Nowadays, almost every business has their own CRM systems!
Yes, I said that almost every BUSINESS has some kind of CRM systems and guess
what, your band is a BUSINESS! And before you get your head wrapped around that fact, you can kiss your dream of being a rockstar goodbye!
It may sound harsh and “non-idealistic”, but that’s the honest truth. Even though you’re still in the garage rehearsing hours and hours just to get to play in the local pub, you’re still in business.
You’re a starting business. You’re an entrepreneur just as much you are a musician.
Here in Trondheim we are 4 guitarists and “band owners” that are about the same age and about the same music style.
I consider myself as the least skilled guitarist of the four of us, but still my band has the biggest fanbase and making the most money of these 4 bands. All bands are on the heavier side of the music biz.
I remember talking to some of them one time and I explained why my band was doing better than theirs and it’s very simple. They use 80% of their time “on the guitar”, rehearsing and getting better and writing songs, and just 20% “in the office” doing boring administrative tasks.
I on the other hand, use 80% of the time in the office and just 20% on the guitar and writing songs etc.
And that’s the reason why my band is the biggest of these 4 bands!
Many musicians don’t realize that their time is more well spent doing the actual work! Doing the boring stuff like sending out e-mails, booking shows, planning tours, pushing for labels, lobbying at festivals or traveling and showing up at the office of the record label they want to sign them.
They tend to get caught up in writing music, not getting the music out there, so they write more music and not pushing that music out there and then writing more and more, but never really get any attention for their new album.
Now, I’m not saying that Keep Of Kalessin is the biggest band out there either and we have done a lot of wrong things in our career. Maybe the biggest one is lack of consistency when it comes to releasing albums and going on tours, but we have also done many things right because we’ve been able to tour the world and make some money in the process. Which is more than most band’s out there manage to and I see that the big difference is actually where the focus is. If you don’t keep focus on the business, you’ll never really get your band off the ground! The day and age when managers picked you up and signed you to a big label while the band was out there drinking and partying and let everyone else take care of business is absolutely over!
So, one of the most important tools when running your band business is actually gathering your fans’ information.
Facebook is great, followers on Instagram and Snapchat is all fine, but to have your own CRM tool is a great way to keep contact with your fans and you can build your own fanbase slow and steady and know that you will really be able to reach them. You can also have statistics and analytics on how well your e-mail campaign is doing as well as do special deals for a certain group of customers sorted by gender, age or adress.
The great thing about this is that when you for instance have a new T-shirt in your webshop, you’re able to send an e-mail campaign with an offer for this t-shirt. If you have a few thousand mail-adresses in your list, it should be possible to create instant revenue from that list by offering the fans a good deal on the new shirt. Promoting shows, selling merchandise etc. is way more effective with a good CRM system.
You don’t need a huge fanbase to start, but I think that if you just start and gather this information, you’ll some day be very glad you did that even though it’s in the beginning of your career.
There are countless CRM systems out there and earlier I used MailChimp, but since this is just an e-mail sender, I feel that I need more. So I’ve been using Wix for some time to gather e-mails from the fans of Keep Of Kalessin, but recently I’ve also been moving my database over to Cashback Solutions by Lyoness.
In Cashback Solutions, I get a full CRM system, not just an e-mail sender. This includes statistics and analyzis on a very professional level for a very low price compared to any competitor. But there is also one crazy benefit of choosing Lyoness as my partner for CRM systems and that is the opportunity to get paid whenever the fans of Keep Of Kalessin is buying their daily household products! Imagine as a band not only getting paid when your fans buy music or merchandise or go to your shows. But rather when they buy things like groceries, gasoline, clothes, shoes and more! Lyoness gives you the opportunity to earn money whenever your fans buy what they normally buy anyway and there is no other company on the planet offering that solution! I honestly just love what this company is doing!!
And besides, aren’t we all kinda fed up about all those different type of loyalty cards and customer clubs now? So why not share ONE customer club with thousands of other businesses instead of trying to create your own!? Lyoness’ motto is actually “Together we are strong!” and I couldn’t agree more!
Lyoness is a global shopping community offering benefits to all their customers in any type of business.
This means that our customers can save money in many different stores like Carrefour, Lidl, OMV and thousands of small and medium sized businesses across the globe as well as thousands of online stores. Our fans happily save money with their Keep Of Kalessin Cashback Card or the Cashback App on what they are going to buy anyway, and the band gets a cut of every transaction! It’s unbelievable and it’s absolutely brilliant, if you ask me!
If you have any questions on how this would work for your band or business, please don’t hesitate to contact me on mail@morningstarmusic.no and I’ll be happy to assist and teach you a thing or two about it.
To sign up for the Keep Of Kalessin Cashback Card simply go to http://www.keepofkalessin.com/fanclub and fill in your name and e-mail and you’ll be contacted by us!
I wish you success in your endeavours and hope you found this post a little enlightening!
all the best,
Arnt
Arnt Obsidian Official Blog 