How to promote subscriptions to your music fans

So you've decided to start selling fan subscriptions, and you’ve determined the rewards to offer your fans. Now it’s time to get the word out and promote your subscriptions offering. 

Promoting subscriptions to your fans is a little different than promoting a crowdfunding project. With subscriptions, there’s no set deadline or release date. It’s an ongoing offer with a constant stream of new content and rewards for your fans.

Here are some of the ways that you can approach promoting subscriptions to your fans to get them excited to sign up. 

Promote Exclusivity

When deciding the rewards for your fans, be sure to have some really exclusive perks. As you promote your subscription options, you’ll essentially be selling the exclusivity of being a subscriber or fan club member. 

Perks like previously unreleased songs and videos, behind the scenes updates, and private online shows are all things that can make your fans feel like they’re part of an exclusive club. 

Promote Access

Similar to exclusivity, you’ll also be selling the access that your fans will get by subscribing. This can be early access to new tracks, access to your full discography of music, or to presale tickets.

But, you’re also selling access to you, the artist. Offering subscriptions is all about regularly releasing new content, and engaging with your biggest fans. So be sure to remind fans that they’ll gain access to come along on your journey as an artist. 

Have a launch event 

Similar to having an album launch show, you can also have a launch event for your subscriptions. Instead of simply announcing that fans can now join your fan club, why not build anticipation that something special is on the way for your fans? 

This event can be a free online show with a Q&A. You don’t have to say what you’re going to be announcing at the show. Just make it clear that your fans will want to attend to get a first look at something awesome that you’re releasing.

For the launch event, you’ll want to have some initial exclusive rewards ready to go for those fans that will subscribe immediately. Unreleased tracks, new song demos, merch discounts, pre-sale tickets for an upcoming tour, limited edition signed merch, etc.

You can publish the subscriptions area on your website right before the online show, and then share the link for subscribing several times during the event.

Website

With Bandzoogle’s Subscriptions feature, you can run a fan club directly through your website. This means that you’ll be driving fans to your website which you own and control. Unlike using outside service, fans pay you directly for subscriptions, and those revenues are commission-free. 

So when running a fan club on your website, there are a few ways to bring attention to it:

Have a main menu page dedicated to Subscriptions

The fan club area on your website should be visible to all visitors on your main menu. With Bandzoogle’s Subscriptions feature, you can dictate where on the menu it appears, and also customize the page name.

When naming your Subscriptions page, it could be as simple as “Subscribe” or “Fan Club,” or even names like “Backstage Pass,” “VIP Area,” or “Green Room.” This can help convey that there’s something exclusive on the page. 

Include a call-to-action in your header

When launching your fan club, be sure to use the call-to-action in your header to point to the subscriptions page. A call-to-action will help guide your website visitors to the action you’d like them to take. In this case, it’s to check out your subscriptions page. 

If you’re going to do a launch event for your fan club, then at first your call-to-action can be to RSVP to the online event. 

Include info on your Homepage

Besides the call-to-action, you should also include some information on your Homepage about your fan club. This could be part of a welcome message at the top of the page that has a short bio of who you are and what you do. You can then include a sentence or two about your fan club with a link to take visitors to that page.

Have info on your Music & Store pages

Similar to the Homepage, you should also include information about your fan club along with a call-to-action link from your Music and Store pages. 

If fans are on those pages, they’re likely considering making a purchase. So it’s a great opportunity to encourage them to check out all of the regular rewards and perks they’ll get by joining your fan club, while supporting you on an ongoing basis. 

Redesign your website 

Taking it a step further, you can do a complete redesign of your website. This is similar to redesigning your site when launching a new album. You can change the website template, change the color scheme, update the imagery, change the fonts, and more. 

For your fans and regular visitors to your website, this will really help convey that something new and exciting is launching. 

Build a professional website in just a few clicks where you can sell fan subscriptions commission-free! Try Bandzoogle now.

Video

Intro video

To promote subscriptions with video, you can of course include an intro video on the paywall page of your website. This video should be short, but will help create context for why your fans should subscribe. Let them know that they’ll get exclusive rewards and access, and how it will help your career.

Video blogs

If you create video blogs, you can mention your subscriptions offering during, or at the end of those vlogs. 

You could also release vlogs that specifically show the behind the scenes of creating subscriber-only rewards. This will give fans who aren’t yet subscribers a glimpse of some of the exclusive rewards and perks they’ll get by subscribing. 

Video descriptions 

Another way to use video to promote subscriptions is by including info and a link in all of your video descriptions. You can keep this brief, even just a sentence with a call-to-action asking fans to click the link to check out how they can get access to exclusive rewards. 

Live stream preview shows

If you’ll be offering regular live stream shows or Q&A’s to your subscribers, every once in a while, you can make one of them open to all of your fans. 

This will give them a taste of what the monthly live streams are like, and you can even take that opportunity to announce any new rewards or perks that have been added for subscribers.

Email list

When it comes to driving music sales, ticket sales, and in this case, subscribers, email is still your best option. Year after year, email still offers the highest returns for marketers across all industries. 

A few ways that you can use your email list to promote subscriptions:

• Send a dedicated email to promote the initial launch event for your subscriptions

• Send a follow-up email after the launch event when your fan club is live 

• Have a call-to-action on the sidebar or footer of all subsequent newsletters pointing readers to the fan club page on your website

• If you add any new big rewards or rewards tiers, send a dedicated email letting your fans know about it

The bottom line is that when launching subscriptions, you’ll want to use your email list to help keep it top of mind for your fans. 

Social media

A big part of running subscriptions is engaging with your fans. The same of course applies to social media. So you’ll want to leverage all of your social profiles to keep fans informed of your subscriptions offering.

If you have a launch event, you can heavily promote it across your socials to drive as many of your fans as possible to attend. Once your fan club has officially launched, you can then do another round of heavy promotion to let fans know they can now join.

Once the initial launch of your subscriptions is done, you can regularly post info about exclusive tracks, online shows, ticket pre-sales, and other perks that only your subscribers get. 

Some examples would be:

• When posting pics or videos about the process of creating new music or videos, you can mention when they’re for subscribers only

• If you have any online concerts/lives streams that are subscriber-only, you can promote those to all of your fans to encourage them to join and attend

• Post pics of any physical merch that is exclusive to subscribers 

• Occasionally remind your followers about the exclusive rewards you’re offering

• Promote any new tiers or rewards that you’ve added for fan club members

• And of course, don’t forget to publicly thank your current subscribers, which your other followers will see

It’s important not to overdo it though. You can of course sprinkle in info about subscriptions, but it shouldn’t become the sole focus of your social media presence. Not all of your fans will become subscribers, and that’s ok. They can still support your career in plenty of other ways.

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When promoting subscriptions, you can’t be passive about it and simply post a link on your website. You’ll need to leverage all of the promotional tools at your disposal. Then it’s all about regularly engaging with your fans to let them know all of the exclusive rewards and perks that you’re offering.

Need help with setting up subscriptions on your own Bandzoogle website? Check out the subscriptions feature help article: Creating a Subscriptions Page