Guide for emailing as an Artist/Band

When you're faced with having to send hundreds of emails out to people this can be a daunting task.
What makes matters worse is that almost all the bloggers, radio shows and labels don't like being mass-emailed. I suppose this is fair enough but it's also a massive pain for musicians therefore you will have to email them all individually.
Here is my guide on how to do this:

• Use Gmail
• It's convenient, free, easy to use and stores all the email addresses you have used before so when you start typing up a followup email the recipients email should auto fill.
• Although Gmail is great, it can look a little amateurish when you post in on your social media and website, consider buying some email package to go hand in hand with your domain and use email forwarding.
• There is a handy tool available for free called YesMail which allows you make and save templates, gives you response rates for emails sent using templates and let's you see when people have opened their emails. Since discovering this tool my productivity has skyrocketed. I won't post a link but it's easy enough to find via Google
• Send a pre made email
• If you don't use the plug in, make a template and save it in to drafts
• You'll need to make a few different templates to cover all the email you'll be doing, have different ones for radio, gigs, labels, follow ups, etc.
• Content is KING
• What you write and how you write is almost as important as your music
• Take time to get the email right
• Don't overload it with information, keep the important bits in but trim all the fat
• Put links close to the top of the email and make them easy to see
• DON'T send attachments unless they have asked for them - not even pictures, put them on your site and link your site
• Make sure that all your social media is easy to see and you can click on the links (and that they go to the right place!).
• Once you have done this, the only thing you'll need to change in the foreseeable future is the "Dear...." part.
• Try making the email as personal as possible, don't write it like your sending a spam email, nobody likes that, instead try to write it as if your sending it to someone you already know in the business - that'll make it friendly and not spammy.
• Be consistent
• Spell Check!
• Follow up on your emails
• If you haven't heard back from your contact for a week it's acceptable then to follow up
• Use your pre made followup template and send it to everyone who didn't reply to your previous email that you sent the week before.
• Give them something to reply to. There's no in emailing "Hi, I sent you an email last week, any chance you could reply?". If you're sending it to radio for example ask them to give any feedback on the track, if there's any way to be involved with the upcoming show, if there's a way you can do a session for them. Give them something extra to bite to.
• Calling is always a good option if you can - but this article focuses on emails so I won't get into that.
• Be prepared to put in the hours
• On a normal day I can send 200 emails because I've nailed my system now by doing things logically and being organised
• Prepare for a whole load of "NO"
• My reply rates for blog sites are 6% (after emailing hundreds and hundreds)- which is depressing to say the least, but it's to be expected. 400 emails (two days solid work) to blogs might get you featured on just under 25. But on the flip side of this, these are all high quality blogs that thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people read and getting on 25 of them at the same time is something to be proud of so carry on doing it even if you're not seeing the results yet, it will pay off, and if nothing happens this time at least they already know your name for next time.