Country star turned pop princess Taylor Swift, made some serious big wins in the year of 2014. The American singer-songwriter was named Woman of the Year for 2014 by Billboard Magazine. Her fourth album, 1989 has become the fastest-selling album in last 12 years. The album created an online frenzy on social media, with official hashtags #TS1989 and #taylurking having garnered more than 700K tweets reaching 4 billion tweeple. Speaking of ROI, the album sold a whooping 600,000 copies in the first 48 hours of it being on the shelves.
In the rapidly evolving landscape called the music industry, where consumer is the undisputed king, at the young age of 24, Taylor continues to drop album after album, strumming up uncontestable buzz using social, mobile and digital channels with her loyal fans who keep investing in her brand.
Email Marketing Ideas
Here are a few tips inspired from Taylor’s marketing strategy which you can use to ramp up your email marketing campaign and accomplish your digital marketing goals.
PREMIUM ACCESS
Taylor’s team gave a special ‘behind the scenes’ access to Swifties leading up to the album’s release on digital channels such as Instagram and Vine. Never forget, loyal fans love to be treated in a special way by having premium insider access. The image shared on Instagram earned thousands of likes in minutes of it being uploaded and even helped her team build deluxe-edition awareness for the album’s corporate partner Target.
What is the point of having a consumer/business email list, if you haven’t segmented it properly, identifying loyal customers. The lesson to be learnt here is that most marketers today forget that their loyal subscribers shouldn’t be treated like generic crowd. Hence, when you successfully create a responsive audience after sending offers to the list procured from FrescoData, you need to appreciate that audience in one or the other ways.
FRIENDS & CORPORATE PARTNERS
Taylor’s marketing team makes sure that the release of her new album is supported by popular product or event. Likewise, for her Red tour and promotion, Taylor had exclusively collaborated with Diet Coke. While for 1989, Target offered loyal fans a unique opportunity to get her deluxe album, which included additional tracks and polaroid’s along with 1989 track listing and lyrics.
Branding elevated to a new level when New York’s Tourism board appointed Taylor Swift as their global welcome ambassador. Everyone right from Ed Sheeran to Lorde tweeted out their love for 1989 album on Twitter. Some of these heavyweights are also Taylor’s friends, who helped her reach out to fans by establishing credibility for her fourth album and getting fans even more excited for all her songs.
Never underestimate the influence of friendship and powerful collaborations. Keep a special space for cross-promotional campaigns to foster a symbiotic relationship, which can be deemed a win-win for your product awareness campaigns.
PRESS COVERAGE
For a brand, one of the smartest ways to set your brand message is by letting your views on it resonate clearly instead of waiting for secondary sources to pile on. On August 18th, Taylor Swift and iHeartRadio in collaboration with Yahoo! presented a worldwide live stream along with previews from 1989, where Swift headed the discussion about her new album. She was able to debut it by giving her perspective on it, instead of letting reviews make their way.
As a brand, you can do the same by sharing your perspective on a specific product during a promotional email campaign, instead of letting your reviewers and critics take the lead. Let your loyal subscribers know why the product is in the market, how and why it matters.
PUT YOUR BEST FOOT FORWARD
On the same day as her Yahoo! debut, Taylor Swift launched Shake It Off, which has garnered more than 329,776,618 million views on YouTube. Visually heavy channels like Tumblr were able to feed gifs of the heavily anticipated video which further worked as fireworks for her album.
Let’s assume that you’re starting on a heavy email marketing campaign. Wouldn’t the whole campaign fizzle out, if you simply share a mediocre or uninteresting content during the start of the email campaign?
FANS FIRST
A few lucky Swifties were handpicked from social media sites through their comments by Taylor’s team for Secret Sessions. These fans were shuttled in limos to Taylor’s five homes (in Nashville to London) got the chance to hang out with Taylor, take pictures, eat homemade baked cookies and plenty of takeaway. Each of those fans were undoubtedly in the center of her marketing gimmick on various social networking platforms.
Most brands forget that a small thank you to their loyal fans every now and then works a lot more than expected. You cannot bring them to your home, but you can rent a space or may bring them to your office and treat them nicely for their loyalty.
Lastly, don’t treat marketing and promotion as just another business chore. Marketing should be fun. Try out new mediums for your marketing campaign. Did you know that Taylor joined Tumblr just a month before the launch of her new album? It’s definitely not a coincidence! If you are afraid that you do not have a huge creative team to construct perfect marketing props for you to share on these platforms, you can use it from your existing promo props or may even hire a team outside to do it for you.
For assistance and tips on how you can improve on your marketing campaign, contact experts at FrescoData.
