Discuss everything FanReach here (tips, issues, ideas, etc)

I have the Fan Collector widget on my MySpace page, do I need to have FanReach?

KICKIN-

Having the Fan Collector is only half of the battle. While it is great for collecting emails of fans, it automatically uploads these contacts into FanReach, so using it without FanReach obviously isn’t the most efficient way. Activating FanReach is simple, you find it in your Artist Toolbox on your artist profile page. You should see the contacts you’ve already collected uploaded in there for you. You can even add your current mailing list!

When i get fans from FanCollector, will i still get 50 points per each fan i get from Fan Collector?

THEBLACKYEAR-

Unfortunatley, no. Any fans who sign up for ReverbNation accounts and put up profile pictures and fan your band get you the 50 points. A good idea would be to email these addresses you’ve collected from the Fan Collector and tell them to sign up! You can do this easily through the FanReach filter under “Choose Group” by clicking Fan Collector. This shows you all of the emails that came through the widget!

So once i have imported contacts, do they still hafto sign up to be a fan, or can they just click on the become a fan link and become a fan straight away?

The blackyear-

Great Question!

A Fan will only score you 50 points if they have a profile page on ReverbNation (with a photo) AND they have gone to your profile page and clicked “Become a fan”. If they come to the site and click the “become a fan” link, they will be promted to sign up if they aren’t already.

FanReach (the contact management/email system) is a tool for you to use to reach out to your fans and encourage them to become a fan of yours on the site.

Unfortunately, if we allowed band “contacts” to simply click a link to be considered a fan, the contest would be susceptible to cheaters who use bogus email addresses to score fraudulant points. This is why we require signup and a profile photo for a fan to score points for you. Its a little bit of a burden for them, but its kind of like registering to vote – we need to make sure the votes are legitimate. SXSW is a huge opportunity for our users and we are committed to keeping the contest legit so that everyone has a fair shot.

Awesome, thanks man. Oh and one more quick question, when i send email to my fans from FanReach, will the emails go to their account on ReverbNation or their email provider account? eg. hotmail?

THE BLACK YEAR -

No problem! Email provider account. Sending through ReverbNation we deem as “messaging”.

so does fanreach automatically put a tunepak of my songs into every email I send? also, it says that my fans that want to join the street team can automatically do that. how does it work and how will I know if that happened?

roygbiv, Yes, TunePaks of your music automatically ride along with every FanReach email so that your fans always have your music just 1 click away. When a fan joins your mailing list, they are given the opportunity to express interest in joining your street team. Those fans will appear in your FanReach “Manage Contacts” tab with a tag called “Street Team” attached to them. To contact all of your street team volunteers, simply filter your contacts by “tag = street team”, then send a fanreach email to them.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else is experiencing the same problem as us.

Since adding the widget to our website and MySpace – with the offer of a free download for anyone who joins – we’ve had a steady stream of signups. Great!

However I am a bit concerned that the number of emails that remain ‘Unverified’ now equal those that are ‘Confirmed’. In other words, it looks like around 50% are not clicking the link to complete the signup process, for some reason.

Doing a test I see that when someone signs up they are sent quite a lengthy automatic response email which includes the following as the opening paragraph:

Thanks for joining the mailing list! Our emails will come from ReverbNation (our fan email service). Make sure the address reverbnation@fanreach.com is in your Address Book (see instructions below) to ensure our emails don’t accidentally land in your junk folder.

all this before the request to click the link to complete the signup process.

If others are experiencing similar low conversion rates it might be that people are just not getting the message that they need to click the link to become a Verified member. If this is what others are experiencing too it might be better to include all the details about amending your address book etc etc in the pop-up that appears once the link has been clicked.

Hope all this is making sense. Whatever, thanks for a really great service! Think ReverbNation is really brilliant.

very best Paul The Rosinators

Paul,

Great observation. Starting next week (when we do our weekly site update) the email for Fan Collector confirms will be switched around to ask for the click first.

Keep the suggestions coming. We listen.

Thanks for changing the ‘Confirmation Message’ email – it does seem to have made difference – we had 5 more ‘Confirmed’ sign-ups today alone!

However, can you advise what I should do to try and get our list of ‘Pending’, ie still unverified – currently over 40 – to confirm (if they still want to, that is)?

Doing a test by clicking ‘CREATE EMAIL’ and trying to send it to one of my own ‘test’ addresses which I had left ‘Unverified’ I discovered that I wouldn’t be able to use this function as it can only be used to send email to ‘Confirmed’ list members.

Doing another test on my ‘unverified’ address, I sent the Opt-in link (which I found at Step 2 on the ‘Add Contacts’ page) and clicked the link when I received the email.

The link opened a pop-up window which said”

THANKS BUT… You are already on the email list. If you are not getting our messages, take a look in your spam/bulk email folder to see if they are being misclassified.

However, not long after closing this window, I did in fact receive a confirmation email allowing me to click the link and join up.

So, I suppose my question is, is this the only way to follow up on ‘Unverified’ sign-ups to remind them that they must click the link to complete the process? It would be a shame to lose these fans – we need all we can get!!

very best Paul The Rosinators

PAUL

We put that step 2 link in place for precisely what you described. It’s a way to remind your fans that all they have to do is click the link. Glad you are getting more confirmed lately! I hope you have some success with the sending out the link, let us know how it works for you.

The Rosinators rock!

what does % open mean? ive got one that says 50%.

That is the open rate. If you are looking at the open rate in your email history area, it is measuring the overall open rate of the folks who received that particular email. 50% in that case would mean that half the people you mailed opened the message. If you see it next to a particular email address in your manage contacts tab, it means that this particular individual has opened your mail half the time they received it across all the email you have ever sent them through FanReach. A good overall open rate is 20%. The averages for artists are between 8% and 15% in general.

thank you very much!!

when adding in addresses that we got from fans at shows, is it possible to add fields for city, state and age? We get that info from fancollector adds, but it would be nice to have a place to put that for all of the addresses.

SKYBOX

Unfortunatley, you don’t have the ability to do that yourself. However, you can get this information quite easily. Every FanReach email includes an “Update Your Contact Info” link for addresses whom you don’t have city, state, zip, age, and gender for. We recommend adding a little note in your frist couple FanReach emails urging your fans to do this, after all, it will benefit them by allowing you to send them emails about things in their area instead of emailing a fan in Miami about a show in Toronto.

Let us know if you need any more help!

Thanks

ADMIN

I am still totally frustrated with people who have gotten stuck in the “unverified” section. I manually copied and pasted their emails into my personal email account and asked them to try and verify their info and they were told they are already signed up, but there they sit in the unverified section, not receiving my emails. I cannot figure out how to get them into the system so I can write them. Help!

Hello…just curious, is there a difference between “click thru” and “opened.”

My other note is that it’s hard for me to tell why people did not confirm themselves on the list. Either they don’t care and never opened my emails anyway, or they are going into their junk… This is not a slam on Reverb Nation, it is merely frustrating knowing someone isn’t opening the mails, and not being able to determine if it is something I can help them with, ie fix, or if they are just ignoring emails.

Thanks for the site.

-Kevin

KEVIN

Hi! Click Thru would mean that they actually clicked something in your email (i.e. a Tunepak, a link to something else, etc) instead of just opening it and reading it.

I understand your concern on the emails. If you know any of the fans, its always nice to tell them to check their junkbox. However, we are currently operating on over a 90% deliverability rating (well over the industry standard), so I would be greatly surprised if many ended up there. You are always welcome to try to get them to confirm from your personal email account as well, if you are worried they don’t recognize ReverbNation as an entity. If you look on the Add Contacts tab of your FanReach, there is a link you can send out from your own email client that basically serves the same purpose, just copy and paste it.

Thanks for the kind words!

ADMIN

Ok here’s one more question…let’s say you have a bunch of people on your email list who either never open the emails, or they open them, but never have entered geographical info etc. I would like to give them another opportunity to share where they are from. By sending the http from the fan reach tool box, it will tell them they are already on the list, and to check their junk box. But how can I ask them to enter the site and add their information, while they are already “on the list?”

Thanks

-Kevin

KEVIN

Hi! Every FanReach email you send out contains an “Update your Contact Info” link near the bottom of the email. If someone has not entered their information, this link will be present. For contacts whom have already entered their information, the link is gone. So the best way to obtain this is next time you send out an email to everyone, include a little PS that encourages them to click the “Update Contact Info” link, so that you can better target them for shows in their area.

Also remember, the open % is based also upon them “displaying the images” or clicking any type of link within the email, not just strictly opening it.

Thanks

ADMIN