specific show information to subscribers in that area.  Or, a label could use data about their subscribers like favorite artists, so they can send relevant, band-specific information.  And don’t even get me started on automated, dynamic messages.  But if you’d like to get your mind blown, drop us a line.

Here at FanMail we really care about our clients and their success. About two years ago we decided that we needed a space where we could communicate with our clients, they could share ideas with each other and most importantly, we could provide the best possible customer service. We brought this idea to life shortly after and launched our knowledge base and help desk powered by Zendesk.

Our Knowledge Base is a marketer’s best friend, it is filled with whitepapers, case studies, design tips, best practices and additional tools and tricks, and a developer’s forum. In addition to being a place of learning, it is a really great place for help. We pride ourselves on excellent customer service and due to the online nature of our business, it made sense to have a platform where users could request help online and provide screen shots of what they are working on as well as have chats with our help desk technicians. This year, we took it a step farther and our tech team built an ExactTarget – ZenDesk integration. It was so successful, we knew we couldn’t keep it to our selves!

The ExactTarget – Zendesk Integration allows Corporations, ET Partners and ET Resellers:

Single Sign On Authentication: Users sign into one place: Their ExactTarget advanced account. They have access to the knowledge base, their support ticket history and are able to request support with one sign on.

Easy Access to Information and Help: With easy access to help resources, we noticed that the amount of help requests lowered and client knowledge grew.

Interactive Help Desk: Our help desk is also a community where users can comment on posts, chat with our support staff,  and easily submit help tickets & provide screen shots without leaving the application.

To find out more, check out the video below:

For more information contact us.

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.

In 2001, when we first met the 4 founders of ExactTarget at a dry cleaning conference, who could have guessed where our two businesses would be today? We could have partnered with any number of technology providers to help us drive our direct-to-fan vision… and these days there are dozens if not hundreds of database/email/voice/social/sms service providers out there that run the spectrum in quality and cost.

“Email marketing is a commodity,” is what one exec told me not long ago. Yeah, well sort of… The ability to send lots of messages to lots of people is a commodity, but the ability to accomplish great marketing is not. Permission marketing is not a commodity… it’s a premium. Delivering the right message to the right person at the right time through the right medium is not a commodity… it is a premium.

So, yeah we were lucky. Out of all the partners we could have picked, we picked the one that understands that it isn’t about sending emails but about helping organizations connect with their customers in real and meaningful ways. Great technology is just the beginning, but real and true customer relationships are the glue that keeps it together.

This partnership has been incredibly valuable to FanMail and has allowed us to push some of the most sophisticated direct-to-fan marketing initiatives ever seen in the music and entertainment industry. The technology which ExactTarget has built allows us to ask “how” instead of “if” when it comes to complex direct, lights-out and lifecycle marketing programs. Almost anything we want to do is possible. In addition, their dedication to the FanMail Reseller Partnership and our vision and commitment to the music and entertainment vertical has permitted us to bring ExactTarget technology to our customers in a way that is accessible and cost effective for them.

So, we were not surprised to hear that ExactTarget has swept the field in the latest Forrester Wave report. Earning the title of “Leader of the Pack”, ExactTarget dominated the competition.

The Forrester report analyzed the products and services of 15 top-tier email service providers, using over 70 criteria and found ExactTarget dominated in nearly every category! In fact, ExactTarget earned perfect scores in 6 of the 14 categories – Product Roadmap, Vertical Strategy, Executive Vision, Strength of Management Team, Employees and, most importantly, ExactTarget was the only Email Service Provider to earn a perfect score in the Customers Category – a clear validation of realizing their core value of “Make clients look like heroes.”

The graphic above is a quick synopsis of the report. Notice ExactTarget’s placement in the upper right, making them a “Leader in the Industry.” It’s clear that it’s become a two-horse race between ExactTarget and Responsys. The data behind the graphic tells an even more compelling story. We beat or tied Responsys in 11 of the 14 categories, and ExactTarget beat them especially where it counts: current offering, technology platform, services and customer satisfaction! ExactTarget distanced themselves even further from the rest of the competitive pack, including e-Dialog, CheetahMail, Epsilon, Silverpop, Lyris and EmailVision. Even Forrester made mention in the report of ExactTarget’s acceleration and separation in the market. “ExactTarget has vastly expanded its organization to cater to marketers in any market segment. It offers a highly usable self-service application and has a growing services organization that offers the ability for its personnel to be deployed at the client location.”

Congratulations to the ExactTarget team. This show a tremendous amount of work and dedication to being the best of the best. As we enter 2010, FanMail is very proud to have such a prominent technology leader as our partner!

>> Download the complete Forrester report here