So, everyone will be ranting about Social Media to you and how important it is to everything you do now. Very true. I don’t doubt it and it’s an incredible asset to my business. Email is better,here’s why:
Between Facebook’s EdgeRank and the incredibly fast stream on Twitter and Instagram, your update and message are only going to be seen by a small amount of people and it’s going to miss it’s mark most of the time (Which is why you should recycle your content, more on that another time).
Your spot in someones inbox is a valuable position. You may not think it straight away, what with all the mountains of spam that does get through, but inboxes are getting better at filtering this out and its incredibly easy to make your inbox quite the sanctum of friends, family and trusted third parties. First thing most people do when they wake up is check their email, incredibly bad habit but we do it.
We love our inboxes because they are our personal box of love, you get in there and find out people love you, remember how it used to feel when you heard “You’ve got Mail!”, incredible. I was on such a high when I heard that… until as I said before you got hundreds and thousands of email every day asking for the sale. You’re not going to be one of those people. You are going to be sending out only the most valuable emails possible. Incredibly useful, incredibly respectful, incredibly intimate.
You need their email so you can develop the strongest personal relationship. Off it’s strength you can ask for the bums-on-seat sale. Sale means you have an easier time making the next film.
Your going to ask for it, and in return give them something of value.
Create exclusive content that your audience are going to want. A report, video, audio, PDF doc, give this away free in return for their email address. You could even give away your short for free, its gets them in the door and maybe your next film you can get start thinking about the money.
You give away this exclusive content and you might get 1 signup, you might 10. If you just get the one, then this is an incredible opportunity for you to personally reach out and say thanks, find out about the person and really build that relationship. One good relationship at a time is how you win in this film business. One good relationship leads to them sharing your film to 1, 2 maybe 3 people, they now know about you, could sign up and could share your film further. Everyone in the chain is important and it all starts with their email address.
In my next post on this subject I will run through what you are going to need to get the ball rolling on this. I’ll work hard to make it as easy as possible and get you in thier inbox in no time!
As some homework why don’t you sign up with an email newsletter provider; I recommend MailChimp because its easy, looks nice and friendly and best of all, free for the first 2000 subscribers.
Extras:
Paid method (Easiest)
Try SaneBox, this thing does the job, try it out for 14 days free and if you like it, buy it. I definitely recommend it.
The Free method:
Using Gmail and filters, overtime you can select spammy emails, use the ‘Create a filter’ option and slowly but surely get all the spam to ’Skip’ your inbox and reside in All Mail or a particular label of your choosing. Check out this video here: Clean your inbox