Surveys/quizzes are amazing for getting more email opened and clicked and that, in turn, massively boosts all your engagement figures!
How come?
Because they allow you to be highly relevant. There are many survey options out there - some free like Surveymonkey or Google Forms. Then there are paid for ones like Typeform or Zonka or Jotform. If you use Kajabi, you can use Assessments which is already included. With ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp you could use a form with custom fields - but they all offer the same capability; to be able to take the answers and apply them to contact records..
Imagine, you send out a survey to your list and ask them ‘What do you want to hear about from me most?’ – you might have 4 or 5 options. People love being asked what they want – so you let them do that.
Using industry-strength email platforms, you will be able to tag people with their answers.
So let’s say your survey options are production, mastering, Ableton hints and tips and tracks. These will be checkboxes so that folks can multi-select. Once they submit the form/survey, their contact record gets ‘tagged’ with their selection(s).
So a couple of days later I might want to send out an email that has some great info about my production techniques.
If I sent out that really useful email to my whole list (let’s say 1,000 contacts), then only 100 might open it and get value from it. Why so few? Because it’s not relevant to 100% of the contacts – so why send to all contacts?! Your engaged contacts are only 10% of your list. And if you want them to actually do something (maybe view your latest youtube for example), then it will only be 10% of 10% - so only 10 people will get to see your Youtube vid.
Now, let’s look at your list another way. 300 people said they want to here from you about production techniques. So you send your email ONLY to the 300. Because it clear relevance because it speaks directly to what they want to hear, 200 people open it. That’s 66%. Then if the youtube click continues the relevant strand, you can expect 100 people to click the link. That’s 10 times the number if you send to all your contacts!
This is the typical kind of results I see for my clients when using this approach;
So blasting your list, when it comes to most market segments, is not your best interests. If you were putting your contacts through ‘buckets’ in a sales funnel, then sending to all is the best approach (as long as you tag them along the way, so they don’t keep getting the same email messages!). But in your case, you want to engage and connect.
This is what I mean by community-first email strategy – the primary strategy is not about sales; it’s about useful value and outcomes for the people in your community - who will naturally buy your tracks or merch when you release them because they are engaged.
You don’t need a list of 60,000 disengaged people – 600 engaged people will yield way more for you in the long run.
Creativity isn't just for the music - be creative with how you engage with your community and they will be delighted to hear from you and to support you.