Gig success tip #5 -List on Bandsintown (etc) free! (with low-cost extras)

Of the incredible array of music marketing tools that have been released over the past few years, gig-guide-in-the-sky Bandsintown remains among the best.

In fact the term 'gig guide' is a little limiting given its really a gig-guide on steroids!

Other than being able to conduct the standard search for gigs in your locality via browser or its own app, Bandsintown offers a range of other impressive features that all add up to invaluable free and/or low cost promotion for your gig.

Fabulous free features

First of these is the ability of your followers to Follow your own profile page. Once they do this they actually receive an email informing them of your upcoming gig.

This feature alone is worth its weight in gold because as we pointed out in our last piece in this series, email outperforms any other direct marketing tool when it comes to actually reaching your followers, unlike social media platforms like Facebook that now only reach less than 5% of followers.

But as they say in the ads, 'wait, there's more!'

Free email integration

Not only does Bandsintown send an email once your show is registered on their platform, it also sends a further specific email a week out from the show and even a further collated email with other acts you like, and their algorithm thinks you'll like.

Followers who have the app and the notification settings activated also are notified of your newly registered gigs via a notification on your mobile, adding even greater value.

And all free!

But if you want to arrange your own email campaigns, Bandsintown provides this too at reasonable prices and there are plenty of big names that do just that rather than run it via a seperate edm (Electronic Direct Mail) platform like Mailchimp.

Bandsintown say they offer each artist 10,000 free emails per month through the Email Builder. Additional emails can be purchased for $0.002 per email—that’s 500 emails for $1.

Other low cost goodies

But here's where the value really kicks in. Other than targeting your own followers, like Facebook boosts, you can actually arrange email campaigns targeting artists you think your followers will like and target them based on your budget.

For example, if you think Temper Trap followers will like your act, you can target them with both budget and locality to send them an email.

There's a bunch of other useful features via the platform so go and check out what it can do for you on their website.

Bandsintown and its ilk really are one of the great free tools you can use to promote your gig for very little effort and cost.

Need professional, yet affordable help with your marketing? Reach out to Craig today.