Are you Neglecting a Big Part of Your Promoting Business?

I noticed something the other day with many newer promoters that really worried me...

A buddy of mine is opening up a lounge in Dallas, TX and asked me if i would help him out and interview some of the promoters he was looking to hire.

I called up each of the promoters to conduct a phone interview (i wasn't looking to fly to Dallas in the summer) and I asked most of the promoters the same basic questions to get an idea of what kind of promoter they were...

One of my go-to questions to get them talking is:"give me an idea of your promoting process to bring people to my venue".

I got a bunch of different answers......some told me they would use myspace/facebook marketing.......some told me about an elaborate radio campaign......some were strong believers in a street team handing out passes...but out of the half dozen or more promoters i interviewed that week, only one of them discussed using an email marketing campaign. (and guess which one got my recommendation to hire???)


And when i say "an email marketing campaign", I'm not talking about someone that is going to send out a blast to their facebook or friendster buddies...
No, i mean someone that has an email list with names and emails of real people that will attend their parties.

There is a very big difference between email marketing and social network marketing. With Social Networking sites like myspace, you often have random people that are located all over the world as "friends" on these sites. While its great to have lots of friends all over, these people aren't realistically going to come to your party that Saturday night.


This is why building a good email list of realistic, local clients is so much more valuable and crucial to filling your venue...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking those that use social marketing, radio ads or street teams to promote, but i CAN NOT BELIEVE that they use these methods BEFORE email marketing.
Those are things that should be done ALONG with an email marketing campaign...email marketing should be the first thing you do THEN you use these other methods to help grow your party.

In my experience (and those of all the top promoters i know and work with) email marketing is the easiest, cheapest and BEST way to get people to your party.

For as little as $20 a month there are amazing sites that you can use to make your email marketing very simple and very effective.

These sites automatically send out the emails, track how many are delivered, how many are opened up and read, and how many of your links inside your emails are clicked on...its amazing!
There are a bunch of different companies out there that do this, but the one that i personally use for my own business to send out emails (including this one) is Aweber.

No matter what company you use, you want to make sure it's a big company that is well respected, otherwise you can run into problems.


I use Aweber because:

1) They are inexpensive
2) It's very easy to use (I don't have too much time to mess around with emails)
3) They have a great reputation in the business so your emails don't get sent to people's SPAM folder...which is a HUGE waste.


I started with a different company originally (which many other promoters were using at the time) but i found that many of my friends and clients weren't getting my emails when i asked them about them.

...they told me they never got it, or maybe it was sent to their SPAM folder.


So, regardless of what company you use, you need to make sure that you are using email marketing as a big part of your promoting business.

Build your email list of potential clients, email them regularly about your upcoming events, offer your clients incentives to attend like reduced admission or drink specials, and fill your party every week!

Repeat this cycle often and you are easily on your way to being a success in the promoting business...