• DO make sure you’re landing site is mobile optimized.  Forgetting this most important step can cost you, the whole point of QR’s are to enable quick access and sharing of your digital content on a mobile device.

•  DON’T be the guy that forgets the aforementioned note.

•  DO create value in what your QR offers.  Having a QR code directed to a website or landing page is common and useful, but not what your fan is always looking for.  Making the content access something fun and value added gives your fans incentives to check it out, share it, and lets you as a marketer engage them better.

•  DO be relevant and create a call to action.  Along the same lines as creating value, make sure there is a point to your QR and let your fan base know what that is.

• DON’T make your QR too small or else the photo capture applications might not be able to pickup on the embedded code.  1”x1” is pretty standard.

•  On the same hand, DON’T make it too complex either.  Links with long URL’s will create a more complicated code and can be harder for readers to decipher.  If you do have a long URL use a URL Shortener site like Bit.ly or Goo.gl so that your code stays simple and accessible.

•  DO be creative in your QR code design.  Many sites and mobile apps let you add custom flare to your QR design to where you can brand it with your logo or create a completely unique design to reflect your campaign or company.  For some creative ideas checkout Custom QR Codes site which has some neat images and ideas.  Also checkout this interactive campaign by Zoo Records in Hong Kong which has implemented some pretty advanced and guerrilla marketing style QR’s that have generated a lot of buzz.

Check the difference out between a basic and creative QR code design:

• While being creative with your QR can be cool, DON’T forget that too complicated is bad as well.  Over design, too many colors, and too light of colors can all make for a hard to read QR.

• DON’T link to Flash enabled pages, most mobile devices cannot access this.  So while you might have some cool content, it won’t matter if people can’t see it.

• DO test you QR code and DO it on multiple devices.  A code directed to a broken link is one of the worst-case scenarios and a code that is difficult to read by some devices is just as bad.

And last but not least, DON’T wait to implement a QR campaign after everyone else has caught on, and DO look out for my follow-up blog on uses of QR codes in the music industry.  If you have any questions or looking for ideas on how you can implement your own QR, feel free to leave a comment or reach-out to me at: Jeremy@fanmailmarketing.com.

In the world of music, there is probably never a more engaging experience than the live show.  It’s time to fully leverage the deep connection that exists during a live event.

With FanMail’s Live Capture Program, you can collect email addresses for your subscriber list via SMS/text message.  And it’s easy.  You choose a keyword that will activate the message.  It could be a band, label or event name, like Lollapalooza.  There’s a quick setup process that FanMail will assist with.  Then BAM!  Get the word out and start collecting emails.

Live Capture can be a great alternative, or a great compliment, to a smartphone app, when thinking in terms of a mobile strategy.  It’s also a convenient way to collect emails without the standard clipboard and paper.  We can even set the program up in conjunction with FanMail’s Sound Cloud Integration to deliver media as incentive for fans to sign up.

Check out this video to see how it works!

Try it yourself: Text Fanmail to 88769.  If you are looking for help with establishing an effective mobile marketing strategy, including Live Capture, drop us a line.

Over the next few weeks we will be rolling the Interactive Marketing Hub out to our clients. If you interested in getting considered for the beta release, please sign up here.

The Interactive Marketing hub centralizes Social, Email, Mobile, Sites, Audience Builder, Automation Studio and Reporting into a single unified workplace. Hot damn dogs! This is a game changer. With a real time view of the living web, Interactive Marketing Hub is one of the most exciting product enhancements we have seen from our technology partner ExactTarget.

Here are some of the key features being rolled out as a part of release 139 and The Interactive Marketing Hub.

THE INTERACTIVE MARKETING HUB:

The Hub Brings it Together

SOCIAL MARKETING MANAGEMENT:

MOBILE MARKETING MANAGEMENT:

Mobile Marketing Management

AUDIENCE BUILDER:

Audience Builder Provides Lightning Fast Complex Segmentation

VISUAL AUTOMATION:

Easily build complex automation tasks

REPORT STUDIO:

Easily create simple, costom reports

MORE RESOURCES:

VIEW THE INTERACTIVE DEMO

FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION ON 3SIXTY

DOWNLOAD THE PRODUCT SHEET

So, I took a look at one of her emails and talked with her about their audience and engagement process and came up with the following points that are relevant for all email marketers, even those of us concentrating in music media marketing.

Full disclosure: My friend and the company she works for are not FanMail clients and are not associated with FanMail or ExactTarget.

The first thing I did was look at the email for design and content best practices.  In terms of design, it was flawless: coherent and non-distracting themes, organized content areas, even bookmarks for easy navigation. As for the content, well, there is not a lot that can be done to jazz up new court interpretations of hiring standards or how federal workers’ compensation regulations have changed. I mean this is a human resources newsletter, not a concert promoters‘ show calendar or a record label‘s new artist announcement.  The main thing that I pointed out here was to break up the copy with an image now and then to keep things interesting to the eye.

The second thing I looked at was the list. Who is on it? What kind of communication would this qualify as? While some of the subscribers are clients, the primary purpose of the newsletter is to keep HR industry professionals informed and up-to-date. This means that this would qualify as a B2B (business-to-business) send instead of a B2C (business-to-customer) send.  Typically, one would expect to get above average open rates on a B2B send, definitely not the 12-13% that she was seeing. That’s when I noticed that a large number of the subscribers were employees of the company–wait, I’ve seen something like this before! I asked her how many of her coworkers read their emails on their blackberry. Most, if not all, she surmised, because the company provides them with blackberries. Many people only read the text version of email on their smart phones, or don’t load the images at least. This means that they don’t get counted as an open because open tracking requires images to be loaded from the email server.  When we compared click-through rates to open rates, this point was further proved. According to their click-tracking one would expect an open rate of around 40-50%, which indicates that many more emails are being opened then the numbers show.

The final point I raised was the ESP being used. As I have noted before, sending emails on an ESP with a less than stellar sender reputation is like throwing emails away, or at least into the junk-mail folder which is basically the same thing.  With communication and effective engagement being the cornerstone of successful fan relationship management and fan marketing, our clients (whether they are festival and events promoters or small independent artists) would be losing money if we did not provide them with the absolute best in deliverability, even if the cost of services was less because the drop in revenue due to poor deliverability would far outweigh the savings. So my suggestion here was to get a deliverability report from their ESP and to also set up a bunch of test accounts across several domains (gmail, hotmail/live, yahoo, etc.) and test if the emails are making it to the inbox or the junk folder.

As with all metrics, open rates are only a small snap-shot, they do not tell the whole story. However, they do give a good first impression of the effectiveness of a send.  The three things to consider when trying to improve this number are design/content of the email itself, the quality and composition of the subscriber list, and the deliverability of the email which is based upon sender IP reputation.  By keeping an eye on these factors, it is possible to see open rates that many of us dream about. So keep working and improving and tuning your processes and let’s get as many people opening your emails as possible.

The challenge for many direct music marketers is figuring out how to own the relationship. (ie having permission to contact a fan directly in the future).

To that end, we are happy to introduce “LIVE CAPTURE” which uses sms protocols to collect an email address and trigger the associated responses and confirmation messaging.

Wanna try it out? On your cell phone text “stubbs” to 88769 to see the whole process at work.

Notice that the goal here isn’t to grow a mobile fan base or collect a cell phone number to blast messages. That is so 2006 and has kind of lost the shiny “second coming of Christ” luster that it once had. (after all a mobile fan base is kind of limited and many folks see mobile marketing as highly intrusive).

The goal here is to collect an email permission in a live environment or as a means to maximize print advertising. This takes a direct live experience and translates it into a direct online experience which has real lifetime value and depth and color.

Goodbye ye ‘ol beat up clipboard that the merch table. Goodbye endless hours of having interns transcribe email addresses by hand. Hello instant gratification!

The best part is that early indications are showing that LIVE CAPTURE can be one of the fastest email list growth mechanisms out there. Of course it has be done right. It has to be promoted with savvy, in the right places, with the right incentive like an unreleased MP3 or live show. After all, if people don’t know or don’t care then they won’t sign up.

Expensive? NOPE. There aren’t any upfront costs. We set it up and customize everything to your needs and only charge based on the number of subscribers you actually collect.

Oh interactive marketing bliss!