Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
It's easier and way faster to make money through your email list and grow your email list, and then monetize it, than it is to get a licensed placement. It is way easier to make a certain amount of money on your email list than it is to make that same amount of money on Spotify. So as sexy as licensing and Spotify and social media and all that stuff sounds, email is going to get you probably what you want faster.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry. With constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month, without spending 10 hours a day on social media.
We're creating a revolution with today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker. 
All right. So I'm super excited to be here today with Cheryl B. Engelhardt. I think this will be the second interview that we've done. And every time I talk with you we totally ... we end up geeking out about really awesome stuff like emails and analytics and stuff that normally I don't have a chance to geek out about. So I really appreciate the conversations that we have.
So a little bit about Cheryl, if you haven't met her yet. She's a composer, a performing artist. She's won several awards from VH1 and Billboard songwriting awards. She had a number one best selling new age album on iTunes and Amazon. And specifically, her area of expertise is how to use emails effectively as a musician, which you may or may not be aware of, they're super, super important. Emails are where it's at. They're awesome. So Cheryl, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today and to share some of the experience, some of the wisdom that you've learned over the last 10 years.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. I'm always happy to be here. It's always good to talk to you. And I'm really, really glad that I'm your go-to geek, so that feels really good. I'm really excited about that.

Michael Walker:
Go-to geek. That has a nice flow to it. Go-to geek. 

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep. 

Michael Walker:
Awesome.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
So yeah, no. Super psyched to geek out with you today. And yeah, email. My shtick is really communication, so just being really clear on what you want, whether that's on social media and/or email. But I do think email is one of the most underused tools that musicians have at their disposal. And I'm really psyched to talk about it a little more.
It's not sexy. I think people feel like, "Ooh," when they think about dealing with an email list. And that's just simply because they don't have a structure set up yet and they don't know the value of it, that when you're doing it right you can be making $1 per subscriber per month. So to lay that out, if you have 1,000 subscribers, that is $12,000 a year, via your email list. And that's not just because you're selling really well. It's because you're nurturing relationships and then they want to purchase and support you in whatever ways that looks like for you. 

Michael Walker:
That's so good. I love what you just said there, that the email is just a vehicle, it's a platform. But really it's about communication at its root. And email just happens to be a really effective way to communicate with your fans more directly.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
So to start out with, I'd love to hear you share a little bit about why email in the first place. Everyone's on a million different social media networks. There's TikTok now and there's Instagram. And there's all different social media that certainly has its place too. But where do you see email fitting in? And what are some of the benefits of email versus some of the social media platforms?

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. First of all, there's a ton of data that suggests that people are more likely to buy from an email, versus social media. I could get into very specific numbers, but it's a very, very, very big advantage if you are good with email. Everyone has an email. It's not going anywhere. It's like a horseshoe crab. It has evolved and is not changing. And it's been around for a long time because it's really effective. Also, you need an email in order to sign up for any social media. It's kind of like when you hear people who are like, "People aren't on email anymore," it's actually very much not true.
So there's all the marketing statistics around why email is great. But recently I've been thinking, "Okay what is it about email that has those statistics still be relative and true?" And when you think about it, when you're on FaceBook when you're on Instagram, you get served ads, you get served hashtags you're following. You might see something that either triggers you. Even if you're really good at curating the content that you're receiving on these platforms, on Twitter, on FaceBook, and Instagram, it's still you being out there. And if you're just consuming the stuff, you kind of don't have control over what comes in. 
And if you're posting, you also don't have control over what people see publicly. So you might be dealing with comments and conversations. There's a little bit of, "Fff, okay here we go," when you're out there. Email is kind of like the personal, your walk-in closet. It's not the outside of your house, the exterior that everyone sees. And you get to decide what comes in. When you sign up for an email list or to receive something, you can stay on that list and get nurtured and learn something and just know that you have those resources inside of your inbox. Or you can unsubscribe. You have a lot more control there, so it feels a little more personal, feels a little safer. And that is what we want our fans to feel with us. We want them to feel familiar and safety. And all of that leads to purchasing and following and sharing, and showing up when you need them to.
So I think email's a really ... in this day and age, where everyone is online because that's literally the only place to go, it's one of the places on your device that is still inside for you.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. That's so good. And I love that analogy of the walk-in closet versus the exterior. We might've talked about this before, but another analogy that I really like when it comes to emails versus social media, is that social media is like a social party or like a cocktail party that you go to. And it would be really weird if at the social party you were trying to sell things to people at the table. It would be inappropriate. It would be somewhat inappropriate for that platform.
But if you go to those places, and you might invite someone, just be like, "Oh, I think we have a business opportunity here. Let's come back to my office tomorrow and then we can have more of a conversation." And then from there you might have some offer or you might negotiate or to have some sort of sale.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. It's like going to a networking conference or a music conference where you know that people are there to further their careers, versus going to a party where maybe someone's there for networking, but also there for social engagement and other sorts of things. So if you know that the context is specific for that kind of relationship, yeah. Absolutely. I'm not sure where this analogy ... where I'm taking this. But I see what you're saying.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That helps to click into place. I'm a geek for analogies as well. Anytime there's a good analogy that can be put into place, it's always-

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
I get lost in them sometimes, which is fun, and then you have to come back.

Michael Walker:
There's probably an analogy for that too, for getting lost in analogies.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Oh yeah.

Michael Walker:
There's the meta. Okay. So one thing that I'd love to dig into is ... because we've talked before and there's certain things that I know are going to be fundamental, they don't change. And sometimes those are really, really important to master. And a lot of times you see the people who are the grand champions of karate are the ones who are just good at doing a punch, a normal punch. They just get really good at doing the punch.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
So I'd love to do a yin-yang kind of thing where maybe we could talk about, one, right now what are some of the biggest, maybe upcoming trends, or just the things that you're personally really excited about, in terms of email or new things that you're working on that you see working really well for 2021, especially in times that we're in right now where at the time of recording this we're in the middle of the pandemic still. So that, and also we can follow it up and then go back to the roots of what are the fundamentals that haven't changed.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Sure. I think right now I've learned ... I'm always learning with email. I'm always testing things with my list. And something that I've noticed over the past year, definitely ... I think the last time we recorded our episode was pre-COVID. But something that I've really seen is changing things up. I think that we are all in a period, we are in the same space. We are in our own homes, most of us. The boredom factor, not traveling, especially for people that used to tour a lot, the boredom factor is up. 
So what can you change, just slight things, to keep people really engaged? So for me, with email, sending these out to my list, it means making my subject lines look a little different. Every once in a while I'll throw in an emoji. Sometimes I'll use all caps. Sometimes it will be a question mark. Sometimes it will be ... at the end. It won't every be all of those. I won't overdo emojis or all caps or anything. All caps are really also very special because it really occurs like someone is yelling at you, so you've got to be really careful with all caps. So I change up the subject lines.
I change up the content of the emails. Some people are readers and like to read and scroll. Some people are video watchers. So it's great if you go to loom.com and make a screen share or like, "Hey, just checking in." And then you can just ... the email literally is like, "I made a video for you. Here's the link. Click here." And it says X, Y, Z. But it's really about the video.
Some people are visual people and like the images or the GIFs inside of the email. So I change up the kind of content. I change up the length of the emails. And so I sort of keep people on their toes. They're like, "Oh, this is interesting," or, "Oh, this doesn't look like the last thing I sent." So I think that that's really important in this day and age. And that might've been a staple in the past, but I think we're moving away from the let's have the monthly newsletter, it always looks the same with just different links inside it. I think we're moving away from that and getting into a little bit more dynamic, and a single focused thing, which will lead me to my second current in the state of the world.
We've really been trained over the past couple years that social media ... social media has trained us to be a single topic scrolling experience, meaning when you're scrolling through Instagram you see one photo, it has one caption that's about the photo or the post or whatever, and it's one topic. Same thing on FaceBook. People are posting about one thing. So when you get an email that has 19 things in it, it goes against the experience of being on our devices, looking for content. Even though email is obviously very different than social media, I really encourage people to not send newsletters and to not do the multi, here are all of the things, unless it's something that your fans are expecting. Like in my membership, Amplify, I do a weekly digest, "Here's what you missed this week. Here's the most important video to watch. Here's the hottest conversation in our FaceBook group." And that's not about me. That's not like, "Here are all my updates." That's literally a tool for them to stay organized within the membership.
But besides those very few exceptions, I would say stay away from the multi subject content email because we have been trained, and I think especially because we are on our phones more and on our social media more in the pandemic, too really see, okay, one thing per thing. One topic per post. One point per email essentially. I do encourage multiple links in an email, by the way. So you're sending an email specifically to get people to follow you on Spotify, for example, have your follow link in a button in the HTML of the ... sorry, hyperlink in the text and maybe in an image as well. You can have that one link multiple times, but the idea is still there that it's one topic. So I think that that's really important. I think that's always been important, but now more than ever because we are in this single topic scrolling land.
So those are two things that pop out to me right now.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. I love both of those. And as you were sharing that I was just like, "Ooh, there's a gold nugget right there." So one of the things that you were talking about, in terms of almost catching people by ... doing something interesting or something like, "Oh, this is cool," and connecting with people and communicating on a deeper level. Been doing this a ton, is Loom videos. This is my go-to strategy for if there's someone that I really want to connect with and it's important, then using ... So, if anyone's listening to this right now and they haven't used Loom before, Loom is an awesome tool that basically you can screen share on your screen. It records your screen, as well as a video of you. 
And for me, exactly what you just said, if I really want to get someone's attention and connect with them deeply, then I'll record a Loom video. And basically maybe it'll be a minute or two long and I'll just say whatever the point of the video is. But then the subject line is just, "Video for you." And then the copy of the email will just be like, "Hey, Cheryl, just recorded a quick video for you," and then a link to the video. And that, if it's a text, you text someone that, or you email it to them, it's so hard for someone to resist being able to click on it. They're like, "Wait, they recorded a video for me." And then the title of the video is literally video for Cheryl. 

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
That's if I'm reaching out to someone personally. Really it is a one to one personal video. But I also think that what you talked about, in terms of using that as a way to connect with the people in your audience through emails, even if it is one that goes out to all your email list, would still probably be super powerful to just say, "Video for you," like, "Hey, recorded a quick video for you." They click on it and then it's just you sharing, just talking through the message of whatever it is that you wanted to communicate with them.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. And I definitely would ... I record the videos and I write to my list as if I'm writing to one person. Even though I'm not saying their name, if I'm like, "Hey guys. So good to see you." There's some party feel for that and that might be your brand. But if I'm like, "Hey you. How's it going today? So I have this news I really want to share with you. I had this crazy press thing that came up yesterday and I'm so glad that you're here with me on this journey." You know I'm talking to a list, but at the same time you're like, "I'm listening. Okay. Tell me more." You can make it feel personal, even though people are not dumb. They know that they're getting an email list. But at the same time, there are ways to make that experience feel really good for them.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. I think that's one of those fundamentals, that you just brought up, that's so important with email versus maybe some other platforms where it really is a one to one type of feel. Could you talk a little bit about that, when it comes to really being effective with your emails? How do you recommend that people position it and that they think about the message that they're crafting?

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. I think you need to know ahead of time what do you want people to walk away feeling after they read this, and/or what do you want them to do. Because they're going to feel something and they're going to either do or not do something. So if you're really clear on what you want those two things to be, before you even sit down to write the email, the email's going to be really effective. 
The other thing is, no matter what you're doing ... Some people have band mates and you all share the responsibilities of writing emails. Always sign it from one person, not the team at, even if it's the person that never writes the emails, just so they know that there's a person behind that email. I think that that's really important. Again, it's just that personal thing.
 I also would say write the email. Most of the time there are ... again, there's exceptions to everything, so take everything with a grain of salt. But most of the time I'd write it from the first person, so I, instead of the band name. We did this. I did this. So that they know that it's ... it's just going to feel a little bit more personal, as if you were getting an email from a friend. So knowing what you want people to feel and knowing what you want people to do is going to help you really get clear on the copy, and that points them to whatever you want them to do. Maybe it's just to reply or to fill out a survey to help pick your album art. Or maybe it's just you telling a story behind the origins of one of the songs you wrote and you want to just say, "Hey, if you want to hear the song that I've been talking about, here's the link." And it's not a hard sell or anything like that, but it's just content for them.
The other thing I would do is put in a basic subject line, just in case you hit send before you go back and change it. But I really encourage people to write the subject line after the email, so that you can extrapolate some element from the email that's really interesting, and craft a really interesting subject line. The subject line should not be a summary of the email, and here's why. A, it's just not interesting. B, if someone sees, "Pre-save my single on Spotify," they're going to be like, "Cool, I know what's in this email. I don't need to open it." Even if you think they're going to open it just so they can go get the link.
 You don't want to give away the farm in the subject line, because then you're not going to get that open rate, and then you're definitely not going to get anyone clicking on whatever link you want them to click to. The job of the subject line is to get the open. And the job of the email is to get the click. So, when you write a subject line ahead of time you know the email's going to be about sharing that you have a single coming out and you have a pre-save link. The subject line is not going to be that. But when you were sitting down to write that email and you haven't written the email yet, it might be, "Pre-save my link on Spotify," and that's what I would type in as a placeholder, just in case I press send too soon. We're all human and it happens. You don't want to be like subject line, "Placeholder," because that would suck. So put an actual placeholder in there. Write the email.
My assistant, Robin, is amazing on email. And his email list is called Robin's Nest. I mean, come on. Don't you just ... you want to be in that already. I love that. But he has one of his nurture emails, which is what I send to people after they're welcomed in. They get a couple emails in the welcome series. Then I have some selling series, which I call rise series. But in between those I have a nurture series, which is telling your story, your background a little bit. It's one of those series that people get no matter where they are in your ... how long they've been on your list, that everyone receives this email. It's because you're telling your story. Your story doesn't change. So it's not anything that you really need to manage, if it's set up with automation, which is a great thing to do.
But in one of Robin's nurture emails, he tells this story about when he first realized that he was really a creative person. And he was swinging on a swing when he was a kid. But the subject line that he obviously came up with after, and I've confirmed this with him. He wrote the email first and had this sweet story about something he realized. He remembers the moment when he was swinging on the swing. But the subject line is, "I'm a swinger."

Michael Walker:
That's good. 

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
And clearly he didn't come up with, "I'm a swinger," and then was like, "I wonder what story in my life I can figure out to work into the subject line." The subject line came from the fact that he chose that story to tell. And people open it and they're like, "Aha, that's funny." But there's also some curiosity, be like, "What?" So I love things like that, when you can really put together the subject line with the email to make a really fun experience.

Michael Walker:
That's so good, "I'm a swinger." What that reminds of is kind of this closed loop, open loop type of phenomenon. Whenever you're watching a TV show and it's a really well down cliffhanger. At the end there's a drop then it's like, "I really want to watch the next one." It literally ... something in your psyche that feels uncomfortable because there's ... It's like if you play a chord next to a chord that doesn't resonate when it's like, "Brrr." Something inside of you just is like, "This needs to resolve." And it sounds like what you're saying with the subject line is a couple of things. One, that a lot of times the best way to write the subject line is it's berthed from the email itself, as opposed to trying to start with the subject line. And that ideally you don't want to give away the farm or be too obvious with it, because then it's kind of like at the end of the TV show. It's like, "Oh by the way, this is how the series ends." And then we're like, "Okay, well crap. Now I don't really want to watch the rest of it."

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Exactly. Exactly. You're like, "Okay, cool. I get it. Don't need to know that." But here's the thing, it's kind of like writing a song, for me. Most of the time I pick a title after I write the song, but a lot of people come up with the title first and then write the song. And that might really inspire you and be helpful, especially if you know which direction you want to go.
So I'm not saying that that's the no-no. But you want to be really mindful about it, and then write the email and then come back and double check is this aligned with the copy here, am I giving away the farm, is there some element ... There's four different things you want to put in a subject line. It's either FOMO, fear of missing out, curiosity. A statement like, "I'm a swinger," is going to be, "Huh?" Real value, there's something like a gift or a freebie, there's something of value inside for the reader, and/or urgency. That's the four things. So the urgency is there's a deadline, you have a coupon code that's expiring or whatever. 
So if your subject line has one of those four things, and you could probably squeeze two of those in, depending on how you word and how good you are with semantics and the languages, then you'll be able to see that that's going to get you higher open rates, and therefore, higher read rates, and therefore, higher click rates, which is cool. And you can't measure read rates, by the way. I just made that up.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So a quick recap. So it sounds like one thing that you mentioned that's really important in terms of writing effective emails is just making sure that you are focused in terms of understanding the point, the purpose of the email and how you want people to feel and what action you want them to take. You mentioned how it's really important not to have five or six different things that people can do. And to pull another analogy into this, because you know any point that I can insert one I'm going to, it's like that saying if you chase three different rabbits then you're not going to catch any of them. "He who chases two rabbits doesn't catch either one," versus one.
What else would you say ... The roots of what you're talking about, you mentioned that it's really about communication, about staying connected with the audience. How do you see email fitting into a higher level relationship that they're building with their community? What's the best way for them to build those connections right now in 2021 if they're not in person live, performing live? How can they integrate emails really effectively to build those relationships?

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. Here's the thing, when we think about building relationships with fans there's a couple things that we actually want. Yes we like connection, as human beings we like that. But we can get that from friends. So why care about connections with fans? And if we really want to get real about it, as musicians we want to make money for our career, especially if this is not just a hobby and we're in this for the long haul and we're treating it like a business. So we want to be able to profit and we want people to stick around. We don't want a turnover rate where someone signs up, maybe buys something, and then leaves. We want those repeat customers, those turn into your super fans.
So if we can get really real about that and not get wonky about the fact that we need to use our email list to actually promote the things that we have going on, then it comes down to how can we promote effectively. Well that's building the relationship. That's where the relationship comes in. So there's a much bigger why than just, "I want a relationship with my fans." Who the F cares, really? 
There's a reason that you want to have an authentic relationship. Not just a relationship so that you can sell to them, but an actual relationship where they're like, "Okay, cool. I'm here if you pivot genres. I'm here if you lose a bunch of money from your gigs and now you're doing online live shows and I've got to show up and pay for that. I'm here for you." That's what you want your fans to be saying, "I'm here for you if you need my unused flight miles that I'm never going to use and you want to fly your band over to Switzerland." That's a thing that I did, by the way. It was one of the first things I asked of my email list when there were maybe 500 people on it. And so many people had unused airline miles that they got from work that they did not care about gifting to me so I could fly my band to a festival.
So there are ways that your email list will show up. And then they get to be part of the process. So I just want to cut the BS around the words connection and relationship and stuff, and just get real. It's to profit. And the profit will come and it will come at a much bigger scale when that relationship is authentic and when it's real. People can smell I'm trying to get to know you from a mile away just so you can make money off of me. So there's a real fine line there. But you got to be clear and you got to own that. And that's one of the reasons why in a welcome series the most opened emails that you will ever send are the first couple emails after someone subscribes. 
That welcome email is the highest open rate that you will see on your list, ever. Promise. That's an opportunity to actually set people up and say, "Hey, I'm going to be taking you along this journey, going to be giving you some free content. I'm going to make you feel like the cool kid in school, because you're going to be able to be like, 'I knew her when she did this and this and this,' and I'm also going to give you opportunities to contribute to this process and to play this game with me." Whether that means purchasing something. So you let them know that you're going to sell to them, so then when you do they're not like, "Oh my god, so sleazy." They're like, "Oh yeah, she said she was going to do that. Okay, cool. What's it this time?"
And in between, we want to tell our stories and get vulnerable, and ask their opinions and run polls, and really just make it a relationship, not this, "I've got an update. I've got an update. I've got an update. I've got an update. I've got a thing to promote. I got a thing to promote." We want to balance it with what you would want to receive from a relationship. 

Michael Walker:
What's up guys. So quick intermission from the podcast so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public, they're normally reserved for our $5,000 clients that we work with personally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode Your Fan Base and Make a Profit With Your Music Online. And specifically we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel that's going to allow you to grow your fan base online. And the system's designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music.
We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, and really see what's working best right now for musicians. And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. So if that's something you're interested in, in the description there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that. And the other thing I wanted to mention is if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast is if people click subscribe then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear. So that will help us reach a lot more people. 
So if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free training, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right, let's get back to the podcast. 
I think this is super good. There's a lot of really good stuff that came out there. The one that sticks out in particular is it sounds like what you're saying is that one mistake sometimes if for musicians feeling like they have to hide the fact that they want to make money, that they want to sell things to their fans. And because they feel weird about it, they avoid bringing it up or they try to pretend like that's not a part of it. And it is. And so they feel really weird about talking about it. And then when they finally do bring it up it's like people weren't expecting it and it's just weird.
So it sounds like what you're saying is that it's just important to be congruent in the first place, and to acknowledge. And that's okay. That's okay that part of it is that you do want to have a successful business. And that ultimately the more you make, the more you're going to be able to impact people and connect with them. So it sounds like you're not saying that it's not important to connect with fans and to build a relationship and to genuinely care about them. That's super important. But that that coincides with the need and the purpose, in order to make an income so that you can continue to grow.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. I totally agree.

Michael Walker:
Beautiful. All right. One question that came up, because we were talking about subject lines. And I think that ... back to the fundamentals, what you're talking about is so important too, just to reiterate that the subject line, the purpose, is to get people to open. And you literally have these numbers, this data that comes from it that's so beautiful, this beautiful data that lets you be able to adapt and to be able to grow. So the subject line is really important for just getting the open rate. And then really the purpose ... when someone's reading an email, the whole purpose of it, from your music business standpoint, is at that point how many of them click through, how many of them click through to the action.
So what are some of the biggest mistakes? What are some of the biggest challenges that someone, when they're just getting started with writing emails and they haven't quite mastered it yet but they're just getting into this world, what are some of the patterns or some of the things that you see coming up over and over again?

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. I sort of look at the process of mastering your email list a little bit linear. So the first thing is just knowing what you want, and how it fits into your strategy. So are you up to selling CDs because you've got a new CD coming out? Are you playing a Spotify game? And it can be short-term, it can be long-term. But if you're not clear on what you want, it's not going to come through in your emails, so they're not going to know how to show up. So that's the strategy part. It's actually an acronym, STAGES. The T is the technology. So before you dig in ... I see technology as a really big block, people not knowing which platform to choose, not knowing how to set up the emails, and then once you're in the platform, how to write them and format them. 
So to that end I would say the best email platform for you is the one that you use. So pick a platform. If you're already on one, watch some YouTube videos. Most platforms, especially the designated Constant Contact, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Kajabi, they all have training videos. Watch their training videos. Spend an hour and dork out on this tool that's going to become one of your easiest money making tools. It's easier and way faster to make money through your email list and grow your email list and then monetize it, than it is to get a license placement. It is way easier to make a certain amount of money on your email list than it is to make that same amount of money on Spotify. 
So as sexy as licensing and Spotify and social media and all that stuff sounds, email is going to get you probably what you want faster. So make sure you know how to use that tool. So the technology can be a block. And if you handle that first, everything else will come out of that. And then it's about growing the list. So let's get people in to the list. How do I do that? And there's a bunch of different ways to do that. But if you're not seeing the return it's, "Okay, let's get more eyes on this." And from there it's like, "Okay, we're getting people in. Are they getting really great content?" So the engagement. So if we're looking at the word STAGES, strategy, technology, awareness, growth, engagement. 
And engagement is really your copy, your content that you're sending out. Is the welcome series set up? Do you have a really clear nurture series? Are people getting to know you and your story? What are you selling? Are you selling one thing? Is it really clear, that first small ticket item to get people in as a buyer? As soon as someone buys something from you, even though it's 99 cents, the chances of them buying are 90% more, the chances of them being a repeat customer. And from there, that's when they become the super fans and the advocates, the people going out and sharing your stuff so that more people come in as subscribers, and perpetuating that awesome cycle.
So if you're stuck along any one of those points, go back. "Do I have the tech handled? Do I have the emails written?" And not even in your email platform. You can write them in a Google doc or Word document so that they're just there as emails. I notice that it's much easier for me to write an email or a series of emails, like my story emails, if I write them in a Word document so that I'm focusing on the story and my writing, versus focusing on how am I formatting this. It's two totally different parts of your brain. So let the writing, the engagement part be one task on your calendar. And then set it up inside of the technology and deal with the formatting later. It's a really different shift.
So look at all of those different stages and see, "Okay, where am I stuck? Am I stuck with the technology of it? Am I stuck with writing it? Am I stuck with getting people in? Am I stuck with monetizing?" Because in each one of those places, you can either go back a step and make sure you've got that check box like, "Yep. Got that." And/or, you can look at, "Okay, what do I need to do? What actions do I need to take inside of this phase that I'm in so that I can elevate and leverage it so that I can move onto the next phase?"

Michael Walker:
I love that so much. The acronym is so helpful, so STAGES.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
I have that on a worksheet that's free. I'll give you the link for that at the end, if you want, so that you can see that. And there's a couple little tips for each of those stages of the STAGES. If you want.

Michael Walker:
That would be super awesome. Cool. So one of those stages of the STAGES that I want to drill in on a little bit, because I know that it seems like it's one of the biggest questions or the biggest challenges that people have is around that awareness phase and around this point where ... Even with the pandemic and whatnot, there's a lot of people doing live streams now. And in general I know a lot of people feel like the market's saturated and how do I stand out and how do I get awareness. What are some ideas or what are some of the things that you see getting the best results in terms of getting people onto the email list?

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. When I was touring, the name of the game for me was get 50% of the people in the room on my email list. And now with live streaming, first of all, it may feel saturated but I don't think it's any different than trying to get a gig at a venue. And you actually have the opportunity to perform for people all over the world, not just people in the 10 mile radius of the venue. So I think we're in a good place here to maximize the same game, get however many people watching live on that mailing list, which means you have to tell people about it, which is a radical thought for a lot of musicians. They're not going to know by osmosis that you have a mailing list. And you also don't want to use the words mailing list or newsletter. You want to have something that you're going to give them, even if it's an MP3 or sheet music to a song or something easily consumable. So not a long video behind the scenes. You don't want to assume people are fans. 
The idea is that they're coming in and subscribers and your email content will turn them into fans. So under that assumption, you want to give them something that's easy, especially exclusive possibly. And you say, "Hey, I have this thing I want to give you. Where should I send it?" Especially you want to tell people before and after, if it's a song and you're going to perform that song live on a livestream, before you perform the song and after you perform the song you want to tell people, "Hey, there's a link up here. Just plop your name and email in and I'm going to send you that song for free." Boom, on your mailing list.
And you can have someone, a super fan ... this is what I would do at live shows. I would have a fan of mine be in charge of my mailing list, because, A, then I don't have to be annoying and ask people. By the way, it's not annoying if you're doing it right. But I felt like that's going to be better, if someone else is doing this for me. And they really want to impress you, so of course they're going to be like, "Yeah I'm going to get 50% of the room on here." And then they're like, "Game on." And then you could do things like, "Hey, anyone that signs up while I'm live here, we're going to go check out the list and we're going to randomly pick someone and they're going to get a free T-shirt," or whatever. You can ship something to them or give them a discount code that your merch store. So there's a lot of games you can play with your list, if you're doing live things. 
If you're not a performing artist and you're not doing live stuff right now, that's totally fine. There are a bunch of other ways to grow that list. And one of them is that gift, giving content out, sharing on social. You can run ads, FaceBook ads, to videos, to other content. I also love the idea of cross promotion with another artist. Cross promoting with another artist, it doesn't need to be someone with the same list size. 
It doesn't even need to be someone in the same genre. You can literally say to your list, "Hey, I met this artist, they're up to cool things. You may like their music." You can even be like, "It's not my cup of tea, but you might like it." I mean, I wouldn't say that. And then you send them to their free gift thing, and then they do the same for you. And that's insta-audience, especially if they have a slightly bigger audience, which is great. I include that in my nurture series. So people that I promote, they actually get long-term promotion in that every six months I just check in and make sure the link's the same, all that stuff. 
So those are a couple real quick, wham bam thank you ma'am, growth tactics, whether or not you're performing live. 

Michael Walker:
So, so good. So one thing I wanted to tack on to the live stream ... This is just a random thought around it. But I feel like I've seen this working across different markets right now, is this idea of going live or having a post or doing something, and rather than ... Of course, you weren't suggesting that they do this either, but rather than just being like, "Reply or comment below with your email address," or sending them somewhere to put in their email address.
I've seen a lot of people just killing it saying, "DM me and I'll give you the thing that you want. Just DM me." And I think on Instagram live that probably is a really ... especially if you're smart, like you, and have someone on your team or have a fan who can do some of that for you. Then maybe having that as just something to experiment with for people if they're doing live streams, saying, "Hey, shoot me a DM if you want this thing," and then actually having someone respond and say, "Hey, so glad that you were on the live stream. So where should I send that thing that you wanted?" That probably would be a really cool thing to try out, in terms of taking people from the live stream to sending them the gift too.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. Absolutely. I love the personal touch of that. I also want to eliminate any extra steps that the user has to do in order to get the thing. So if you're live streaming and you're like, "DM me to get the link to put your email and name in," I think you're going to lose a lot of people. For every click, through your website or wherever, you generally lose about 36% of the people that are going to keep on going through. So as few touchpoints as possible is what I would encourage. 
But I do love a good personal, "Hey, I saw you were on this live stream, is this something you're interested," to the people that didn't sign up. So rather than make the pitch, "DM me so I can personally send you a link," I would just put the link up there. Make it super easy for them. And then reward anyone with a coupon code if they sign up during the show, and you can just go manage that, automate that, whatever. And then you follow up with people that didn't sign up maybe in DM ... I would suggest doing that. 
I like the idea of that, but I think it might be too many steps and you're going to lose a lot of people along the way.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's a really good point. It would probably be a really good thing to test out, for anyone who's currently doing live streams, having both and just ... Maybe you can report back to us. This is why I love talking with people like you, Cheryl, because a bunch of really good ideas come out of this, and things for artists right now. So I'm totally going to be like, "Hey, try doing this on your live streams."
So a piece of that ... I loved when you talked about doing the cross promotion too. For anyone who's savvy, you can kind of zoom out a little bit and look what we're doing right now. This is a form of partnership or promotion. And Cheryl and I have a relationship and we both have audiences. And by cross pollinating, kind of like bees cross pollinating, it's best for everyone. And I think that there's a lot of opportunity to do that with other artists and other musicians, like you're talking about. And traditionally you think that's what a tour package is, is you get people that align really well and they all can bring and mix and match. 

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
But what if you do a virtual festival, a virtual festival where you reach out to 10 different artists that are bigger than you in the same music scene. And then if you're able to ... even if you're not at their level yet, if you're able to get four or five people that are at that level, and everyone is a part of it, then that could be a really cool way to leverage these audiences from other people and to serve them, so they're growing their audience as well. They're doing live streams. That was one thought that I had that ... It's basically modeling what we do with the Success With Music conference. I'm like, "I wonder if there's a way that a musician could do this." So I'd love to see if someone wants to play around with that idea too.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. We have a couple members of Amplify. Last year we really brainstormed on how to pivot. And that was something that a few members came out with. One of them did a local ... she's in Minnesota, and got local artists to do a digital festival, song circle sort of thing, and set it up. And I think it's becoming an ongoing thing. I think that's exactly what you're talking about, is create communities within your ... and it could be within your genre, within your location.
There's a lot of different parameters that you could put on it to create that kind of camaraderie and connection with the other artists, and then also really making clear what's the win for them. So knowing what to expect from you. And having done your research, so that that pitch is just a no-brainer yes for them. But yeah, I love that idea. I think that's great. And you also want to get, in writing, that they are willing to share with their audience. Because just getting people to show up, because they're like, "Cool, an opportunity to play," is not going to help anybody. There's got to be a level of participation and sharing with their email list, so that everyone can grow theirs. So you want to make sure that that's all really spelled out and you're not ...
Again, don't we wonky about the hard stuff, about the selling, about what's going to make it a win for everyone, about the work that's got to get put in. I know a lot of musicians have this, "I don't want to be a burden," or, "I don't want to insult anybody." Just make it a yes or no request. And people are not going to poo on you if you ask ... If you powerfully invite them to do something, and the invitation is an opportunity for them to either say yes or no, they might say no. Okay, cool. But if you're weird about it, then it's not going to be a clear invitation, and they're not going to feel like they have the option to say no.
So a powerful pitch is one that gives a ton of space for either yes or no to show up. Yes, no, or counter-offer. "Yes I would do this if." Or, "I could do this, not now, but maybe later." So if you have the space in whatever you're pitching to anybody and they can see the win, then you're going to have a huge opportunity to cross promote and grow your lists and everything, as long as you're not wonky about it.

Michael Walker:
That's so good too. That's one of those fundamental skills, of mastery, is the art of asking. And what you're saying I think is so important, because it is ... it's a numbers game. If you're willing to ask, then it's just a numbers game. Yeah, you're going to have a certain amount of people that say no. And there's a lot of different ways you can ask things. But your success as a musician is going to be proportional to the amount of times that you're asking people to do the right things. Whether it's asking someone to support you by purchasing something or asking someone to join your email list or asking them to follow you on your social media platform. 
It sounds like what you're saying is that it's okay for people to say no.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. Absolutely. 

Michael Walker:
But it's better to give them that option than just not clearly asking.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah, totally. And for me personally, I told you in the beginning my shtick is communication. I have a course called The Perfect Pitch because pitching was one of the things early on I learned was kind of a big deal to be good at it. I actually used myself as an experiment. I was doing a two week tour and I looked at all the emails I wanted to send. I was pitching to music venues, so I had ... I only wanted to play at seven, but I pitched about probably 20. Then I wanted to play local radio stations. I pitched some house concert places. I ended up having almost exactly 100 emails to send out as pitches for this two week tour. And I was like, "Ooh, that's a nice number. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to experiment." 
And I wrote three different kinds of pitches, three or four. And I saw which ones got me more responses and got me more yeses. And I formed this eight step, here's the perfect pitch. And I get 100% response rate when I use this pitch. And that's what's interesting to me, is getting responses. Because when you hear crickets, you don't know what didn't work. You don't have a yes or a no. You just have this void. So I would much rather get a no, and know, "Okay, cool." Here's the thing, whether you get a yes or a no, there's going to be something to do. So if you pitch to perform on some venue's live stream and they say yes, you've got something to do. You've got to promote it, you've got to practice. There's something to do. If they say no, there's something to do. You need to pitch better people, you need to fine tune your pitch, you need to see why they said no. You can keep pitching to other people and just keep going. There's always something to do. 
So if you can take the emotion out of the no, and just get that it's data and that there's going to be something to do either way, then you're going to have a much more powerful pitch in the long run. And I think that that ... there is only really one way to pitch. It's show the win for you and the win for them. And yes, show the win for you. People want to know what's in it for you. And if you don't, if you're not straight up with why this is great for you as well, people are going to think that you're trying to dupe them somehow. So get clear right away. And then it's a yes or no want question. And yeah, not being afraid of the no, and not trying to semantically direct them to the yes. 
And you all know, when you send an email and it's like, "Check out my blah, blah, blah. Check out my link to my video," you don't get a lot of responses to that. I see that all the time. And, semantically, that's a command. And I say this a lot, but you might as well have said, "Come vacuum my house." That's the kind of response you're going to get inside, subconsciously. Versus, "Would you be willing to take a look at this?" And that is a yes or no question. And the brain is more likely to answer ... There's some psychology behind the yes or no question actually, that the brain is more likely to answer it internally, which is going to translate more to action, than just, "Check this out." Nothing's happening in the brain when you're just like, "Check this out." It's like a billboard. 
So yeah, absolutely. And this gets applied to your email list, for sure, especially when you have something specific to ask them. We're not always asking our list to do stuff. We're not always promoting and selling, or inviting them to follow us somewhere. But sometimes we are. The email is not, "Check out my Instagram. It's, "Would you come follow me and engage with me and show me your stuff. And let me follow you back. Would you be willing to do that?" Would you be willing is a great phrase. It's very soft, would. The W sound is very soft, versus could you. Could is hard. You want to talk about dorking out, I can dork out on the language of pitching as well, and how to leverage yourself. But yeah, you can apply this to pitching one person or pitching your entire list, and social media too. 

Michael Walker:
That's so good. This is why I love talking to you. I feel like we always get to some really good, both things that are technically advanced, but also the foundations. So it sounds like part of the root of what you're saying right now is that it's much better to have a direct yes or a no, or to have a response, because that gives you feedback. It's almost like the feedback mechanism is something that's so important, because without that you don't know if it was right or wrong. You don't know what was wrong. But having the feedback mechanism gives you data that you need to adapt. And same thing, that's probably why email is so effective and valuable, because the feedback mechanism is basically all those decision points that we're talking about, did they open the email, did they click through, is a yes or no question. And it's like, if it's a no then you have feedback and you know that you can adapt it.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Right. We love data.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's so good. It reminds me of ... I'm not sure if you ever read this book. It's kind of a classic now. But it's called Psycho-Cybernetics. 

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
No.

Michael Walker:
And one of the core points of that book was talking about servo mechanisms and how our brains work. And it really ties in nicely with what we're talking about right now, in the sense that it talks about goal setting and how our brains, in terms of accomplishing goals, that it works as a servo mechanism where by getting feedback we can course correct. And without the feedback we're not able to course correct. Kind of the same way that if you're shooting a free throw with a basketball and you shoot it and it goes to the right, then as long as you're aware of where it went and where you aimed, then you know, "Okay, I need to aim a little bit more to the left." And so you step up and you shoot it again.
And so it sounds like what you're saying is that if you don't have that feedback, it's kind of like if you close your eyes and you throw the basketball. And there's no feedback. You don't get to hear if it went swoosh. You don't get to see where it hit the mark. And then it's like how are you possibly going to do that. And even worse, what if you don't even have a goal, you don't even know you're shooting at the basketball. So you're kind of just holding a basketball, doing nothing. So starting with the end in mind, what you talked about, it's kind of like having a basketball hoop and then paying attention to the dat and getting a yes or no is sort of like seeing how far off the mark did you get.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. I love that you need to know where you're shooting. I'm going to take this analogy to a totally different place, because I don't do sports, unless it involves water. It's like cooking. You can't just be like, "I'm going to put a lot of cinnamon and nutmeg in this pot. What's the recipe? What's going to be the end result there? And then you can follow the recipe. And then you taste it and you get your feedback, and whether or not you need a little bit more. But I like the idea of you can't just do the one thing you think you should do, which is I should definitely be putting cinnamon in this, that is all I know, when you don't even know what you're making. So I love that idea of being really clear on what you want, which comes back to what we said earlier too, about email. And for every email that you're sending and also for the big picture of what you want for your career. So that is getting communicated pretty much everywhere. 

Michael Walker:
So good. So good. Awesome. Well Cheryl, thank you so much for taking the time to be here again, and to geek out with me, and to go down the rabbit holes. So for anyone that's listening to this right now who's ... I know you mentioned that you have some resources like the STAGES where it drills down deeper and gives them some really good insights for how to successfully implement email. What would be the best place for people to go to learn more from you?

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. So if you want that workbook, it's called Mastering Email, you can go to inthekey.co/masteringemail. And I am inthekeyofsuccess on Instagram. That's where I give a lot of tips and tricks and love talking to musicians there. I'm cbemusic, if you want the personal insight into my music career and my life, and dogs and water sports and things like that. And that's where I am on Instagram and FaceBook and Clubhouse. So you can find me at any of those places. But inthekey.co/masteringemail will get you in and get you some free stuff. And you'll see how I give you some more tips and fun stuff inside of there.

Michael Walker:
Beautiful. Awesome. And what we'll do, like always, we'll also put a link in the show notes so that you can click on it to go directly there. And another thing too, so when we put this out, Cheryl and I, we got some training. We got an ace up our sleeves. So she's putting together an awesome, in depth workshop for you. So just stay tuned. If you're listening to this around the time that this first comes out, there's going to be some awesome stuff coming up soon for Cheryl. So keep an eye out on your email.

Cheryl B. Engelhardt:
Yeah. Great place to keep in touch. Well thank you so much. I always love talking to you. I loved working out. I love the analogies. It's always a pleasure. So thanks for having this platform.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, you got it. Thanks for being a part of it. 
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's three ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe then that'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.