What's up gigging pros. It's Jared Judge. Welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. And we're doing this live once again in the Gigging Musicians Facebook group. So Happy Friday, if you are joining me live, and happy whatever day it is, if you are just listening to the podcast. Alright, so today, I wanted to chat about the concept of email lists. For most musicians, when you're trying to book high paying gigs, which typically tend to be on the private events side, then there is actually, you know, a more methodical way of getting them than just hoping and praying. And the idea is that people typically don't know about you. So it's your job to let them know about you and your ability to provide entertainment for their high paying private event. So one of the most effective ways to let people know is by sending out emails, which I kind of hinted at the last time we did this, which when I sent an email to my partners list of over 645, Milwaukee businesses. And so the concept there is email lists. If you've ever done a newsletter, or you've ever received a newsletter, you understand that people have the ability, and you also have the ability to send out emails to a large list of people. And there are tools out there that make this super easy, like literally just click a couple buttons, and you can send it to hundreds, if not 1000s of people. And so the crazy part is you can actually use this to get gigs. And you can use an email list actually have four that I'm going to share with you. And when I first discovered this, I started building up an email list of I started out with partners. But then I also went into people who could book me, not just partners, but also potential clients. And I started to send out one off emails to them. And when I sent an email, I discovered all of a sudden, like, I'd get an increase in traffic on my website. And then I sent another email, I'd get some more traffic to my website, and then I would get a booking come through. So I realized because I was sending these emails to my lists, I was actually impacting the number of gigs that I could get. Because the problem, as I mentioned before, is people don't know about you. And this solves one of those problems by letting people know that you exist and also reminding them that you exist. Maybe they're not in the market for booking you right when they first join your list. But maybe a couple months later, they're finally ready to pull that trigger. And instead of them just having to do another Google search, your email shows up in their inbox. And boom, they're reminded, hey, I actually can have this group perform at my corporate event, or my my gala or my wedding. And so that's the power of email lists. And I'm going to share with you the four basic email lists that I believe are necessary to get started. So I'm, I'm live here, so I'm actually sharing my screen. But I'm going to basically read through everything in case you're not able to see this live. So there are four email lists that I believe every musician needs, or everyone who's trying to book high paying gigs needs. And it is a list of all of your potential leads. By the way, if you don't know what a lead is, it's when somebody raises their hand and says, hey, I'm interested in your services, they give you their email address and phone number and maybe some more information about their gig. So the First List is all your your Leads. The Second List is a List of Buyers, people have booked you. The Third List is Non Buyers, which is people that you've already shared price and availability and your offer, but they haven't booked you yet. And the Fourth is your Partner's List. So I'm going to go through each one. So you understand the strategy behind them and how I would use them to encourage either more bookings, or how to actually increase the dollar amount that you can book that you can get from a single booking, which is pretty cool. Alright, so the first list I mentioned is all leads. A lead is any potential Booker who gave you their email address. And I would say this actually can include all of the other types too. This could include your buyers, this can include your non buyers. And if you've ever used a lead magnet, like you offer somebody a PDF of maybe your wedding playlist or something in exchange for their email, put them on this list, too. So this is a gigantic list. It's everybody who could potentially book you and the goal is to keep you top of mind and also to drive them into your marketing funnel. We want to be sending emails regularly to this list. If you're just getting started on this, you might start with maybe once a month, but ideally you actually want to get a little bit more emails per month, maybe an email a week, or if you're feeling particularly aggressive and you're not offending people. Feel free to do one email a day. Although that might be a little bit too much, you might turn people off. But don't worry about unsubscribes unsubscribes are good, they weren't going to book you anyway. So what to send all of your leads, I would send them performance videos just to showcase. Here's what I'm capable of providing for your private events, your wedding, your corporate event, that kind of thing. Share with them testimonials of people who have booked you in the past, because that will get them to understand, they're not the first person to book you, you have a track record of providing excellent entertainment for their events, and also share stories, I would either I would share both stories from your personal experience, or stories of people who have booked you, because stories are one of the most effective ways to sell people on booking you. So always include links into your booking funnel. In these emails, you never just want to write an email and have no way for them to actually book you. So include a link into your funnel so that people can actually book. So that's the all leads list. The second list is your buyers list. These are people who have booked you, when you add them to this list, make sure that you take them off of your non buyers list. Basically, you don't want to send people who've already booked you the same kind of messaging as people who have not booked you yet. But this is a great list to still email because you can actually get more money per booking by upselling these people on other services that you offer. So if you're booking a cover band, you might also try to upsell them on a lighting package. If you are a string quartet, you might try to upsell them on a PA system for their wedding. You also should use this to solicit referrals and check in as their event date gets closer. And you can send them emails that talk about the upsells that you offer reminders about their booking and referral solicitations. And the sky's the limit here. So like you can also sell other people's services too. If you maybe partner with a DJ company or a flower company, you could actually work out an affiliate commission with them to get more money per booking. The third list is your non buyers list. This is an email list of people who have come into your your world they said hey, I'm interested in booking you and you have provided them with your offer, you say yes, we are available, our pricing is so and so. And maybe you've even done a consultation or sent them a sales presentation. But they still have not booked you. So the goal of sending emails to this list is a save the booking you want to get them to finally pull the trigger and book. And I like to use an automated email sequence for this because you know, we I want people once they've seen my offer to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. So the thing that send those is offer recap emails, remind them like, hey, we just chatted the other day, here's what you get when you book us send them more videos, we want to resell them on booking you for their high paying private event. You want to send testimonials, remember more social proof is better. And again, more stories in these emails, I would be a little heavier handed on urgency and scarcity. And if you're not sure what that means, you basically want to convince them like this is kind of your last chance to book this, your event is coming up. And we have a pretty full calendar. Don't lie on these emails, like I don't believe in being unethical or immoral and lying to people. But there are ways you can say like the month of June is getting very busy for us. So you definitely want to lock in your date before it is taken. So that's how we treat our non buyers list to get them to book quicker. Makes sense. Awesome. And then the last email list that I would suggest you have is your partner's list. This is a list of all venues and event planners and other event vendors that you've partnered with or worked with in the past, you know, maybe you've played at so and so ballroom, add them to your partners list because you want to keep yourself top of mind for them and build your relationship. Why would you want to do that because these people have the potential to refer more gigs to you for free. Like I cannot stress to you enough the power of this people can send$1,000 gigs, your way. If a venue says hey, I've got this corporate event client coming in, they're looking for a jazz combo for their cocktail hour. Are you guys interested? And boom, you didn't pay a cent for that lead. And that could be multiple $1,000 gig for you completely for free. So that's why it's so important to keep your partner's keep yourself on the top of their minds because they can do that for you. And the things to send them is kind of similar to what you've been sending the other lists, which is videos, have your performance stories, invitations to performances and always include an ask with them, like hey, do you have any clients that are coming in that might benefit from my jazz trio or my cover band. So you want to keep them top of mind and always make the ask. So those are the four email lists. And for those of you who are just joining us live, how's it going, I just went over the four email lists that you need, which is a list of all your potential booking leads, the people who have bought from you, people who have not yet bought from you, and your partners. And there are some really great tools out there to manage all of your lists, such as MailerLite, or MailChimp, or click funnels, these are all tools to manage your email list. But that's kind of I don't want to get too far in the weeds with that. By the way, we in a couple of weeks, we are actually launching a new challenge. It's called the Book More Gigs Challenge. You may have heard that I've run the Book More Weddings Challenge, and we've had so much success with The Book More Weddings Challenge that people have asked like, does this stuff work for things other than weddings? The answer is yes, because these are marketing fundamentals that will help you book as many high paying gigs as you want. You could certainly book weddings with this, but corporate events, nonprofit events, even private parties, which all tend to pay much higher than your typical bar gig. So I want to invite you personally to join our Book More Gigs Challenge, all you need to do is go to BookMoreGigs.com and sign up there and you'll find everything that you need on that page. So join us at the Book More Gigs Challenge at BookMoreGigs.com and thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, you are just one gig away!