Your email list is the most valuable marketing asset you will ever build. Not your Spotify followers. Not your Instagram audience. Not your TikTok views. Your email list. The reason is simple: you own it. No social feed decides how many of your subscribers your message reaches, though mailbox providers still filter for spam, which is why authentication matters. No platform can take the list away. No policy change can erase it overnight.
Artists resist email because it feels old-fashioned compared to social media. The honest case for email is not that it always posts bigger numbers than a post does. It is ownership. A social platform decides how many of your followers see what you publish, and if it changes its rules or closes your account, that audience goes with it. Your email list travels with you, and you can move it to another provider whenever you want.
Be careful with the benchmark numbers you see quoted at artists. Mailchimp's published benchmark data, last updated December 2023, puts the average across all its users at a 35.63% open rate, a 2.62% click rate, and a 0.22% unsubscribe rate. There is no reliable published benchmark specific to musicians, so treat any music-specific figure as an estimate. Open rates are the least trustworthy number of the three: Mailchimp itself warns that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection can falsely inflate open rates and the metrics derived from them, because it loads the tracking image whether or not the recipient reads the message. Mailchimp says clicks and purchases are not affected, so clicks are the sturdier number.
This guide covers how to set up, build, write, and maintain an email list that makes every release, tour, and project more successful.
Choosing an Email Platform
You need a tool that sends emails, manages your subscriber list, and tracks basic metrics (open rate, click rate, unsubscribes). The options range from free to enterprise-level, but for most artists, the choice is straightforward.
Recommended Platforms
Mailchimp. The most widely used email platform. Simple to set up, good templates, decent automation features. The free plan is tight: 250 contacts and a maximum of 500 sends per month, which is enough to learn the tool rather than run a list. Paid Essentials plans start around $13/month.
ConvertKit (now Kit). Designed for creators. Stronger automation and segmentation than Mailchimp. The free Newsletter plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers, but limits you to one basic automation with one email sequence and gives Kit the earnings from one recommendation slot. Paid Creator plans start around $33/month at 1,000 subscribers. Preferred by artists who want more sophisticated email sequences.
MailerLite. Clean interface and good automation. The free plan covers 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails per month, which is five times Mailchimp's free send allowance at the same contact limit. Paid plans start around $12/month. A strong option for artists who want more room than Mailchimp's free tier without paying yet.
Laylo. Designed specifically for music drops and events. Integrates pre-save capture with email and SMS. Less flexible for general email marketing but excellent for release-specific campaigns.
Beehiiv, Buttondown, Substack. Newsletter-focused platforms that work well if your email strategy centers on written content (personal updates, stories, industry commentary) rather than promotional blasts. Their free tiers differ a lot: beehiiv is free up to 2,500 subscribers, Buttondown is free up to 100, and Substack is free to publish but takes 10% of any paid subscription revenue.
Free-tier limits and entry prices on all of these change often. Check the platform's own pricing page before you commit to one.
What to Look For
Ease of use. If the platform is complicated enough that you avoid sending emails, it is the wrong platform. Pick the simplest option that meets your needs.
Signup forms and landing pages. The platform should make it easy to create signup forms for your website and standalone landing pages for social media links.
Basic automation. At minimum: a welcome email that sends automatically when someone subscribes. Ideally: the ability to create simple email sequences (a series of emails that send over time after signup).
Deliverability. Your emails need to actually reach inboxes, not spam folders. The major platforms listed above all have good deliverability, but you still have to authenticate your sending domain. Google requires SPF or DKIM from every sender, and adds SPF, DKIM and DMARC plus one-click unsubscribe on marketing and subscribed messages for anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to personal Gmail accounts. Google also asks senders to keep their spam complaint rate below 0.3%. Your platform will walk you through the DNS records. Avoid obscure or very cheap services where deliverability is unproven.
You can always switch platforms later. Do not spend weeks evaluating options. Pick one, set it up, and start collecting subscribers.
Building Your List
An email list does not grow by itself. Every subscriber represents a moment where someone decided your communication was worth their inbox space. Your job is to create those moments consistently.
The Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is something you offer in exchange for an email address. "Sign up for my newsletter" is not a lead magnet. Nobody is excited about more email. You need to offer something specific that your audience actually wants.
Effective lead magnets for artists:
An unreleased song or demo. This is the most proven lead magnet for artists. "Get an unreleased track when you join my list" gives people something immediate and exclusive.
Early access to new music. "Be the first to hear every new release, 24 hours before it goes public." This creates ongoing value, not just a one-time exchange.
Behind-the-scenes content. A video of the recording process, a voice memo of the original demo, or a written story behind a specific song. Content that cannot be found on social media.
A discount on merch or tickets. "Join the list and get 15% off your first order." Simple, tangible, immediate.
A free resource. A production preset pack, a sample pack, a chord progression guide, or any digital product relevant to your audience. This works especially well for artists whose fans are also musicians or producers.
Where to Capture Emails
Your website. A signup form on every page, with a dedicated landing page for your lead magnet. This is the permanent home for your email capture.
Your link-in-bio. Your link-in-bio page (Linktree, Stan, Beacons, or your own website) should have the email signup as one of the top links, not buried below streaming links.
Pre-save campaigns. Use a pre-save service that includes email capture (Feature.fm, Laylo). Every pre-save campaign is an email building opportunity. See How to Market a Music Release (Pre-Save Guide) for details.
Your Bandcamp page. Streaming platforms do not hand over your listeners' contact details. Spotify for Artists shows aggregate audience stats and a follower count, not names or email addresses. Bandcamp is the exception: fans who buy from you or follow you are offered the chance to join your mailing list, and you can export that list from your Tools page.
Live shows. A QR code on your merch table that links to your signup page. A verbal call-to-action from stage: "If you want to hear new music first, the QR code at the merch table gets you on my list." Every show should capture contacts. See How to Make Money From Live Music for more on show-day tactics.
Social media. Periodic posts that drive traffic to your signup page. Not "sign up for my newsletter" but "I just recorded something that is not going on streaming platforms. Link in bio to hear it." The content is the hook. The email capture is the mechanism.
Collaborations. Joint giveaways or content swaps with other artists where both artists' audiences are invited to subscribe to both lists. This works because the audiences overlap in taste.
Growth Benchmarks
Nobody publishes reliable list-growth benchmarks for musicians. The stages below are working rules of thumb, not measured figures. Your rate depends on how much traffic you already have and how visible your signup is.
Starting from zero to 500 subscribers: Expect this to be a matter of months rather than weeks. Focus on having the lead magnet and capture mechanism in place, then driving traffic to it through every channel.
500 to 2,000 subscribers: This is the size where the list is worth building a release campaign around rather than treating as an afterthought.
2,000 to 10,000 subscribers: Your email list is now a significant competitive advantage. Release campaigns, ticket sales, and merch launches all benefit from direct access to thousands of engaged fans.
Growth rate: Adding 50-100 subscribers per month is a reasonable target for most independent artists. If you are adding fewer than 20 a month, evaluate whether your lead magnet is compelling and whether your capture points are visible.
What to Write
The question artists ask most about email is "what do I even write?" The answer is simpler than most people make it.
Email Types
The Personal Update. The most versatile and effective email type. Write like you are texting a group of friends who care about your music. What you have been working on, what is coming next, what happened in the studio, what you are listening to, what is on your mind. These emails build relationship. They should be the majority of what you send.
Length: 200-500 words. Shorter is fine. Voice: conversational, honest, unpolished. These should not feel like press releases. They should feel like a note from someone the reader knows.
The Announcement. New release, tour dates, merch drop, or other specific news. These are the transactional emails where you are asking for something (stream this, buy tickets, pre-save). They work because the personal updates have built the relationship that makes the ask feel natural.
Length: 100-300 words. Be direct. State the news, explain why it matters, include the link, done.
The Exclusive. Content your email list gets that nobody else does. An unreleased demo, a first listen, a behind-the-scenes video, a personal story, a discount code. These reward subscribers for being on the list and reinforce the value of staying subscribed.
The Story. A longer email that tells a specific story: how a song was written, what happened on tour, a turning point in your career, a lesson learned. These emails get the highest engagement because humans respond to narrative. Use them sparingly (once a month or less) so they feel special.
The Give-to-Ask Ratio
For every email that asks for something (stream, buy, attend), send 3-4 emails that give something (content, stories, updates, exclusives). If every email is a sales pitch, people unsubscribe. If most emails provide genuine value, the occasional ask feels earned.
This does not mean promotional emails are bad. It means they work best in the context of an ongoing relationship where the subscriber already feels they are getting value.
Subject Lines
The subject line determines whether your email gets opened. Keep them short (under 50 characters), personal, and curiosity-driven.
What works: "I made something weird," "this one's been stuck in my head," "a quick update from the studio," "you're hearing this first," "I need to tell you something." Conversational, lowercase, human.
What does NOT work: "EXCITING NEWS! NEW SINGLE OUT NOW!!!," "Newsletter #47," "Monthly Update - January." Corporate, generic, forgettable.
Writing Voice
Write like yourself. The same voice you use on social media, on stage, or in conversation with fans after a show. Your email subscribers signed up because they like you. Do not switch to a professional marketing voice when you sit down to write an email.
If you struggle with writing, try this: open the voice memo app on your phone, talk about what you want to say, then transcribe it and clean it up. The spoken version is almost always more natural than what you would type from scratch.
How Often to Send
There is no published optimum here, and any article that gives you one is guessing. The cadences below are judgement calls that hold up for most artists.
Minimum: twice a month. Less than this and your subscribers forget who you are. When your next email arrives, they think "who is this?" and unsubscribe.
Optimal: weekly during active periods, biweekly between releases. A weekly email during a release campaign keeps momentum high. Biweekly between releases maintains the relationship without overloading inboxes.
Maximum: do not email more than twice per week unless you are in the middle of a release campaign or tour with time-sensitive updates. Past that point you are more likely to wear people out than to reach them.
Consistency matters more than frequency. A biweekly email sent reliably every other Tuesday outperforms a weekly email sent sporadically. Pick a cadence you can maintain and stick to it.
Automation
Automation lets you send the right email at the right time without manual effort. For most artists, two automations are sufficient.
Welcome Sequence
A series of 3-5 emails that send automatically over 1-2 weeks after someone subscribes. This introduces new subscribers to you and your music while their interest is highest.
Email 1 (immediately after signup): Deliver the lead magnet. Thank them for subscribing. Tell them what to expect from your emails (how often, what kind of content).
Email 2 (2-3 days later): Your story. Who you are, what your music is about, and why you do this. This is the email that turns a casual subscriber into someone who cares.
Email 3 (4-5 days later): Your best work. Link to your strongest songs, your most popular video, or your best live performance. Give them the greatest hits so they understand what you are about.
Email 4 (7 days later): The invitation. Invite them to follow you on their preferred social platform, listen on Spotify, or engage with whatever channel matters most to your strategy. By this point they know who you are and have a reason to deepen the connection.
Pre-Release Sequence
If your email platform supports it, create a sequence specifically for release campaigns: a tease email 2 weeks out, a pre-save email 1 week out, a release-day email, and a follow-up 3-5 days later with a new angle (lyric video, behind-the-scenes, live version).
Segmentation
As your list grows, not every subscriber needs every email. Segmentation lets you send more relevant content to different groups.
Basic segments to start with:
By engagement. Most email platforms track who opens your emails and who does not. Segment into active subscribers (opened an email in the last 90 days) and inactive subscribers. Send re-engagement emails to inactive subscribers ("Still want to hear from me? Here is what you have been missing.") and consider removing subscribers who remain inactive for 6+ months.
By geography. If you are touring, segment by city or region so you can send targeted show announcements to subscribers in specific markets rather than emailing your entire list about a show in Nashville when half your subscribers are in Los Angeles.
By interest. If you sell merch, offer exclusive content, and play shows, some subscribers care about all three and some care about one. As your list matures, let subscribers indicate their preferences or segment based on behavior (who clicks on merch links versus show announcements).
Maintaining Your List
A healthy list requires ongoing maintenance.
Monitor your metrics. Judge your numbers against your own history and against the in-app benchmarks most platforms show you for similar senders, not against a figure you read once. For scale, Mailchimp's published benchmark data, last updated December 2023, puts its all-user averages at a 35.63% open rate, a 2.62% click rate, and a 0.22% unsubscribe rate. Treat open rate as the softest of the three, since Mailchimp warns that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection can falsely inflate open rates; it says clicks and purchases are not affected. The honest signal is what happened after the send: replies, streams, ticket sales, and merch orders. If your numbers drift, investigate: are your subject lines working? Is the content relevant? Are you emailing too frequently?
Clean your list. Remove subscribers who have not opened an email in 6-12 months after a re-engagement attempt. Inactive subscribers hurt your deliverability, because mailbox providers use engagement to decide where your messages land. Google's own sender guidelines tell senders to mail only people who want the messages, and to consider unsubscribing recipients who do not open them.
Respect unsubscribes. Every marketing email has to give recipients a clear way to opt out, and under the US CAN-SPAM Act it must also carry your valid physical postal address. That address can be a registered PO box or a private mailbox from a commercial mail receiving agency, so you do not have to publish your home address. You must honor an opt-out within 10 business days, and you cannot charge for it or ask for anything beyond an email address to process it. If you email people in the EU or UK, the rules are stricter and generally require consent before you send at all. Do not take unsubscribes personally. People's interests change. A clean list of people who want to hear from you is better than a bloated list of people who do not.
Common Mistakes
Not starting. The biggest mistake is not having a list at all. Every day without email capture is audience you are building on rented platforms with no backup. Start today, even if you only have 10 subscribers.
Treating email like social media. Social media is public and algorithmic. Email is private and direct. Write accordingly. Your email voice should be more personal, more honest, and more direct than your social media voice.
Only emailing during releases. If your subscribers only hear from you when you want something, they will stop opening your emails. Maintain the relationship between releases so the audience is warm when you have an announcement.
Over-designing emails. A plain email that reads like a personal note fits an artist better than a polished template that reads like a brand broadcast. Your subscribers want to hear from you, not admire your graphic design. Heavy image-based layouts also give you less control over the message, because plenty of email clients block or delay images by default.
Buying email lists. Never. Purchased lists consist of people who did not consent to hear from you. They will not open your emails, they will mark you as spam, and your deliverability will crater. Build your list organically with people who actually chose to subscribe.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many subscribers do I need for email to be worthwhile?
Start at any number. Even 50 subscribers who are genuinely engaged with your music represent 50 people you can reach directly for every release, show, and project. The value scales with size, but the habit and system should be in place from the beginning.
What email platform should I use?
If you are starting and want free: MailerLite (250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month) or Mailchimp (250 contacts and 500 sends a month). If you want the largest free tier: Kit's Newsletter plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with limited automation. If you are focused on release campaigns: Laylo. Free-tier limits move, so confirm on the platform's own pricing page. Pick the simplest option and start. You can always migrate later.
Should I use SMS instead of email?
SMS can complement email but should not replace it. You will see SMS quoted at 90% or 98% open rates. Nobody can measure that, because a text message carries no tracking pixel and no read receipt, so treat those figures as marketing claims rather than data. SMS is genuinely more immediate than email, but it is also more intrusive, more expensive to send, and harder to use for detailed content. Use SMS for time-sensitive announcements (ticket on-sale, release day) and email for everything else.
How do I get people to open my emails?
Subject lines and sender reputation. Write subject lines that sound like a text from a friend, not a marketing department. Send consistently so subscribers expect and recognize your emails. Deliver genuine value so people learn that opening your emails is worth their time.
Read Next:
Coordinate Your Outreach:
Orphiq helps you plan your email campaigns alongside your release schedule so your list is always primed for the next announcement.