“It occurs to me that most DJ companies to this day still don’t make use of the pure power that effective Email Marketing and Automation can give your business.”
It’s early April, and I’m configuring all the Email lists and Drip Campaigns for the recently launched National Proms. As I do so (with the phone ringer turned off and the headphones blasting some good trance), it occurs to me that most DJ companies to this day still don’t make use of the pure power that effective Email Marketing and Automation can give your business. So, to get my DJ LIFE articles going again, here’s a great refresher on how to set up and configure your Email efforts.
Set-Up
There are a few extremely important I.T. aspects for you to consider, in order to even begin emailing, as follows:
- You have to ask yourself what domain you want to be sending your emails from. Most beginners would just use their main email address (that is, if your main URL is djxyz.com then you would blast from say info@djxyz.com), which is a mistake. If anything goes wrong in one of your blasts and you end up getting black-listed on spamhaus.org or similar, then you’ve ruined the email deliverability of all of your emails from this domain, not just the email blasts. It’s much better to buy a complementary, yet similar domain to blast from (such as djxyznews.com as per the above example), so that if you get reported for any reason and the domain name becomes ruined, it’s no bother to swap in a new one and move forward.
- There are many solutions available for you to choose from, and even solutions that enable you to host your own email newsletter platform. I’ll go over a list of options in Appendix A for online choices, and also go over something below called Sendy in case you want a DIY solution that offers you some serious benefits over the big email platforms… namely less restrictions and lower costs.
- To prevent spam, all the big email providers enact strict adherence to DNS records for SPF-DKIM-DMARC having their values set properly these days. Of course, many hundreds of DJs who use a leading DJ company organizer ran into those problems in early 2024, and learned the hard way about those DNS settings. Email newsletter delivery also requires that you pay attention to this issue as well. Failure to do so can and usually does result in emails ending up in the spam folder… or worse… not being delivered at all.
Strategy
Once your technical aspects are taken care of, you’re ready for next steps. Now, before you start typing up email text and configuring your HTML, you should take an hour and plot out your strategy for email marketing. A little bit of time spent on coming up with your email master plan will save you time and keep you focused once you get into the details later on.
Some questions to ask yourself…
- What information do my potential customers care about?
- How many emails is too much or too little?
- What content can I offer that will prompt potential customers to sign up for the email newsletter list?
- What can be automated vs. what needs to be sent out manually?
One of the best DJs out there for emailing that I’ve worked with before is Ken Cosco from A Touch Of Class (ATOC) in Boston. Without giving away all his secrets, here’s an overview of his email strategy:
- List-acquisition strategy revolves around the bridal-show season.
- The mechanism is a form on his website that auto-adds emails to his list, which he and his team funnels through a QR code combined with great customer service at the bridal shows themselves.
- Once a user signs up, there is a modest, yet strategic drip campaign that takes the user through bridal show season, including a giveaway to visit the ATOC booth at the second big bridal show of the season. These emails rotate between informational and promotional, so as to both educate the client on how ATOC is the best choice for their event as well as prompt users on what’s available to them as they decide on what kind of entertainment they want to procure for their wedding.
- Most importantly, all of Cosco’s emails (both drip and manual) are geared towards booking a Zoom videocall. Getting in front of the client on that videocall is the key for the entire process for Cosco, who then takes over personally to book the event. His close rate, once the videocall takes place is extremely high, hence the reason for the videocall-centric strategy.
- When bridal show season is over, Cosco reverts to a once-per-month newsletter that he types up manually and sends out.
List Set-Up
Your most important choice when setting up your list(s) is whether to set up one master list or a series of smaller lists that are more targeted. My personal choice is to use one master list, as it can be far more convenient when you want to send out an overall company newsletter. For those of you wishing to have the ability to send targeted niche email blasts to certain customer groups, this is still very much doable through using Segments.
For my own set-up for National Proms, I have a vendor sign-up form (see here) that has a custom field called Business Type. Check it out by clicking the dropdown, and you’ll see the main vendor sectors within the prom industry. When filling out the form (feel free to fill out the form yourself and submit), that choice of Business Type then automatically assigns the email from that signup to a Segment that matches the choice in that field, resulting in a list of Segments within the master list that looks something like this. We only have our internal beta testers on here so far, but you can see we’ve started on DJs just this week.
Using this sort of segmentation gives DJ companies the ability to send both all-user blasts for general company announcements, as well as targeted email blasts for your various niches such as brides blast, mitzvah blast, corporate blast, prom blast, etc.
Drip Campaigns
The effective use of drip campaigns is a great way of automating email delivery, and, as mentioned above, is a vastly overlooked opportunity that most jocks don’t make the effort to put in play. With a well-thought drip campaign in place, you can avoid about 70- to 80-percent of the sales work by having emails sent out automatically when a user signs up on your list.
In my use-case for National Proms, I use a seven-day drip campaign (Day 0 to Day 6) to send an intro on the various aspects that make up our prom marketing packages. Day 0 is an intro, Days 1-5 are informational, and then Day 6 is where we get into sales and provide the call-to-action. Take a look here.
For DJ companies, here’s the emails that you should consider putting into your own drip campaign.
- About your company
- About your gear
- About what your company does to prepare for an event
- About your protocols, including what happens should a DJ be unable to get to a gig
- About your performance, etc.
Essentially, create and schedule an email within your drip campaign for every topic you think is worthwhile mentioning, but isn’t necessarily important enough to spend videocall time discussing (unless the client asks about it, of course).
Manual Newsletter Blasts
Once your drip campaign has completed, you still have all your users on your email subscriber list, of course. Don’t ignore them, it’s important to continue to send emails to your list at least once a month going forward. Content suggestions are as follows:
- Feature your recent gigs, with photos and a brief write-up on how the event went.
- Go over one of your premium packages, and point out how the event experience will be enhanced by making the bigger investment.
- Offer a monthly special of some sort.
- Link to all your socials and YouTube.
Metrics
Some last-minute things to know about email metrics:
- Average Open-Ratio for the DJ industry ranges from 20- to 60-percent. It’s higher during bridal show season, of course, and then starts to decline as brides start to book the DJs for their weddings.
- The Subject Line determines the open ratio. Try doing some A-B testing with different Subject Lines to see if one style obtains better results than another.
- The email content determines the Click-Through Ratio. Again, try for some A-B testing if your Click-Throughs aren’t up to par.
- If you have Unsubscribes over 3-percent, that’s the danger zone.
- If you have Spam Complaints over 0.1-0.2-percent, you’re running a risk of getting your account closed.
Pay attention to these metrics, and tweak your email content if your numbers aren’t getting results for you.
For more in-depth reading, click here to read a great article on email psychology. If you still have follow-up questions, feel free to message me directly here. Above all, don’t neglect your email marketing, as it’s still the No. 1 way to reach customers. Combined with some well-thought automation, you’ll save a lot of time as well.
Appendix A – Email Platform Options
In no particular order, here are some prominent email newsletter platforms that are available to you:
- MailChimp
- Constant Contact
- AWeber
- SendFox
- Sendinblue
- Emma
Also, pay special attention to Sendy, which I use every day, and have based my screenshots above on.
Jordan St. Jacques is the President/Lead Digital Marketer at Digitera.Interactive in Ottawa, Ont., Canada. He’s also part of the Author Collective from National Disc Jockeys.
