The Krafty free CD at the merch tablE strategy

Written by Kyle Kraft of Krafty Entertainment

Krafty Entertainment is a music business development coaching company dedicated to providing guidance to musicians (and their teams) on how best to grow your audience and properly monetize it. Krafty Entertainment’s founder Kyle Kraft has over 20 years experience in assisting both developing and established artists in substantially growing their net income from their music. Interested in working with us? Let’s talk!

If you're going to be performing live in front of large audiences, a key way to increase your merch sales and also to grow your email list (which should result in a lot more sales income in the future if you're following good digital marketing practices) is to promote a giveaway of a free CD at your merch table in exchange for people signing up for your email list. 

Despite the fact that most people listen to music via streaming platforms most of the time now, many people still want CDs. This strategy has resulted in dozens of people taking this offer at shows with hundreds of people in the audience, and hundreds of people taking it at shows with thousands of people in the audience so has a good conversion rate when done right!

Creating awareness about the fact you're doing this giveaway will increase traffic to your merch table (some of which can be converted to buyers of other items on the spot), and also build your email list which you can then nurture and make sales offers to with both regular emails as well as automation sequences.

Ideally you share a QR code on a bunch of signs that you post around the inside of the venue that say something along the lines of "Get a FREE CD from (artist name) at their merch table", also have those signs posted at the merch table, and instruct whomever you have selling merch to give people a free CD when they show them that they've signed up on their phone.

Here's an example of what that kind of sign could look like:

It would also be worthwhile to mention this free CD offer on the mic during your performance. If the venue has screens you can display images on, you should also share the same message and QR code on any screens that you can.

Have the QR code point to a web landing page on which you collect the person's email address and first name so that you can address them by first name in the emails you send, since that results in a closer connection that is more likely to result in them staying subscribed and  to ultimately becoming a repeat customer. Have a thank you page that instructs them to show the page on their phone to your merch person, and to also check their email (assuming you have an email automation set up to send them a confirmation email immediately, which you should to begin the nurturing process).

Be sure to also have an old school mailing list sign up sheet (with pen) at  your merch table as a backup as not everyone has a smart phone, and also not every venue allows for good internet data reception in order to  facilitate the online signup method which is more ideal. Using the online method makes more sense than just using a sheet whenever possible, as it's more difficult and time consuming to transcribe handwritten emails.

Having your merch person verbally highlight the other items you're offering for sale to the people that come for the free CD will help increase your sales on the spot, as will having a well set up merch display.

While just collecting emails is great, even better would be to have an automation series in place using your emailing list platform (i.e. Drip, Mailchimp, etc) to automatically start nurturing your new subscribers right away. Email leads go cold fast, and the objective should be to keep them as warm as is possible in order to have the highest likelihood of them becoming e-commerce customers and then repeat customers of yours.

Getting additional people to your merch table and also getting new email subscribers is well worth the cost of giving away CDs if you're executing on even some of these recommendations. When following all of these recommendations, this strategy can be very profitable both immediately and even more so in the long term. Hopefully you see the logic of getting all of this set up ASAP in order maximize your merch sales and your mailing list sign ups!

This information was compiled by Kyle Kraft of Krafty Entertainment. Whether you are an artist who is in the early stages of building your career and have next to no money to invest into it looking for the best paths to generating income, are an artist that has established a following and are interested in getting assistance with securing funding to further your career, or are an artist or collective with an extensive fan base that would like assistance with increasing the efficiency of your business development, we can help you.

Want to read more articles written by Kyle? You can do so here.