The Best Way to Connect With Your Fans

I read a lot about how bands should get email addresses because, well, it's the way to reach out to your fans,

right? Here at Adva Mobile, we use email marketing - our Adva Advantage newsletter, and guess what? Here's the lowdown on email marketing:

• About 25% of the people on our email list open and read the Newsletter
• That figure is HIGHER THEN THE AVERAGE for email marketing

That's right! If you have an email campaign that performing above average, three quarters of your fans don't even open your email.

So what's the best way for you to stay in touch with your fans? It's mobile.

• The "OPEN" rate for text messages approaches 100 percent, and since it's totally opt-in, your fans are likely to open a text from you 100% of the time.
• It's much easier to get your fans to sign up for your mobile text list than your email list - they text get to 88704 and it's done.
• They're always on their phones. Sure, they can read emails on their phones, but it's hard to get all the nice colors, pictures, etc. to show up on your mobile phone email app. A text that opens a mobile web page designed for their phone is a much better experience.
• Email has shown terrific growth over the past few years. Think spam has had anything to do with that? You collect e-mail addresses from your website widgets and  merch table sign up sheets and launch database marketing campaigns only to find most of your messages are treated as junk mail, often ending up in spam folders.
• Text Messaging has more immediacy with mobile phone users than email, since emails are generally reviewed in batches, whereas SMS messages tend to be viewed as they arrive.
• There is a limit on the length of a text message – a limitation that tends to serve as an advantage. This limit allows mobile users to consume the message more quickly. We’ve learned that the attention span of users is getting smaller – they want ‘snacks’ vs. ‘meals’ when it comes to information (the same reason that Twitter has gained so much popularity)
• There are stricter guidelines that govern the distribution of SMS messages to consumers, and although they are merely guidelines, the Mobile Operators tend to enforce them. Therefore, mobile users can opt out of messages they don’t want to receive (thus filtering out unwanted messages more effectively). Opting out of emails can be more difficult and doesn’t always work – hence the success of Junk Mail filters.

A fan list is key for an Artist, but the mobile phone list is so much more powerful than the email list.