Michael Walker: Yeah. Alright. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Troy Ericson. So, Troy is the owner of EmailMarketing.com, so he knows a thing or two about email marketing. In fact, he's driven over $200 million in client revenue through email strategy, copy, and deliverability.

This is something that I feel like is still weirdly like a secret or almost like an unknown superpower. Pretty much every successful online business owner I know gets it—gets the power of email and how important it is in terms of a real business strategy—but it often goes underappreciated for artists and just in general.

So I’m excited to have him on the podcast today to talk a little bit about his experience as it relates to email, and also his experience as it relates to the intersection between that and the music industry as well. So, Troy, thank you for taking the time to be on the podcast today.

Troy Ericson: Yeah, thanks so much, Michael. I'm super excited to talk about music and email together. Most of the time, people just talk about email—and I love it—but when you throw music in, I mean, who doesn’t love that even more?

Michael: And we were just talking backstage about how you’re a big Metallica fan.

Troy: Absolutely. I've seen them 30 times live—four more this year in Tampa and Denver, which are the two places that I live right now. I've traveled all over the world to see them. I've met amazing friends. I've met the band. A lot of people kind of in their camp have some really cool stories and experiences I wouldn’t trade for the world.

It was like my bridge into music. I didn’t really listen to anything until I was about 13. My dad was taking me to football practice and he was like, “We need something to make you angry because you're too nice.” So I started listening to Metallica.

Michael: Oh man, that’s awesome.

It definitely—I mean, music has this amazing ability to bring people together, right? Even just like we were talking about earlier with one of our clients, Ryan Kresha with First to Eleven, a big Metallica fan as well. I think they’ve done some collaborations with Metallica, and so syncing you guys up—I know now you’re probably gonna have, even though you haven’t met, you have this foundation of connection through the shared community.

Even before we dive into some of the email strategy side of things, I’d love to hear your perspective of just as it relates to—you have a big background in digital marketing and online business—I’m curious, when you look at music and think about the role of what musicians can play in the wider industry… I think often musicians kind of undervalue what we do because it just seems normal.

So I’d love to hear your perspective a little bit about the kind of impact that music has made on your life and what you think that role is for the artists who are listening to this.

Troy: Yeah, so that’s a pretty broad—

Michael: Question.

Troy: No, a very broad question. But yeah. I mean, like I was saying, I didn’t really listen to music as a kid and I didn’t know what I was missing out on. I’m from Indiana, there’s not really any kind of scene there. And when I finally found a home musically—it started with Metallica, but it’s much more diverse now—I just think about how much I can look into myself.

I always tell my wife, I’m a very introspective person. At first she didn’t understand that because she’s much more extroverted. But I started thinking about why I am like that, and it’s literally all because of music. Metal a lot of times is like—you’re looking inside yourself, you’re looking at the problems in the world and you’re figuring out: how can I be better than a lot of these problems? How can I make myself and the people around me better?

And it’s also just a way to vent and get out all that stuff. I always like to say too, the best type of music to me is when you’re live at a show—probably when I’ve seen 70 shows. If I’m able to bounce, then I know the energy is good. And the same thing in my daily life—it just brings life, it breathes energy into me.

It’s incredible. I literally do feel like I’m a completely different person, and a lot of my success in business is derived from the inspiration of music. I’m finally at the point now where I’ve put in a lot of years of business—and I’m still working very hard—but it has gotten me the luxury of buying back time to actually get really good at music and play, and work on a demo and things like that. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do too.

Michael: Hmm. Oh man. If only there was a company or some kind of platform or software that could help talented artists who are just getting started launch their music and do it in a smart digital marketing way. Gosh, that would be awesome. I know a guy—I should think about doing something like that.

Cool. Well, I’m stoked to hear your demo when you share that. And maybe to zoom back a little bit, I would love to hear a little bit about your journey with becoming—you know, when I first heard about you, Troy, it was from Shane Heman, who’s one of our first success stories at Modern Musician.

He went from being a high school principal to transitioning to his music full time and turning it into a multiple six-figure per year music business. And yeah, when he first introduced you to me, he was like, “Troy is the guru. He’s the guy for email.” And that’s high praise coming from Shane because I have a lot of respect for him.

So I’m curious to hear a little bit about your story. How did you go from starting out where we all start—from scratch—to being able to generate over $200 million for your clients?

Troy: Sure, yeah. Shane's great, first of all. So there's actually two passions that I have outside of business. Obviously music is one. And you may not be able to see it behind me, but there's a whole bunch of sports stuff on this side and a whole bunch of music stuff on this side. So those are the two things.

For me growing up, like I said, my dad wanted to amp me up when I was 13 to play football. That’s how I got into Metallica. I ended up playing baseball at a very high level—Division II college. Music was a great inspiration for me there as well. But I always wanted to play professionally as a baseball player, and that’s what I had set out to do since I was roughly around that same age of 13.

I had a Tommy John surgery, which is basically the worst elbow surgery you can have. A lot of major leaguers have that. I had that when I was 16, which is not good. But I worked my butt off to make it to college, and at some point it all came crashing down—a little bit physical, a little bit mental, a little bit I just wasn’t good enough despite how hard I worked.

I took that very hard because that was my identity at the time. Maybe a lot of people can relate to that with music—there are times where it’s not going well and you feel like your identity is tied to your success. So I felt kind of lost. But I knew that I didn’t want to have a regular job. So I started to follow some people who were talking about how you can make money online doing different types of marketing. That’s literally where I started because I was graduating soon and needed to figure out how to not get a job.

So I had maybe about a year to really figure it out. I took a Facebook Ads course and I implemented it to the T. I went on Upwork and started getting some clients. I met a couple that really gave me an opportunity. One day one of them was like, “Hey, we need to fire you.” And I was like, “Wait, why? I'm in Ads Manager right now. Cost per lead is good. Nothing else really changed. Why?”

They said, “Well, we can’t really tell you.” And I said, “No, you’re gonna tell me right now. I have two clients. I don’t want a job. Tell me right now.” They said, “Okay, okay. So our emails are going to spam. You’re getting us these leads, but we can’t make any money off of them. Not really your fault, but sorry.”

And I was like, “I’m gonna fix it. I have a little bit of email experience from my other client. I’m not gonna charge you for this, but when I fix it, you’re gonna pay me double.” They said, “Okay, fine. Whatever.” Over the course of that summer, they almost 4x’d their email revenue—from $13,000 a month to $51,000.

They were like, “Oh wow, okay, well I should keep you on.” Eventually I fired them because I had too many people. I started going to events and people were like, “Wow, this whole email list management thing—you have a good list, you mail it every day, your deliverability is good, you know the right email automations to send at the right time—and I want that.”

So it kind of just turned into a whole business. Now we have an entire team and have generated over $200 million for clients. It’s really fun—it feels like it’s not really a company, it’s like a whole village and community and team that I’m building. It’s very special.

So those are the three things in life that I really enjoy: business, music, and sports. I’ve definitely learned a lot about myself through that time, and I mentally feel better about the whole situation.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I always appreciate hearing different success stories across different industries, including this one. They’re different, but also they have underlying patterns that you see are the same across different areas.

I think a lot of people who are listening to this hopefully can relate to this feeling of being at a crossroads where they have an aversion to the idea of “getting a real job” or going back and getting a real job. And now they’re looking at how do I take more ownership and control of my own destiny.

I’m curious for you, at that point when you were facing the fork in the road—“Am I gonna have to go back and get a real job, or am I gonna figure this out?”—I’m guessing that some of those first courses that you took, you had to invest your time and money and make a decision to commit and go for it without knowing if it was gonna work out.

I’m curious what your mindset looked like at that point. If someone’s listening to this right now and they’re in a similar place with their music—like, “I don’t really have proof that it’s going to work. I think it’s good, people tell me it’s good, but I can either take a bet on myself or do the easy thing and get a job”—what’s your perspective around that?

Troy: Yeah. At that time, that course was a thousand bucks and it seemed like a fortune, especially for somebody who was a student. At that time too, I was learning. I learned a little bit before that, right? Because everybody starts on YouTube and tries to learn the free stuff before they buy the course.

On my mom’s side of the family, they have this really old-school hardware store back in Indiana. So I started helping her a little bit with that. We had somewhat of a trade. I was like, “Hey, I’ve been helping you with marketing. There’s this course, it’s a thousand bucks. If you could pay for part of this, I will implement everything in this course that I’m learning in addition to what I’ve already been doing for you for free.”

So I negotiated a little bit, but at the same time I had to put down some of my own money as well. It was a little bit scary. But the nice thing is, at that time I was still a little bit naive. I know a lot of people have a bad experience the first time they spend money on marketing, but for me, I didn’t have any burns from the past. So I had full belief—everything I had was in this.

I just went into it, and in my head, it couldn’t fail. I jumped in with that attitude—not even really on purpose, just because I was ignorant to the fact that things fail sometimes. I just jumped in, I followed it to the T, and it was really the only thing to do. Sure, I had to go to a couple classes and whatnot, but at that time I didn’t really care anymore. There was no point.

So I studied it all day long, and as I did it, I implemented it on Upwork and with Ads Manager, and it worked out. There are a lot of decisions in life—even little ones you don’t realize every single day—that impact your future. Sometimes you really just have to go with how you feel and what you want for your life.

There are a lot of successful people who say this—I think even Bezos said it at one point—there are reversible decisions and there are irreversible decisions. Getting married is a little bit harder to reverse, very painful, so make sure you find the right person. But buying a course? If it doesn’t work out, you’re not screwed. A lot of people think it’s life and death. It is not.

One thing I learned through failing with baseball is it felt like life and death. So now anything I did from then on felt a lot easier. Even when you’re on the field, if you make a mistake, the next play starts in 20 seconds. You have 20 seconds to figure it out. In business, you have days, weeks—it just seems like forever.

So yeah, I think that’s my perspective on the whole thing.

Michael: Hmm. That’s super helpful. Yeah, I feel like that’s one of those things that comes back often—the perspective around failure. People who have success have a different relationship with failure. They almost don’t even view failure as failure in terms of a final thing. It’s almost like it’s a good thing—it means they’re making progress and just need to aim a little bit differently.

Like shooting a free throw: you can only learn by throwing it. You can’t just aim forever. You might miss, but then you know where to aim.

Cool. Maybe zooming into some stuff that you talk about a lot, which is great because you’re really good at it—the email side of things. I’m debating whether I want to go geeky and technical right out of the gate, or maybe start a little bit more zoomed out. Probably should start more with the fundamentals.

So for a musician who’s listening right now—maybe they’ve been listening to this podcast or they’ve been in our camp—they probably understand that email is important because we talk about it. But for anyone who maybe doesn’t fully get it or understand: why email in the first place? Why not just social media? Shouldn’t I just try to focus on blowing up my Instagram or TikTok?

Why email? Can you share a little bit of background in terms of why it’s an important thing to focus on for artists?

Troy: Sure. Yeah. So a few thoughts on that. I was thinking about it last night because I knew this question was gonna come up. Mm-hmm. I think about my favorite musicians, bands, artists, even comedians that I like. I'm gonna do a lot of research on them. Eventually I'm gonna hit their website. That means I'm pretty serious. Okay? So if you're not collecting the most serious people who are on your website, you are 100% relying upon social media and an algorithm. And let's be honest, your videos may not go viral ever, or not very often, and the best people to follow you that really, really like you are looking you up on the internet and digging to find you.

They are going to be on your website, in your funnel, wherever. And those people, it's a little bit different than business, right? I'm not looking to necessarily close a deal, but you never know who's joining your list. You never know. There are people that are very silent that don't reply very often, but they read everything. All of a sudden they get that one message about, "Hey, we're gonna be here," or, "We're gonna be doing this, we just released this." And now they're like, "Oh, this is my chance." And then you never know.

Even how I got here is Brett from Roots of Creation connected us. I didn't even really know that he was connected with you. And I was super stoked about this, because like I said, I love music and business and this is the combination. I didn't know that Brett was gonna do that.

Also, the one thing that I really want to get across about social media—and I'm not hating it because it's fantastic—but if you listen to Gary V who says, "Post 10 times a day," people accept that for social media. But then when it comes to email, they're like, "Oh, I'm only gonna send once a month because I think that's the right amount." What's the difference between social media and email? It's just a different platform.

And then you think about, okay, I'm gonna post Instagram Reels, I'm gonna post TikToks, YouTube Shorts, whatever. You do know, right, that if somebody follows you, subscribes, whatever, they are less likely to see your content—at least in the long run. Like if you subscribe… Now, YouTube's algorithm might be a little bit different, but here's the thing: on Instagram, let's say I'm following a thousand people. There's no way they can show you everyone unless I'm on the app all day long. So the amount of followers that see your content is actually like 5–10% a lot of times.

And sure, when you go viral, they'll see it. But those platforms are built to find new people, which is awesome for the front end and acquiring fans, helping them find you. But you have to collect them for the long term. And if you know what you're doing with email marketing, you can get 30, 40, 50% open rates, and that's a lot better than 5–10% of people who are so distracted by all the other content on there anyway, that they're probably gonna lose you.

So I just wanted to be very clear about that. Social media, email. Both great. They both have their roles, but I'm just giving you the facts right now about how the whole system works.

Michael: Hmm. A hundred percent. Yeah. It is surprising how little, in terms of revenue, someone with a huge following on social media that doesn't have an email list versus someone that has a 100th of the size of the following on social media, but has a robust email list, could outperform the social media influencer. Pretty amazing.

I'm curious, for someone who is kind of like, "Okay, cool, email is something I want to get better at. I want to understand how it works." But they are still early on and maybe they just need a fundamental breakdown of what are the most important things for them to really focus on. Could you break it down in terms of maybe the top three to five fundamentals that go into email marketing?

If you're gonna come into an entirely new business who's just getting started with their email, and you're like, "These are the three to five things that you gotta focus on as a starting point," what are those fundamentals?

Troy: Sure. So really I like to think about, before I dive into email marketing, where are the bases that I need to cover? So you should probably have a website, right? You should have a centralized place attached to your website. Somewhere there's gonna be a CRM of some type, whether it's your Street Team.

Michael: If you're watching this right now, then you should definitely use Street Team. Okay.

Troy: Yeah. So that's kind of like your home base, right? And then you might think of like, all right, well, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whatever, which is all great, but they're all kind of the same platform. And now I have to think, okay, whenever I get interest on these different platforms, I need to add them to my CRM because that is what retains somebody for the long term.

So there are a few different ways you could do that. You can obviously have an email opt-in on your website, and ideally one that doesn't just say, "Sign up for updates," because that's boring. There has to be some kind of little behind-the-scenes thing that would be really cool for somebody to see. If they give you their email, you give them that piece of bonus content, okay? And updates, shows we're gonna be playing, whatever else.

At that point too, a lot of times I'll subscribe and I get nothing. So that's not good. There needs to be some type of welcome sequence that explains a little bit about who you are, what you stand for, and how people can find you in other ways as well. You could share your socials, but you can also just talk about really anything that you have seen so far in your career that people look at you or your band or your whoever, and they're like, "I found you because of that," or, "I really started to like you when I saw this."

Those are the types of things that you should be sharing with people in that initial email sequence, in addition to who you are and what you stand for, and sharing all pieces of content that kind of live in that world.

Now, when you are setting up your CRM, there's a way you can test those emails as well to make sure that people are actually getting them, so you can get those 30, 40, 50% open rates. Especially early on in your sequence, it's pretty easy to get north of 50%. And if you have a small list, you can get even higher than that. There are ways to check that. That's nitty gritty, we can get into that later.

But then after that, it's like you have your initial sequence, people are getting it. Now I just need to make sure that I'm emailing people regularly—at least once a week if you're new at least. And really just… you might think, "If I only put out new music every few months, why am I sending an email more than every few months?" But again, all the people who love social media: if there's a clip that does really well, share it. If there is something you see and you learn conceptually, like, "Oh, that's smart," share it with your list.

And don't assume that people know everything about you. There are two ways to go about that. One: you are so down the rabbit hole of yourself or your band that you know everything, and to you, it might seem like old news. But to the people who are following you, it's not.

And the second piece of that is, have you ever seen one of your favorite artists put out some kind of update and you're like, "Yeah, I already knew that." But it gives you a sense of pride when you already know something about them, because it makes you feel like a bigger fan. It's a deeper relationship. So even if they do already know it, it just strengthens their bond with you anyway.

So the initial sequence, deliverability, and mailing regularly—and not being self-conscious and thinking everybody already knows about you, because they don't.

Michael: Hmm. I love that. Yeah. The reminder that it's okay if someone's already heard a story to hear it again. That's actually a good thing, to go deeper. Another way to look at it would be: do you just listen to a song once? And then you're like, "Alright, cool. I got it." Yeah. Or is it that the more you listen to it, the more entrained it gets, the more you enjoy it, and you kind of appreciate it. If you listen to it too much, then it's like, okay, yeah, you might back off on it.

But I think you're right that we often overestimate how much people remember or care about the stories that they hear, and we underestimate how often they need to be reminded in order to build a deeper relationship. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Hmm. Cool. Okay. So what I'm hearing you say is that the foundation is that you do want to make sure you have a home base. Social media is great for discovering new people, but also you don't really own those platforms. And so you want to have your own community, your own list.

And I really like the way that you put it in terms of your email sending compared to social media posting. Like if you post once a day or multiple times a day on social media, why should you not also communicate and take those posts or share those things through your email list, which is a much better form of communication?

So that's an interesting idea too. A lot of artists, I think, have a social media content calendar. So it's like, look at your social media content calendar and break out one of those posts at least a week, is what you're saying. But would you recommend, in an ideal world if someone was willing to do the work and do it right, what do you think is the roughly ideal timeline for people to be communicating with their fans through email?

Troy: Yeah. So in the main, you know, like business world where there's something for sale, I'm a huge proponent of every single day. Because a lot of people, the business owner, they don't really realize that their audience isn't paying as much attention as they do, so they get too far in their own head of like, I'm annoying people. But the truth is, when you get an email in your inbox, it's not like a pressing, urgent thing that's forcing people to do it right now. So they open it at their leisure, and you can even have options next to the unsubscribe button like, “Hey, do you wanna receive less?” Instead of every day, you can do half as much or something to that effect.

It can be tough when you're a creator and you're not necessarily asking people to book a call or buy something on the spot to come up with those ideas every day. But what you can do is make a goal for yourself, like, “Hey, I'm gonna send bare minimum twice a week, three times a week.” And in order for me to do that, I need to be consistent with my content on social because I'm just gonna take the best pieces of it that do the best, and I'm gonna share it. Or anytime we think of an update about our band or about myself or whatever, I'm gonna share that. Or when I am just sitting around and I think of an idea, I'm gonna write it in my phone so I can share it. Or if I remember, oh yeah, that one time we did this super cool show here—share that, it's cool.

People really like seeing that. And just understand, if somebody unsubscribes, that doesn't mean that they hate you. If somebody replies back and they say something mean, that's more a reflection of them having a bad day than anything. So just really, really understand that. I really wanna tie together email and social media again, because if you do it right, your audience will grow very fast.

And you know, I'm not sure of everything that you teach, Michael, but one thing that I've seen work really well in a lot of places is, for example, if you put out a piece of TikTok content and then you hire a bunch of people on Fiverr for a few dollars per video to have a fan page and repost the video, you can literally have hundreds of other accounts reposting your videos. And as you learn, you'll kind of figure out like, okay, well, at the beginning of the video it does really well if we have this, or if we have that, or this angle works well. Now all of a sudden you take what's working and you're amplifying it by hundreds.

And right at the end of the video, you can have people visit the link in your profile and boom, they're coming into your funnel, into your world. You're growing your audience on social and on email. And it's just like, if you stay with it long enough, your audience will grow and you will be so motivated to share more because you're seeing that it's working. So ultimately, just be in the game, create a lot of content, and then the emails will write themselves.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Cool. I like that a lot. I think that's a really helpful frame to take—it is making it holistic and connecting to the content that they're posting on socials as well as their emails to bring people off of socials to their own community.

I'm curious now, kind of like diving in—maybe this is more like the geeky nitty gritty stuff, but it feels relevant right now. Is there something happening in the world of email deliverability or regulations? At the time of recording this, with text messaging there’s the 2P regulations, and that was sort of like a big hurdle for a lot of people who were sending text messages. Definitely could be a good thing just so we cut back on spam, but it also makes it extremely challenging, even for people who are doing it right, to send out text messages.

It also feels like maybe there's some stuff happening right now with email as well, with Gmail and Microsoft and Hotmail in terms of deliverability. You probably have better perspective than anyone I know on what's happening right now. For either a business owner like myself or for our artists who are running their own music businesses and primarily using emails to connect with their fans and drive their business sales, what do they need to know that's happening right now, and how can they navigate the waves that are coming to be able to stay connected with their fans?

Troy: Sure. Yeah. So the whole thing with deliverability right now—and the truth is, it does get harder all the time—but it is kind of like updating a software. More or less, if you have the most recent update, the next update's not gonna be that hard. But if you're several updates behind, it's gonna be kind of difficult and things are gonna go very slowly and not smoothly.

So in 2025, some of the major things that have happened are actually with Yahoo and Outlook subscribers. But to keep the whole thing simple: Google is winning the race in terms of whatever they do, Yahoo and Outlook and the other providers pretty much copy it at this point. So Google had a pretty large algorithm update at the beginning of 2024 that said, “Hey, you need to be fully authenticated with your email deliverability if you send more than 5,000 emails per day.” And it's still recommended even if you're not sending that many.

So what does that mean? Basically, security features. There's SPF, there's DKIM, and there's DMARC.

So SPF is like: every platform that you send from needs to be listed in your SPF record. And all these things are in your DNS, like in your website host. SPF is just a list of the different places you send from. So it could be your CRM, it could be a Shopify store that sends its own emails, if you have a customer support portal, things like that. They all need to be included in your SPF—and even your personal inbox as well, like your G Suite inbox, Google Work.

Michael: So it’s like a list of domains?

Troy: Yes. There's a way to include those. Then your DKIM is like a key—DomainKeys Identified Mail, something like that. Each platform will give you its own key that you put in your DNS. And then DMARC is kind of like the icing on the cake, where once you've done those first two, you basically solidify like, “Hey, if any email is sent from my domain that's not listed above, what do we do with it?” And you can basically block that from happening. So there's ways where hackers can send emails as you. Google’s trying to prevent that, right? So it's just security features they want to see you implement. If you implement them, they're going to like you a lot better for deliverability.

But I know a lot of people are listening like, oh my gosh, this sounds like alphabet soup. What's going on right now? So you can go to MailGenius.com and basically send an email to the address that's on the screen, click a button, and it will tell you if you're good with all that stuff. And if you're not, then how to fix it. That's the entire point of that site, and I’d recommend everybody at least takes a look at it if you want to learn about deliverability. Plus, there are a whole bunch of other new insights.

And then the last thing you kind of need to pay attention to as well is if you go to Google Postmaster, which is postmaster.google.com, you can sign up and Google will tell you exactly how you're doing with all those things—and if anybody is marking your emails as spam. They're very strict about that these days. They'll even give you a bunch of green checks going all the way down the screen, or red Xs if you're doing it right or wrong. So at least look at those couple of tools, and if you do that right, Yahoo and Outlook will follow, because for the most part, they pretty much just copy what Google's doing.

Michael: Hmm. Cool. Good to know. So I heard MailGenius.com. Then another one was called Post… Postmaster.Google.com?

Troy: Postmaster.Google.com. Although I do like Postmark as well—that's what I use for SMTP. That's a whole other conversation.

Michael: I think Postmark is on top of mind because Shane was talking about it as well. Probably because of you guys.

Cool. Side note, Troy. I just had a thought as you were talking about MailGenius. I don't know if you already have something like this or you've thought about it, but I feel like it would be really smart for you on EmailMarketing.com or something to have your own MailGenius tool that can do that for people.

And if you have a development team, or if you wanted to sync up on something like that, I feel like I personally—and potentially some of our developers—we could create something like that both internally for our Street Team software. I bet that would be a really cool thing to integrate with your platform because what you're teaching is so awesome, and I bet that’d be a great lead magnet for people who are looking to get email deliverability stuff.

Troy: Yeah, I own a good piece of MailGenius. But we're always building different softwares and tools and integrations and partnerships. So yeah, we have a great dev team now, and I'm always looking for more ideas. I'm a little bit more of a “no” guy with ideas these days, but I do listen to them all.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Makes sense. Cool. Alright, so email deliverability. You just shared a few tools that people can use to basically check and make sure that they are crossing their T's and dotting their i's as it relates to their email sending.

I guess last question I would have as it relates to the more tactical parts of email are: in terms of best practices for conversion and sales types of call-to-actions. I feel like this is something that artists in particular really struggle with. A lot of people struggle with selling and offers—especially artists who don't want to come across as salesy or like they're selling out with their music.

So I'm curious what you'd suggest in terms of both a mindset around sales with their emails, and also how they might break down their email sending. If they're doing once a week or even once a day, how many of those should have a direct call-to-action to a sale? What are your thoughts?

Troy: Sure. So the mindset side, at the end of the day, whether you know it or not, you are selling 24/7. It doesn't matter if you're telling your spouse, "Hey, we should go out to eat here," or if you are selling a million-dollar deal in a huge business setting, right? Like everything in between is selling as well. That's how it is. And the reason that people are even listening to you or within your world in the first place is because they have some level of respect for you, and you always have to sell ideas no matter what.

And that's the only way. Even if you have a job, you're selling your time and they're paying you, right? So like everything—everybody needs to sell to survive no matter what you do. So it's completely okay. There are a lot of people who don't understand that, who will say that you're a sellout for just trying to survive, and it's crazy. And again, that's another one of those examples. It's actually somewhat unique to the music industry.

Like I was saying, some people reply mean things to emails, but most of the time it's about like, "Stop talking to me so much." But in music, it might be, "You're a sellout." But it is really the same when you boil it down—the same core feeling or internal thing that they need to work on. They're just expressing it in a different way. And you should never feel bad if somebody is trying to put their opinion on you without being in your shoes.

And they haven't had the full, honest conversation in their head like you have. And I wish the best for that person, I really do. But you can't always help everyone at the exact time, or ever sometimes. You can try to help them by selling them, right? Whatever you happen to be selling. Whether it's, "Hey, go listen to this," or, "Hey, go buy this t-shirt," or really anything in between, or even trying to go on tour. You're always selling something, right? So you just have to make sure that you're okay with it and you have your values. And the other person's talking to you because you have something that they want. And maybe they'll say yes. Maybe they'll say something mean and they'll say no. But there's always another one. So just learn whatever you can if somebody says no, and then go on to the next one.

Now what—sorry, what was the other question? I love getting philosophical. Something about tactics?

Michael: Yeah, no, that was great. I mean, to reiterate what you just said there, it sounds like what you're saying is that no matter how successful you are, no matter how good your music is, there's always gonna be people that don't resonate with it. And it's often something that they're going through. So that's not necessarily something to take personally when that happens.

And like everything is sales in the sense that, whether we realize it or not, basically we're having these conversations and we all have—whether it's our time that we're selling or just ideas—it’s something that we don't need to hide. It's something that we can do transparently. And I like what you said too about people being on your list because they respect you in some way. They get value from being subscribed to you, or else they would unsubscribe, which they can.

But I feel like that's an important thing that a lot of artists struggle with—not realizing that they have value, or not fully appreciating the value that they're giving. And that might be sort of a limiting factor on what they sell, because they're not convinced that the value is there. In which case, why should someone else believe in you if you don't believe in yourself?

So yeah, really, I like the mindset stuff, the philosophical part, because I think that is sort of like a core seed that, if that's not there, if that's not fertilized, then the rest of it is gonna struggle to even blossom.

And then what was the other part of the question? I think it was more tactical. It was more like how often—like how many emails—should they all have a call to action with something to sell, or should it be every once in a while? What are your thoughts there?

Troy: Yeah, so in the business world, it's more so like not every email has to sell. And even when you do tell a story, you can sell at the bottom or in the PS. Just understand that if the email is short and sweet and simple and has a very direct call to action, it'll get more clicks and more throughput, but those people will be a little bit less serious.

Versus the longer emails, where they have to go through the whole thing—you’re going to get less clicks and less throughput. But the people who do make it to the bottom, you know, they read the whole story or at least a good portion of it, so they're going to be more sold by the time they click that link to go do what you want them to do.

But there's not really a rule on it. In the music industry, I'm not wanting to be selling a physical product or a shirt every day. Because at that point, the reason they came here is because of what you stand for. And they also think that you're pretty cool because you guys sound tight and it’s good and it makes them move, it makes them happy.

So a lot of times the selling is really just the stories and the music itself. And then when you do come around with something for sale, whether it's a t-shirt, or, "Hey, we're looking for help from our subscribers," or, "If you know somebody who is looking to partner with the band, put us on the road," or, "We're trying to get published and land a record deal," whatever it might be—you can ask from your audience too. And that makes them feel good when they're able to help.

Like if somebody asks you for directions on the street and you're like, "Yeah, it's that way," you feel that little sense of pride that you helped someone. So again, I'm going to defer to probably the first answer. You just have to put out a lot of content and the emails will write themselves. And you'll know, like, okay, if this piece of content hits and I send an email about it, maybe the next day I should try to sell the t-shirt that goes along with that clip that went viral.

Or maybe we just got a thousand new subscribers yesterday because the video popped. I want to, for the next week, kind of acclimate them a little bit with more of our music. And then I want to have an ask of some type. Because you never know who opted in. Out of those thousand people, they're not all just fans. Some of them are bigger heads at bigger places that are very experienced and know a lot of people.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. Cool. So it sounds like what you're saying is that there's not really a one-size-fits-all approach to it. It's different for different types of artists and what you're offering. But you wouldn't recommend just hitting people over the head with the exact same offer, like a CD or something, every single time.

But if you had a call to action where people could go explore your shop, or if you just made a point to share your stories and connect with people, and then every once in a while had a direct ask for something, then often people—that actually feels really good for them to be able to reciprocate and provide value.

Awesome. Troy, it's been great to connect, and I really appreciate you sharing some of your experience around email as it relates to the music industry. I see it as sort of like a deep well that you've built, and I appreciate the expertise to help our community connect more with their fans and actually monetize their music, which can be challenging to do on social media. So thank you.

And for anyone that is here right now that is interested in learning more as it relates to email strategies and the email deliverability packages and things in your world, what's the best place for them to go to connect more?

Troy: Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Michael. So the easiest place is FAQEmail.com. What that is, is it's a document where I answer all the frequently asked questions that people ask me about email marketing. It's really good. People love it. It's free.

And the side benefit to that is when you opt in, if you reply to any of the emails, I will see them. I still receive every reply and I check that folder every day. And music is a soft spot for me. So if there's anybody that wants to talk about email or music, rock and roll, whatever it might be, I'm down. So yeah, FAQEmail.com is how you enter my world.

Michael: Awesome. Well, like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy access. And Troy, thanks again for being on the podcast today.

Troy: Thank you so much.

Michael: Yeah, let's go.