Cheryl: Email is a huge opportunity. It does a lot of things that social doesn't, and they can complement each other. I'm not saying ditch social media forever. I think there are ways to bring people on social to your email and also, to provide some fun and insights and things on your social by sharing that with your email list.

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.

Michael Walker: All right, so I'm here with my friend Cheryl B. Engelhardt. She is a composer and performing artist, a winner of VH-1 and Billboard's Songwriting awards. She's got the number one best-selling new-age album on iTunes and Amazon and has a ton of expertise around how do you use email effectively as a musician. Email's one of those things where I feel like, you probably get this a lot, Cheryl, people are like, "Email, really? Is email important?" I know you're going to blow peoples' mind with today's interview, so I really appreciate you taking the time to be here today.

Cheryl: Well, I know I'm super psyched. Thanks for having me.

Michael Walker: Yeah, like I was just saying, I think there is this new wave of really savvy musicians who understand the principles of marketing and business, but for anyone who's watching us right now who might be thinking, "Email? Is email really that valuable as a musician? Isn't social media way more important?" Why is email important?

Cheryl: Yeah, it's a super valid question and, especially because there are so many courses and talks and things about social media and how does social media manage and how they even run ads on social media, there are big conversations, there's tons of resources out there, so it makes sense. There is nothing for musicians on email. Very little thing. Most of it's just newsletter, how to write a good newsletter, and I actually think you should never write a newsletter, but that's beside the point.

Cheryl: The thing about email is that... there's a couple things about email. One is it's yours. You get someone's email; you can export that into an Excel sheet that you own. It's not living in the cloud somewhere. It's been around for a really long time. You need email in order to even get on to social media sites, so everyone has one. Everyone has one. You're not wondering, oh, is this audience only on Tik Tok or only on Instagram or only on Facebook and a lot of people who are not on Facebook anymore. You don't have to worry. They're on email. There's just that usability, ubiquitousness of it, not a word, but you know what I mean, it's everywhere. Everyone has it.

Cheryl: Then, the other thing is there are some big, big numbers that prove that if you're actually going to promote or sell something, that you're going to do a much better job doing it on email. You're 70 times more likely to sell something on email, in one email, than you are on one social post, so the email is not determined by time in the sense that someone checks their email every day at 4:00, even if you sent that email at 9:00 AM, they're going to see that email versus if you post something at 9:00 and someone doesn't scroll through Facebook or Instagram until 4:00 PM, there's a good chance they're going to miss it depending on certain things that you do with that, whether or not you boosted the post. There are a lot of factors that come into place around the timing of your social post.

Cheryl: Email is one of those things that is... it's something that people do; you write an email to your friend. You can communicate on a level that... so this is the third element, which is like there's a way to build a relationship over email that you can't with social media because everyone knows when you post to social media that everyone is going to see it and that you're posting so that everyone can see it. When you write an email, even if people know that they're on a mailing list, there are ways that you can write to them, so they feel like you're writing to them individually and you can really, really grow that relationship and have them stick around for the long haul and have them turn from subscriber into fan, into super fan, into a customer who's advocating for you out there on their social media site.

Cheryl: Email is a huge opportunity. It does a lot of things that social doesn't, and they can complement each other. I'm not saying ditch social media forever. I think there are ways to bring people on social to your email and also, to provide some fun and insights and things on your social by sharing that with your email list. There are things you can do to bring... to use them together for sure.

Michael Walker: Amazing. Yeah, I love how you just put that. As someone who, probably a lot like you, when I first came into email marketing and online business stuff, I was like, "Really? Email? Is it that valuable?" Then, I've seen over and over and over again all of the most successful people who are doing this, it's like email, email, email, email, email. It's one of those things where you really start to understand how powerful it is once you get good at it, but it's one of those things that can kind of be under the radar because unlike social media, which is very in your face and oh, the amount of followers, it's pretty vanity driven, email is like a little bit more under radar, but for the reasons you're just saying, it's because of that, it's also a little bit more of an intimate connection. It's a better way to make offers and to connect more personally with people.

Cheryl: Yeah.

Michael Walker: What have you noticed have been some of the biggest challenges when musicians start and they've heard about email quite a bit, but they're not even sure what kinds of emails should I write or where do I get started? What were some of the biggest challenges that you see musicians struggling with?

Cheryl: Yeah, getting started is definitely one of them. Can I just send my contact in Gmail an email? No, you can't. People need to... legally, you need to make sure people can unsubscribe from an email. There are a lot of laws right now around that, so you don't want to mess around with that. If you go to conferences, obviously, we're not doing that right now, but if you go to a conference and you get a bunch of business cards, you cannot add those business cards to your email list unless you specifically ask that person if you could and they were like, "Yes, please."

Cheryl: You really, the first thing really is to figure out what platform is best for you and there are a lot of email platforms out there. It's one of the things I go over, and I have a worksheet that I'll give you all for free that is basically like takes you through how to choose the right email platform for where you are right now and where you think you want to be in the near future, and you can always change later, you can upgrade, you can do all these things. It's pretty easy to go from one platform to another. I've changed four times, so I think that's your first thing is to just get a platform.

Cheryl: It doesn't mean you need to get into the platform and then you need to start sending emails. It's get into the platform and watch all the YouTube videos you can about it or take a course or something, get masterful at whatever platform you choose because when you do, the tools are going to not block you from sending those emails because then you can just write the emails in a Word document and learn some strategies. I have a ton of resources around this but learn... the most important thing once you do have a little bit of a list is to welcome new people into your email list, so that they stick around for the long haul. That first welcome email is a huge opportunity.

Michael Walker: Cool. It sounds like obstacle number one is usually just choosing a platform and that's something that you have a gift, a free cheat sheet for people to be able to choose the right platform for them. Then, the tech is obviously going to be a challenge for people who aren't very geeky. I know we've talked before and we're both pretty... we like spreadsheets, we like math and stuff.

Cheryl: Super [inaudible 00:07:34]. Yeah.

Michael Walker: A super [inaudible 00:07:37]. I know a lot of people, like the tech is something that they hate, so you'd recommend just going through the basics, going through the materials. They have videos for it. It's pretty easy once you just consume some of the videos. Ultimately, you want to be at a point where it's like the tech isn't getting in the way. It's like you can just write something in a Word document and then you can send it out.

Michael Walker: One thing you mentioned is the welcome email being really important. What are some components or elements of the welcome email that make it successful?

Cheryl: Yeah. The first email that you send people will be your most opened email ever. Period, end of story. Most of the time people are signing up for your mailing list because there's some free thing they can get. Like, "Hey, I have a bundle of songs. Tell me where to send it," and then they go sign up. That first email, they're expecting the thing, right, whatever the thing is. Whether it's a checklist or a free video or something. You don't want to give them the thing at the top of the email. You want to make them read the email, you have a huge opportunity because they're going to want to get to the link, the thing to download it or get access to whatever you promised them.

Cheryl: You want to take this opportunity to introduce yourself, one or two sentences, this doesn't have to be a long essay, but just a couple sentences to introduce yourself, a couple sentences to set up their expectations, so they know what to expect from you. Like, I'm going to send you a couple great free things the next few days, it's going to be like your birthday, it's going to be awesome, then tell them if you're going to sell to them. Like, I've got some opportunities for you or I've got some cool things, a store, I'll let you know about that down the road. Just let them know what to expect, so when you do tell them, "Hey, I've got stuff for you to buy," they're not going to be like, "What, I need to... you're selling to me?" You can actually set them up to hang around even when you're doing a promotion that they're not interested in.

Cheryl: Then, the last thing is to ask them to do something because you know they're going to click the link anyway. I'm a big fan of having only one link in your whole email. You can have that link several times but in this very first email, I go against that, make an exception. Even if it's something like go follow me on Instagram, when you ask them to do something... and by the way, don't say go follow me because that's technically, linguistically that's a command. You might as well have said come vacuum my house. You want to ask them a question like would you come hang out with me on Instagram?

Cheryl: If it's a yes or no question, and they click the link, and it goes to Instagram, you always want to check your links, there's psychology studies that have proven there's some sort of authority that you now gain because you asked them to do something and they clicked on this link and it went to where they thought it was going to go. It's very subtle, so you always want to ask people to do something, even if you're in an email that's not really... it's not a promotional email, you're not promoting anything. It can even be in a PS.

Cheryl: Those are the elements of a welcome series. Just to recap, it's introducing yourself, welcoming them into the community that you've created, setting them up for expectations, what they can expect from you, asking them to do something, and then, of course, giving them the thing that you promised you would give them. Whether that's the link or file or something.

Cheryl: Thinking about the technology part of it and people get stopped and don't... they're like, oh, I don't want to write this email, or I don't want to deal with the technology. Really, the first part, and I would love to just share the... I've created an acronym, STAGES, for the whole idea of how I think about email in general and you've kind of got to go in order. This worksheet that I'm going to give you guys has this written out, so don't worry about jotting this down, but the S is for strategy. Strategy is really like why are you creating an email list? What's going to be so great about collecting people who love your music and being able to communicate with them at once. What's possible for your career?

Cheryl: If you get clear on the strategy, we can work backwards and say, "Okay, that's my big why." Keep that present, so that when you do get into the T stage, so technology is the tech, then it's like, okay, this is hard and it sucks right now, but the payoff is going to be that I'm going to really be able to engage with these people, I'm going to be able to profit from this list. Then, the A is awareness. You actually need to let people know you have a list. A lot of musicians don't even do that. They go to live shows and don't tell people that they can sign up. I used to play a game every time I toured to get 50% of the room on my email list and that was the game we played. Awareness, you've got to tell people that you have it.

Cheryl: Then, there's the G, which is the growth or the gathering. Once people know about it, how do you entice them to actually sign up? Okay, cool, you've got a list. I don't care. We've got to change that conversation to actually bring people in and gather. The E of STAGES is engage, and this is the content, turning them from subscribers... they may not be fans when they first sign up. There's a very good chance they're not. They're subscribing because they won a free thing or they're curious or they like something and they want to know more. It's your job, through what you write, through your content, to engage with them and turn them from subscribers to fans to customers to super fans to advocates. That's the journey I take people on in my Rock Your Email List course.

Cheryl: The last part of the STAGES is S, which I wish was M, but STAGEM doesn't work, but S is for sell and you really can monetize your list. The statistic that is across industry is if you are making one to two dollars per subscriber, per month, you are doing email correctly. If you have a thousand subscribers on your email list and you're doing email right, you're making a thousand dollars a month, thousand to $2000 dollars a month. If you have a hundred people on your email list and you're doing email right, you're making a hundred to $200 a month.

Cheryl: I just wanted to put that structure in because we can bounce around talking about the content and engage, but that's so far down the line for some people who might only be at the awareness stage. You have to get each level set up before you can move on to the next one. It's funny because writing the actual emails is so late in that stage's process, but it is important to think about, okay, I need to know my strategy, I need to know how I'm going to bring people in and then, once I can do that, as long as you have a welcome series, I always say get your welcome series set up because you can always come back from a, "I haven't written them in six months, What am I supposed to do?" I get that question a lot right now and it's totally fine. You just tell them why I haven't written them and say, "Hey, I missed you. Sorry I haven't written." Just be real with your people.

Cheryl: I wanted to just put that, the stages, process in a little bit because it is fairly linear for the most part and it's just good to think around... especially around getting stuck in any one of them, like technology or sitting down and writing emails or how do I ask people to sign up or... you know.

Michael Walker: I love it. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I'm a big fan of acronyms and I know... The cheat sheet that you're going to share with us, does it have the stages listed out for people?

Cheryl: Yep.

Michael Walker: Cool.

Cheryl: It's called Mastering Email and it really kind of just like brushes off of... skims the top of each of these stages and what's the most important. It's a really good way to just lean back and I look at it every once in a while, and be like, "Where am I stopped right now in my email," because I don't feel like I'm nailing it at any given moment? It's a good way to just look back and be like, oh, I haven't... yes, I'm good here, I'm good here, oh, I haven't done that. I haven't checked in on that. I haven't audited this part yet or I haven't reached out or done any outreach or promos around this yet. It's sort of a good thing to look back at over time, even if you feel like you've got it handled.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. While you were talking, there's two gold nuggets that I wanted to dig a little bit deeper on because you... I love your editor. You're very... I think your mind works the same way that I work in terms of very fast paced and so much wisdom coming out in a very quick amount of time. I think we have a lot that we can dig into. There's one thing that I definitely want to come back to, I want to put a pin in it, is the strategy that you mentioned in passing. You're like, oh, yeah, you know it was like when I played live, I got 50% of the room to sign up for my email list every time I did this. This one little thing.

Michael Walker: I definitely want to come back to that, and I wanted to just add onto one thing that you mentioned with the welcome email was this idea of having that micro commitment, so having that link going to Instagram before the other thing, and how... Yeah, is there something about that momentum, just like that little thing that creates movement?

Cheryl: Yeah. I think that you can when you get people sign up... the least amount of things people have to do at the point of signup is ideal. For the average musician not looking to segment your list yet, you don't really want to have more than a first name and an email on that opt-in form, but I love what you're doing in terms of segmenting your list, which is great, especially when you're touring, which I know, again, is like a different time. When you are touring, it's great to be able to segment your list based on either country or region or depends on what you're touring pattern is. It kind of kills two birds with one stone in the sense that it is a micro commitment. At that moment you're asking them a question, you're asking them to engage already. You're training them to engage with you, which is so valuable.

Cheryl: Then there's also that element of you're just getting more data, which you can use later when you are automating and tagging people. That's a whole part of the tech element, but yeah, I test everything. I love to test subject lines, test, test, test, test. It's so important to test and learn things about your audience because what works for the majority of people in trainings and things like that, may be really different for your audience and they may interact in a totally different way, so you definitely want to test it and [inaudible 00:16:42] do more of what works and less of what doesn't work. Take everything you learn about this with a grain of salt and test it. That's the only way you're going to know what's working for your audience.

Michael Walker: That's so important is what you just said, like that mindset of testing, testing, testing, being willing to test. Can you go a little bit deeper on that in terms of a big challenge for a lot of musicians, and you've probably seen this a lot, too, is feeling like this perfectionism or wanting to get everything perfect before they launch it, so maybe spend way too long writing the first email or getting ready to release the new song and they just... it takes really a long time? How do you think about testing? How does that process work for you?

Cheryl: I used to test every subject line. I figured out pretty fast what subject lines work, so I test subject lines less. The big thing about testing is to make sure that you're only testing one element at a time because when you get really different results, you're not going to know which was the thing? I changed the image inside and I changed the length of the copy and I changed the subject line and this email had way better response than this email, but why was it? You won't know. If you only test the image, if you only test the length of the email, if you only... that's going to be way more valuable than trying to test multiple options. This is kind of the same theory for Facebook ads or any time you're running any sort of adds, too, when you're testing [inaudible 00:17:56] things, you want to be only changing one element at a time.

Cheryl: I mean, I think it's the same as pitching, which is kind of like my other shtick. No matter what, if you're pitching well, you're going to get a response. The response can be yes, no, or maybe and either way you're getting data. If you get a yes, you have to go follow through on the thing that you just pitched. If you get a no, then you have to go do research and pitch someone else. If you get a maybe, then there's like, okay, I can't talk this day, but I can talk... you've got to reschedule an event. Either way there's work to do no matter what answer you get, so I feel like testing in general and being set up for failure or a link doesn't work or there's a spelling thing, people are going to do what they're going to do. I think the fear of what if it's not perfect can really get in the way with email, like really get in the way.

Cheryl: I spell check and I read my emails through and I always send myself a test email and click all the links, but every once in a while, something slips through and a link doesn't work. You'll get a hundred replies of people being like, "This link doesn't work." Then, you just quick send out another email, "So sorry. Here's the right link." Then you want to scream, "Leave me alone. I'm so sorry," but it happens and you just kind of got to roll with it and be responsible for it. Then, clean it up when you can clean it up. If you can't, it's just like you're getting to show them that you're human.

Michael Walker: Totally. I think that's a really important point is that when you make mistakes, that's okay, and it's like you're human. That can actually help you connect deeper with the people. One of my mentors, Jeff Walker, said, "If you don't pretend to be perfect, then you don't have to be." It's kind of like, "Oh," it was one of those... I was like, hey [inaudible 00:19:36] that just like it came out [inaudible 00:19:38] like brilliant. The idea that if you let people know that it's not going to be perfect and that you're imperfect, and you just be yourself, and you strive for excellence. It's not like you're trying to suck. You take everything as a test and you see what are the results of what happened, then you're going to be able to adapt and to be able to move forward based on what you learned.

Michael Walker: One thing [inaudible 00:20:01] that you just mentioned, too, was like kind of deals with the fear of rejection I think sometimes. You putting your music out, there's always going to be some sort of fear of what if people don't like it or what if I embarrass myself or yada, yada, yada.

Cheryl: Yeah, and I feel like if you haven't felt fear of rejection, like I know a lot of musicians that are confident and are like, "Okay, now I might be worried about this, but I have fears in other areas of my life." It is very common for musicians to be like, we're putting our heart on our sleeve, so of course it's like, "Hey, this is something that I created from myself, from my heart, from my soul, from my body, and it's now out there." We don't want it to get criticized, so of course it's very common that is a fear. Yes, I feel like that can stop you in a lot of ways.

Michael Walker: Yeah. One thing I wanted to come back to because we teased it a few times, but I know that this is going to be something really valuable is you mentioned the 50% of the room, like you had a trick that when you play live, you could get 50% of the room to sign up for an email list, what was that?

Cheryl: Well, it was always my email list that I was trying to get them to sign up for and it was never a trick. It was always just a goal and sometimes I hit and sometimes I didn't. I had a bunch of tricks, but really, they're strategies. This is totally part of the awareness part of the stages of email. The strategies include having rehearsed my banter in between songs and knowing between which song am I going to talk about my email list and what am I going to say when I'm talking about it? It's like, "Oh, go sign up for the email list?" Or is it going to be more like, "Hey, I want to take you home with me. Here's how you can do that. I'm going to email you later tonight or I'm going to..." you can actually come up with better ways than, "Sign up for my email list." What do they get? Like, "Hey, if you sign up, you get a free sticker."

Cheryl: First of all, the very first thing you do is you get someone that's waiting in line to be like, "Hey, I'm going to get you in for free..." if there are people waiting in line. Sometimes they're not. Just, "I'm going to get you in for free if you're willing to be the person that is responsible for this clipboard." That person's going to try to impress you so hard that they're going to get 50% of the people in the room to sign up because they're going to be like, "I want to do well." Tell them, "My goal is to get 50% of the people in the room." Then, it's just like a café or a small gig where there's people are coming and going, you can just have it sitting in a convenient spot or have it near the bartender, wherever, and just so you can tell people where it is.

Cheryl: Then, you can tell people in one of the spots, "Oh, hey, if you sign up over there for my mailing list," or "Hey, the next song we're going to do, I'm going to give away the acoustic recording of this for free. Just go tell me where to send it. Give me your email on that list over there." You can do that before a song, but you can also say I'm going to randomly choose one person who signed up on this email list and I'm going to give them a free CD or invite them up to stage to sing the last song or give them a sweatshirt or something. You can run some contests real time, right there, and have people looking for that email list, but you've got to say it more than once, you've got to tell them they have it, you've got to tell them exactly what they need to do and be really clear. You can do that all really concisely.

Cheryl: I think you can actually do that on your Facebook Lives right now and if you're performing live, you can work it into what you're doing, make sure the link is available, what are they going to get that's special, all sorts of things. You can say, "Hey, the people that sign up while we're actually still on the live," and you can see the timestamp of when people sign up, you can say, "I'm going to give away something to a random person and I'll announce it on my next live, which is next week." Then, get people to come back. Boom, I just came up with some badass ideas for your Instagram or your Facebook Live.

Michael Walker: Yeah.

Cheryl: You're welcome, that I've translated from my touring days, which I haven't done recently, so I'm not doing Facebook Live for performance. I have been doing them for speaking and working with other musicians, so I know that there's a lot of strategies out there, but I think you can apply a lot of the stuff that you would do live to digital live.

Michael Walker: Totally. I love that. There's just some really good ideas there, and right now, currently while we're recording this, this is impossible because of the coronavirus pandemic, but at a live show, having someone who's in line who's come out to see you, giving them responsibility to be the person who goes around and asks for email, that's like boom. That's gold right there. That's like a $5000 idea.

Cheryl: Yeah. That is gold. I mean, and if you can get two and pit them against each other, whichever of you gets more signups, great. They've got to be legible. That's a big thing. Oh, man, like the non-legible ones are the pits, but yeah, you've just got to get people excited about it.

Michael Walker: Cool. I wonder, have you noticed, and it's probably going to depend differently depending on the audience and what they're interested in, but have you noticed in particular any patterns or things that just time and time again fans are really interested in or a really good thing to offer in exchange for joining the email list?

Cheryl: I think that right now the idea... because some people are like, "I don't even download MP3s," it's the gesture. It's really about saying, "Hey, I honor your email. I'm not going to abuse it, and here's a thing that I made." People know that it takes something to create a song or whatever, even if it's like a downloaded zip file that they can't access from the phone, they have to go to a computer to get it, it's totally fine. You can just say, "Make sure you're on a desktop to get this," if you're giving a bundle of songs away, which I do. I have a client of mine that got great response to a bundle of songs, plus each song had a PDF story with the artwork in it, so it was like something people could printout if they wanted or they could just read and get a little background. That was cool.

Cheryl: I give a song from each album that I've done. I know some people just do one song. Other people will do... like, get access to a video that's like a hidden link, so you can only get it through the welcome email. That might be like an actual message to the subscriber and a song that's never been released before or like an acoustic version of something that's been released. You want it to be easily consumable, so something that they can either click on, I mean, even a video, keep it short, like song links under four minutes. Just so it's not a burden for them and they can consume it quickly and be like, "Cool, I want more." Then you know that your next email three days later is actually going to be more content.

Cheryl: I think it's really anything that is important to you or that shows some insight to you, but I would not assume that they're already a fan. Some mistakes I see around the opt-in is people are like, "I'm going to give all of my handwritten lyrics," and like people, that's for fans and these are subscribers. They might become fans, and that's the idea. If you're doing email right, they probably will be, but they're not necessarily fans right at this moment, so you want to assume that you need to give them content that will help them become fans.

Michael Walker: Oh, what's up, guys? 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 $5000 clients that we were [inaudible 00:27:03]. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode Your Fan Base and Make a Profit with Your Music Online. 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 $5000 a month with your music.

Michael Walker: 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, so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. 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. The other thing I wanted to mention is if you 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. That will help us reach a lot more people.

Michael Walker: If you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, 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.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. It sounds like there's a variety of different things that you can offer in exchange and ultimately, it's going to depend on your situation, so you've got to test, but in particular, what you've noticed as a pattern, the kinds of stuff you want to offer is something really easily digestible, so under four minutes if it's a video or songs. Even though people are streaming songs on Spotify and different platforms, really, a lot of it's about the gesture, so it's okay to have a download of a song or a download of like a kit, like of an album.

Michael Walker: I love the idea that you just brought up. That one really stood out to me, the one that one of your people did with having the PDF along with the song, so it's like you actually describe what the songs were about and gave some extra depth to it. That's really cool. Maybe like a printout or a wallpaper or something cool, but it sounds like it's one of those things where you shouldn't get too hung up on what it is. You kind of got to just figure, you've got to try out some stuff and just puts something together and offer it and you'll get some feedback on whether it's something that people want or not.

Cheryl: Yeah. Absolutely.

Michael Walker: Cool. Let's say that someone has gone through the hard work of figuring out... well hard, maybe not so hard if they have your resources, but they've chosen a platform, they've gotten things started, they've wrote out their welcome email. Where do they go from there and how do they integrated emails with... how do they sell things from email? How do they sell merchandise from there and how quickly would you recommend that they make an offer?

Cheryl: Yeah. I think you've got to... there's a progression of... in the engagement section of my course, there's a whole progression of your welcome series and then a nurture series, which is a little more story-based information and content, and then there's a rise series, rise meaning you're taking them from a fan to a customer. Whether you're promoting something on Spotify or you're promoting them to actually buy merch or buy something, I would start a little bit smaller. You're not going to come in and be like, "Buy my $99 bundle," but you could say, "Hey, come on into my Patreon for $2.00," or there can be a lot of different things.

Cheryl: The key is, is to really focus whatever you're trying to promote or sell for a specific period of time. Not send one email saying, "Hey, buy my CD in these four places," and then the next email be like, "Then, stream it here and then follow me on YouTube." You want to be consistent; you want to be focused for at least 10 days or two weeks and not be selling all the time, but you do want to integrate selling with stories and free content as well as the value that you can give them. Then, come back to the promotional stuff.

Cheryl: You can set that up and automate it, so people that come into your list are automatically getting all those things. Then, when you have something new to offer or a release that's coming out, something that's time-based, you can pause those or just integrate them, that integrate with the new email that you want to send out. A lot of platforms call those broadcasts. You may know them as newsletters, which I shy away from because newsletters tend to have way too much stuff and people don't know what to do or what's important, so they don't do anything. You want to keep the focus of the call to action very specific.

Michael Walker: This sounds like what's really important is focusing on delivering value and building a relationship and connecting with people first before you make an offer for your merchandise. Could you, on overview level, break down some of the... and give us like an idea of the timeline between welcome sequence to making an offer, what that might look like?

Cheryl: Yeah. I mean, the welcome sequence I would say it's like three to four emails over two weeks. Maybe even 10 days. Then, you could right into a rise sequence, especially if you've got a release coming out, and especially with like a low price point, like a song or digital record or something. Or you could go through a nurture series. The nurture series I usually say are one email every five to seven days and there're about three to five of those in the series, so it could be you're waiting two months before you really start to do a hard-core sale, but I see people are in, they're excited. I can see going either way. It depends on what you've got coming up in your own promotional schedule. If you're automating it, so it's just set to run, I would start with a nurture sequence first to get people to know you and tease some stuff out and maybe share a link, PS, the song I was telling the story about, here's where to listen to it.

Cheryl: It's not a hard-core sale, but you can actually, of course, share what you're... the links to the places you're talking about, the songs you're talking about, or videos. If you're telling a story about a video, obviously, people are going to want to see it.

Michael Walker: Cool. It sounds like you differentiate between a nurture sequence and a rise sequence. The rise sequence is a little bit more... it's still value driven. It's not like you're just going to ever come out and just be like, "Yo, buy my stuff." It needs to be kind of... it needs to be positioned properly, so that the value is there for them, but there's different ways that... it's like artwork. There's different ways to express it and there's different things.

Michael Walker: What you found is a pattern that's really worked well is either going from a welcome sequence over two weeks or so, really getting to know them, building that relationship, and then going into like a rise sequence where you could try offering something, especially if it's something like not a very high commitment, something on the lower end, like a Patreon or you could go into more relationship building from there. You could do a nurturing sequence, and it sounds like the nurturing sequence is... it's not like you're not going to be having any call to actions, but it's just like the call to actions are going to be more geared around let's be friends on Instagram, let's follow each other on Instagram or let's... There's different ways to build the relationship before starting to make the offer.

Cheryl: Yep.

Michael Walker: This is a geeky, like a little bit more of an advanced question for you, but do you have any sort of automation set up, so that when someone... let's say that someone purchases the first initial offer, then you lead them into different offers. What's your advice for people in terms of... I mean, should they even worry about setting up additional automations like that at the beginning or what do you recommend them setting up as their first offer ever?

Cheryl: It depends on what you have available. If you're merch driven or if you're show driven, there might be concert tickets. If you're... or like a fan club of concert tickets, but I think if you have music out, it could very easily be just an offer to the music. If you are not trying to chart and you're not trying to keep track of how many sales are getting to the Billboard charts, then you can host the music on your own site. I use Kajabi. You can host music as your own products. Bandzoogle allows you to sell your own music and keep track of sales there.

Cheryl: If you're going to push people to iTunes or Amazon or Spotify, you can't actually tell who's bought, so you just have to be... which is fine, you just have to be mindful of that in your language. If you send a second or third or fourth email of the rise series and you're still promoting something, you have to say, "Hey, if you haven't gotten this yet." You have to acknowledge that someone might have gotten it versus if you're selling through your own website, you can tag people, so that when they purchase it, they get pulled out of that sequence, that rise sequence, meaning you're not going to keep promoting to them if the person already bought something. It just depends on what you're selling them.

Cheryl: For iTunes, for example, you can't tell who bought in real time as far as I know. I've looked and looked and looked, and definitely not Amazon, so you have to just change your language to cater to the people that did buy, and you don't want to annoy them because they're still in this sequence. You want to make sure that you're just wording that in a way that's empowering them as well as trying to get the new people to go buy it.

Michael Walker: Gotcha. Man, that would be really nice if iTunes and Amazon allowed you to plug in with your email CRM. Would you recommend that people use something like Bandzoogle or that they use like a third-party tool that's going to allow them to offer the music? Have you seen are people making more sales doing it that way as opposed to like trying to go get streams or trying to sell their album on iTunes?

Cheryl: I think there is a lot of different reasons to do any one of those things and it all depends on what do you want for this music, what's the goal, what's the game that you're playing? There's a lot of different ways to word this. For me, I was playing a game of getting on the Billboard charts for my recently released record, so that meant that I had to send people to iTunes, Amazon, and Bandcamp, and Spotify because Spotify counts for streams and blah, blah, blah. I was really looking for sales at iTunes and Amazon and Bandcamp because those are what gets reported to Billboard charts.

Cheryl: For me, I was really clear that I was doing sales. I was not focusing on streams; I was not focusing on... it was not about income this time around. Sometimes you're like, "All right, I'm playing the money game, so I'm going to price this a little bit higher and I'm going to maybe bundle some stuff." I priced it as low as possible that would still allow it to chart. Yeah, so that it depends. If you are looking to make your own money, absolutely sell it yourself through your own website. Like I said, Kajabi, Bandcamp are the two best examples because they don't take any percentage of your sale, so you get to keep all of that, which is awesome. You can also set it up to be a pay what you want with a minimum. Bandcamp allows you to do that as well.

Cheryl: I've noticed that if you set something for, okay, my album is $5.00 minimum, but pay what you want, most people are going to pay more. Instead of saying, "Well, I wished I had gotten... " If you really wanted $10.00 per album, if you look at the numbers, the average is probably going to be $15.00 or $20.00. That's what happened for me, at least. Some people gave $50.00, and a lot of people gave the minimum, $5.00, but you never know what people are willing to do and as long as you're going to get your cost covered and that's a number that's good for you, okay, if everyone pays $5.00, I'm okay with that, so that pricing model works really well, I think, for Indie artists right now is a pay what you want with a minimum.

Michael Walker: That's awesome. If you do do it through Bandcamp or Bandzoogle or Kajabi... I'm not sure if Kajabi has this or not, but you can basically do a pay what you want option, so it's like you set the minimum to $5.00. Then they can pay what they want, which sometimes turns out, depending on your relationship with your people, if they'd want to support you, sometimes they'll pay $15.00 for $5.00. Ultimately, it depends on your goals which platform you're going to be on, but if you're looking to do... if you really care about charting on Billboard or charting or getting as many streams as possible on Spotify, then you'd obviously want to focus on those platforms. But, if your main goal is making a sustainable income or at least making income with this specific release, then doing it on your own is much better.

Cheryl: Yeah. It might be. I mean, you might also have a goal of this CD is going to be for licensing. This was the goal of my third record, so I was like what platforms are music supervisors finding new music on right now? Let's bring all of my followers over to that platform and that changes all the time, so I don't know what it is right now, but back then it was get everyone making Pandora playlists for me.

Cheryl: It totally depends on what your goal is and what's going to help you get to that goal. Then, what are the steps that your people need to take and then you need to be very clear with them on what they need to do and why it's important to you. I made so many little tech videos of here's when you log into iTunes and then you click here, and then you type in this URL, and then you click here, and this is where you pre-save, and then you can share this link. I made screen shares, so I could make it very, very easy for people to do this even if they weren't familiar with the platform.

Michael Walker: That's awesome. I feel like that points back to one of the main benefits of the email, too, is that it is so versatile. Literally, you have three different things that you've done and you're very able to leverage your community and to leverage your email lists in order to do that. One thing that I'd be interested in is hearing what your thoughts are about combining emails, like social media. Have you found a good strategy because social media, at least from my perspective, I've actually got kind of, I don't know, less... I don't go on social media very often anymore. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, I only go on those platforms in order to run paid ads because it's good for my business, but me, as a consumer, I don't like going on Instagram and I just personally, I'm not on it very often, but I know a lot of people it is really important, so that might be a mistake on my part. I feel like, honestly, maybe I should get more into it.

Michael Walker: I know a lot of people take it very seriously and there's a lot of social proof, and especially from musicians, it's helpful. You have a lot of [inaudible 00:41:15] and credibility and you can connect with your people through social media. It can be a really valuable tool, so what are your thoughts on social media and how it combines with email?

Cheryl: I think you should be on the platform that you're most comfortable with, that you are using as a consumer, and meet your fans halfway. If you know that your audience is a hundred percent on Twitch and you have a lot of evidence about that, you may want to go try it, but if you're really comfortable on Instagram and Facebook and you're engaging with your fans there and you built the fan base there, you're starting to or you'd like to, and you know that they live there, then just hang out where you're comfortable with. You can always run a campaign similar to a rise campaign or something that you would do in email, you can do on social media.

Cheryl: This is whole week you're talking about all the perks of joining your email list, like what do they get, screen shot little blips of the fun stuff that happens inside your email list, and you can bring people from your social media sites into your email list as well as run ads to get people onto it. Like, "Hey, you like this song? Get it for free. Just tell me where to send it." That is a really great way to get people engaging with you on social media but have them end up on email.

Cheryl: I also, if you're running broadcast, meaning one-off emails because you've got something coming up soon, it's not something that's going to last forever in an automated series, I do like to focus on social media to sort of double whammy anyone. For example, a month before my record came out, each week I was focusing on a different platform. Four weeks before I was pushing everyone to pre-buy my record on iTunes, three weeks before it was Amazon, two weeks before I was doing Spotify, pre-save, so each week had a different focus and I knew that the email sequences I had set up were focused in those timelines, so I made sure that my post on social media were aligned with those emails as well just to keep the conversation consistent and anyone that was on my email that was also on social media was able to see things because there's this statistic that it takes between seven and 16 times for someone to see something before they click and act on it on social media. The more they see it in different ways, the better.

Michael Walker: Interesting. First of all, you would recommend that people be where they're comfortable, where they enjoy hanging out, but also to kind of meet their audience halfway. Like, if they know there's a lot of their people that are hanging out on a certain platform, then maybe it means trying it out and getting more comfortable hanging out there. Then, in terms of integrating with email, yeah, I think you're so right that email has the benefit that you own it and no matter what happens to Tik Tok or Facebook, if Facebook decides that all of a sudden, they want to stop showing the majority of your followers your stuff organically, then well, that sucks, but you still have your email list, you can still connect with those people.

Michael Walker: You would recommend still tying in any of these social media platforms to your email lists and being able to connect with those people. Then, whenever you do have... I feel like one of the main benefits of an email list, maybe like a text message list, too, is when you have that new release and that first day you really want to make it a slam dunk, so you are able to broadcast, and you have 10s of 1000s of people who are in the first day streaming it and that triggers the algorithm. Then you get a better opportunity to get on Spotify's editorial playlist. What you like to do is you like to, when you do broadcast, when you have a specific release or something like that, to have that hitting people from all directions kind of feeling to it because a lot of times you need multiple, multiple touchpoints in order to actually take action on something.

Cheryl: Yeah.

Michael Walker: All right, so yeah. Are there any other things that we haven't talked about yet that you feel like are really important, that maybe are holding musicians back from really getting into email or figuring out how this works?

Cheryl: Yeah. I think it's like the last sexy thing that people are talking about, like getting on Spotify playlist is so cool. Yes, it is, and getting myself licensed and awesome movies and TV shows is super cool. Yes, it is. I've done both of those things. They are awesome, but I think that the longevity... like, I took three years off literally from performing and I just touched base with my... I did a lot of writing and my dad had died, just like all this stuff. I came back to my email list and I funded a record that I made about six months later and they all showed up. I raised $22,000.

Cheryl: Your list will hang out for you because they're not just a fan of your music, they're a fan of your life and your career, so that relationship, those people that I met in the shows that I'm no longer doing, they remember when I went up and shook their kid's hand and that kid was like, "Oh, my god, I shook..." That was special for them. The list is something that's going to live for a very long time and you're able to use it in ways that are just so profitable for your career that can be and feel really authentic and really like in partnership with them, so if there's any hesitation on like I'm not sure how to do this, well, first of all, I have a course called Rock Your Email List and you should sign up for that, duh, but really learn how to do it and just do the steps, take the actions, and get it set up.

Cheryl: I think now is really a good time to take the time to set up. I think you can... or re-set it up if you set it up a while ago and you haven't touched it in six months or in a year and you're like, "I don't want to right now. It's been too late." It's like when you meet someone and you forget their name and then you hang out with them five more times and now, you're like, "I really can't ask their name." I think people feel like that around their email lists. Like [inaudible 00:46:45] it's just been too long. I want to say that that's a little silly and I encourage you to just be real with people and say, "I'm getting back into this. I've got a strategy, I'm really excited to share new content with you. Thanks for sticking with me. I was even nervous about writing this email because..." like whatever. The more real you are I think the more real they're going to be and the more likely they're going to stick around and then show up when you need them to.

Cheryl: Just take the first step and if that's just downloading this worksheet, awesome. If it's learning a little and YouTubing or reading my blog, awesome. If it's like, okay, let's just handle this, let's just do this course and do that, that's awesome, but you're here listening to all of these great, great, great, amazing lectures from people that are so knowledgeable, so you're already thinking, "Okay, well, how can I level up my career?" If you feel like you've done a lot of stuff already and this is one of those things that's been like, "I should send a newsletter tomorrow," and if that's the feeling around it, then I think there's a lot of room to transform that, that will also transform your career.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah, and I just want to reiterate, too, the value of email because, like you describe it, it is one of those things where it isn't necessarily the sexiest, it's not like for your ego-

Cheryl: Right.

Michael Walker: ... email isn't going to feel that great, but for your music career and for your business, it's going to be awesome, it's going to be game changing.

Cheryl: I will tell you, when you send... yeah, when you send an email about something that's happening for you personally or some story behind a song and people write back and they're like, "Oh, my god. I totally connect with this. Thank you so much for sharing," that feels really good for your ego, I will tell you that. It's just not so immediate, the gratification, that it tends to get pushed aside, so if you can see that light at the end of the tunnel, that will happen. I guarantee you're going to write something that's going to resonate with someone, I promise you. I promise you. It's really, really special because you're seeing your music have the exact effect that you wanted. That the reason you wanted to get it out there in the first place. Right? You actually get that feedback and you... not to say you can't get that over social media or other places, but it is very special when you get that in your inbox.

Michael Walker: Yeah. I think you're a hundred percent right, that email is personal, it can be such a great way to hear from people and that it can stroke your ego. Your ego isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's okay to... everyone has an ego.

Michael Walker: Cheryl, you're awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to be here today. I know we mentioned the cheat sheet that you have available as a free gift for people. Can you tell us a little bit more about what's included with that?

Cheryl: Yeah. Go to InTheKey.co/masteringemail and it's like a six or 10 page PDF that outlines the stages that I mentioned earlier and says how can you get started with each one of these, how can I look at technology, how can I look at gathering, gives you a couple ideas, and it will give you an idea of where you are. It's a little bit of a checklist, like, cool, I've got this handled, or oh, I'm a little blocked here, but what else do I have. I think it's a really good way to zoom out and see what is the next thing for you to maybe take a look at.

Cheryl: Okay, cool, I've got all these emails written, and maybe you've written a bunch of emails, awesome, but I don't have anyone on my list to send them to. All right, let's go to awareness or gathering and maybe take a week and see if we can't get some people from social media over or... You'll see or like, oh, I've got a ton of people on my list, I haven't done anything with them yet. Okay, let's resend them through your welcome series or create a welcome series. Cool, I have this list, but I'm definitely not making a dollar per subscriber per month. All right, let's look on monetizing. What do we need to do to gain their trust again and nurture them a little bit? Maybe we give them a couple free things and then offer them. Cool. None of it's really hard. It's just dependent upon where you are. I think that this sheet will sort of... you'll get to see it in these just six words. Be like, okay, I'm here, and that means I need to do this.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. Yeah. I think I used this analogy with Rick Barker, we were talking about the idea of having a map of if they're looking to go somewhere, then before you start to the journey, you want to make sure that you have a map, so you can see where you're at, where you're starting, and then how you get to where you want to go. It sounds like this is just a resource that allows people have that view and be able to look and be like, oh, this is kind of where I'm at, so here's where I should focus on.

Cheryl: Yeah.

Michael Walker: I super appreciate you sharing that with our people for free. Yeah, Cheryl, you're awesome. I appreciate you and yeah, we didn't get super geeky on this specific interview because it might be difficult to screen share and to go into super geeky, but I know that we were kind of on the same wavelength there. Maybe at some point we'll dig and do some sort of training where we can actually go into some of the text and stuff.

Cheryl: I would love that. Yeah. Fun, fun. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me and for recreating everything I... all the points I make, so that everyone gets it really clearly. I appreciate that. I'm like, oh [inaudible 00:51:36] you're a very good listener, so I appreciate it a lot and this is really fun.

Michael Walker: 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 a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then that will make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media and tag us, that really helps us out, and third, best of all, 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'll look forward to seeing you on our next episode.