Killer DJ Promotion 5

1. Keep your email blasts consistent – If your audience is used to one a day, great! But if one a week is your rhythm, don’t suddenly send 10 a week. I’d also suggest considering whether you want to set up a “do-not-reply” email address on your hosting so recipients cannot reply to you, or whether you’d rather have that ability for them to reply and start a dialogue (you can on Digital DJ Tips, for instance – all replies get read and responded to)
2. Test the best time to send – I’ve been shown that the best times to send an email blast are Tuesdays or Thursdays in the afternoon. Studies have shown that these times guarantee the best chances of recipients seeing them and opening them. But this can vary. Think about how many emails you find in your inbox every morning. Would you want yours in there? Or perhaps catch them when they are not overloaded with promotional email?
3. Be careful with your subject lines – Subject lines are the number one factor spam filters will look at. Try not to use the same old subject line every week. I’d also try to avoid using words such as “free” or “cheap” or “win”, as they will get you tossed into spam folders easily. I’ve also heard using several exclamation marks in your subject line will hurt you
4. Try to keep your file sizes small – Again, this is why I said you should have web versions of your flyers, as attaching a 1MB JPG will only get you set as spam. Remember that many people might be receiving these emails on mobile devices while out and about. They should open quick and not cause any hassles on the recipient
5. Make sure you put links to your website and social media in your email – It should be part of your template in some way. The best strategy for content is also to put short and sweet snippets of copy with a link leading them to a website for full information. Overloading an email with hyperlinks and text can also get you deemed as spam by some email clients.
6. Make sure you put a clear means for recipients to unsubscribe from your email list – In the US it’s law. Most of the services will automatically add it in, but you should still check and make sure outgoing emails have that link at the bottom where someone can unsubscribe
7. Before you can even fathom sending out emails to anyone, you need email addresses to send to. If you have a website for yourself as a DJ (or your promotion company), then you should be collecting email addresses through it right from the off. Some promoters also still carry the practice of collecting email addresses from patrons at their event. A pretty girl with a clipboard can go far.
   While I am not sure about laws outside of the United States, you have to be very careful in how you collect emails here in the US. You cannot take someone’s email off their website or public profile of any sort. So if you see someone’s email on their company website, Facebook profile, another email, or wherever, it’s off limits. You can only send to an email address that was voluntarily given to you. This is very important because the last thing you need is a citation or fine from the FCC. I’ll add to this that stealing or phishing emails can also lead you to trouble with the email providers themselves. If you were to somehow illegally obtain 10,000 email addresses, and then a large enough chunk of those recipients were to press the “Report Spam” button on your messages, whole email systems could literally block your domain. So any email coming from YourPromotionCompany.com to let’s say Gmail would be blocked.
   Now if you can’t get emails right off the bat, consider buying usage of a list legally. Many commercial DJ-related sites will actually sell usage of their email list. Users receive an email with graphics provided by the client, but with legal and other nomenclature showing it came from the list owner. This is ideal if you’re pushing yourself as a DJ or artist, but I’m not so certain when it comes to events. At that point I’d look into local news sites and even other promoters. Money does talk.
8. Finding A Platform to Use
   
   Now that you have your list set up (or are working on it), you will need to find yourself a platform to use. I see some out there sending hundreds to thousands from their own personal email boxes, but this isn’t a good practice. It’s more a sure-fire way to end up having your email account suspended or flat-out deleted, even if this is from web hosting. If you have a website, look into the control panel from the host. Many already offer basic email marketing software for you to use. If not, then consider looking into a service such as Constant Contact, MailChimp, or someplace with the right price for your needs
9. Designing And Building Email. When it comes to actually designing / building an email, you should first think about what you want to send out. Sometimes you’ll just have one message to speak of, like an upcoming event. Other times it’ll be multiple events, a new mix or track, and so on. Just like with a flyer, you need a hierarchy of information in your emails. Your goal is to first get past the spam filters, then grab the reader’s attention so they might actually want to look at your message. In my experiences, there are three types of emails I’ve seen. Many you’ll notice are completely made of images, either as one big one or as a layout chopped up and put back together using old-school HTML tables. This is wonderful to get a beautiful, solid layout in front of the recipient, but if they have their images turned off, they won’t see much of anything at all.
   Another solution would be a combination of text and images. Maybe you’ll have a branded header, information as HTML text, but with a reference image next to it for added colour and pizazz. These can be perfect, but sometimes you’ll see layouts fall apart in different email clients. And this very website (for example) sends out simple plain text emails, which means 100% of the viewing audience can read them. Granted they visually do not grab attention, but they work ideally for some audiences. It’s definitely worth testing this for yourself. Now you don’t have to be a designer or coder to make emails. All those email marketing services I’ve mentioned will offer you a plethora of templates you can use and loads of customisation options. I’d honestly say it’s the best path for the amateur or DIY-thinker since they build these templates to work perfectly on most email clients.

Killer DJ Promotion 4

What’s your advertising plan?

Before you even think of designing anything (or having someone design it for you), really seriously need to think about how you want to go about advertising your event. Basically, your tactics. Are you ready and willing to go out and network, handing out flyers to potential customers? Or are you just planning on leaving small stacks in local stores? What about online? Do you have a website? Social media? Email list?

The main reason to think about these things (and plan from them) is because you don’t want to spend valuable resources on physical paper flyers if you’re not going to really utilise the art of street promotion. Leaving stacks in local shops has become a losing situation, mainly because everyone does this and thus your flyer is lost in a mass of others.

I’ll also add in that promoting your event online is a different tactic than on the street. Too many will design one paper flyer and then use the same graphic on websites, social media and emails. The problem though is too many print flyers are just not easily read in the online medium. This is why you need to make a plan, and list out all the potential areas you’re going to seriously advertise in.

Designing a flyer for print

So let’s say a print flyer is in the plan. First you should decide if you want to enlist a designer to do the work, or if you wish to go at it on your own. Many DJs have toyed in graphic programs such as Photoshop or GIMP to make their own flyers in the DIY spirit. Others will know someone or even enlist a design student looking to build his/her portfolio.

A good designer can turn your mass of event information into an effective, distinctive and attractive flyer.

If you go the DIY route, bear in mind that some programs are better than others, but there isn’t a set “wrong” or “right”. I’ve seen flyers designed in Microsoft Word that can do the job just as well as those designed in Photoshop. What you need to be able to do though is provide your printing service an adequate file they can use. This usually means a PDF or even a JPG that carries a high resolution of 150-300 dpi (dots per inch).

The primary reason for the higher resolution is that a lower resolution will give you an end result of a blurry, pixelated flyer. I touched on this point in the article on logos. While you don’t need to make a vector file of a flyer, you do need something sizeable enough to print.

When it comes to size, that really comes down to you and what your budget is. Unless you’re an experienced designer in some regard, I’d tell you to shop around for a printer, and then talk to them about sizing and pricing. Flyers can be printed in black and white, or more often now “four colour”, which means CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). Those four colours are what printers use and mix to make literally any shade of any colour you design with.

Talking to a printer in advance can help you because they often will advise, give you templates to work off of, or even offer you design services at a modest fee. It’s in their interest to help simply because not helping could end up with them receiving a “project from hell”. So talk to them, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. If they seem annoyed, then take your business elsewhere.

Clean design with a hierarchy of information

If you had to ask me for just one extremely important piece of advice in designing a flyer, I’d actually give you two: Have a clean design, and build a solid hierarchy of information.

When I say “clean design”, I mean a design that can be easily read and understood. Way too many times I’ll see complete rookies and even amateur designers get a little too enthusiastic with fonts, colours, filters and 3D effects, turning what’s supposed to be a flyer into a busy cluttered mess one can’t easily decipher.

‘A clean design with a hierarchy of information’: Here are the three areas on this flyer fir primary, secondary and tertiary information, so you can get a sense of how important getting this right is.

I don’t care how cool that font looks, or how glows and strokes make words blast out… if you can’t easily read the flyer then it’s useless. Best practice is to use the wild effects on what’s known as the “hero image”. That’s the main big logo or text lockup of the whole event.

So if you put “EDM DREAM” as the name of your event, that’s the big piece of text that could be jacked up in effects. Your lineup, address, and other vital information should simpler, clean, and easy to read. Even then, there is good creative design, and then there is overkill. You can only put so much “pop” on a flyer until you make it a mess.

The hierarchy of information is even more vital. This is when you take all the information you need on the flyer and break it down into a list based on importance. From here, the placement of that information, and even how big and “designed” you might make it, will begin to take on great importance.

Look at most flyers you’ve encountered. Usually the date and name of the event is treated as of the highest importance. Secondary to this would be what you see as the “main draw”. Bear in mind this won’t always be the DJ. It could be some kind of “contest” (like a hot body contest), or some unique attraction/vibe (like a white party or costume party), or even just a great food/drink special. I know we’re all DJs here and would love to promote ourselves as the most important, but always think business. Think what you believe the average person will come out for.

From there, the rest is only what you feel is important to put in the space you have. Of course the venue address (or hotline number if this is a rave) is important, as well as any web addresses you like. When it comes to the DJ lineup, you should only list names if you think they are truly beneficial to your marketing. Sometimes you just need to sacrifice the smaller names on the print flyer to push what’s more important.

You should also not try to cram everything into a flyer. Again, it’ll make a busy, cluttered mess. Always think like the consumer does… and what you think will attract them.

Other good tips

If you are using background imagery or colours, design your flyer with a bleed. A bleed is added background length/width put on a design that will be chopped off when the printer cuts your flyers. A 1/8-inch bleed is usually standard. So if you’re designing a flyer that’s 7″ x 5″, make your final design 7 1/4″ x 5 1/4″. This is how you get colour (or the photo) running to the edge as opposed to small bits of white showing up in the cut.

Here’s an example of a messy flyer. People’s attention is short, their time for anything you’ve got to tell them limited. Don’t make it hard for them by producing a flyer that doesn’t even look like a flyer, more like a screwed-up paper bag.

Make sure you use high-resolution imagery for anything you need. So if you have a photo of a headliner or some pretty girl you want to use, make sure it’s big. Taking a small photo off someone’s Facebook page won’t do. If you don’t believe me then try it and see how well it looks.

A big tip is to think branding and marketing in your design. Way back when I touched on the fundamentals of marketing, I showed a flyer I made for an event that failed. It was supposed to be a laid-back, fun night at a bar with some good music, and I used an image and design that would more fit an elegant lounge. It’s no wonder the flyer didn’t help promote our event. You need to watch yourself when you think pictures of gogo dancers, or DJs, or big space events could be a wonderful visual… when your night isn’t about that.

If you’re looking to save to money, consider designing two one-sided flyers and printing them on either side of the paper. This is ideal for those who perhaps have two weekly events and thus want one flyer to hand out for both (even if they are at different venues). Granted you lose valuable real estate in going one-sided, but you’ll save money and have one easy flyer to give out (as opposed to two).

Versioning for online use

Despite event promotion moving more online than offline, I still see too many out there not fully utilising the internet space for maximum return. Most simply take that large high-resolution flyer image and post it on websites, in emails, and all over social media. The end result are images sitting in hard-to-read sizes, and thus potential customers passing you by.

When you design a flyer for print, take down the sizes you would want for a full online promotion, and implement them. I won’t list any sizes here because they constantly change as these sites implement updates. I will say though that your online graphics should have a resolution of 72 dpi, as opposed to the 150-300 dpi of print. This is mainly due to the fact these graphics will be seen on screens as opposed to on paper, and screens (even HD ones) are low resolution.

Back to our friends at Ministry of Sound, and look how Defected uses a clean, simple (but recognisable) version of its branding on its Facebook page to advertise its events.

So let’s say you plan to heavily promote on Facebook. Many will want to put the flyer on news feeds, as well as the cover photo and/or profile photo. Notice though how you’re now dealing with three different sizes. The cover photo is very horizontal while the profile photo is a square, and news feed photos are smaller and rectangular.

So what’s the solution? Design three graphics, and make even bigger decisions on the information to be shown. That profile photo perhaps should be your “big text” telling the name of the event, and the date. Put other information in the description. Your end result will be a visible graphic that might entice someone to look deeper.

The same goes for the cover photo. Why are you cropping a big vertical image into a horizontal space? You’ll end up losing 80% of your information. Instead, make a big horizontal image that fits the space with the name of the event, date, venue, and one to two big pieces of important information, such as the headliner. In all honesty, barely anyone will even come to your profile page versus seeing your flyer in their news feed, so your cover graphic (if you want one) should be a quick read.

With the actual news feed, you’ll probably be posting the flyer as an image, like you would any photo. You might think your normal flyer design is ideal, and it just might be. However, if you have small text, then it won’t be easily read…even when they enlarge it. Your goal should be a quick read graphic that will catch their attention as they gloss over most of the junk on their news feeds. Again… think clarity and information hierarchy.

All of this still reinforces why you should have a website; a central spot to send people to where they can get all the information… including if they need to buy tickets. Your social media and email should all be about leading the patron to one spot where you can post full information in great detail.

Killer DJ Promotion 3

1. Entertain, then educate

I’ve seen it loads of times. A DJ comes on, head down, straight into what he or she loves – no consideration for the crowd, who came before, the flow of the night – nothing. And they wonder why their “amazing” music clears the floor. But then there’s the other way, which I’ve also seen, from underground as well as commercial DJs: You have a box of tunes that express you, for sure, but you also have tunes you are pretty sure will please the dancefloor. The thing smart DJs like these do is spend the first part of their set pleasing the crowd, then when they’ve won their confidence, feel their way with twisting things around to their way of thinking, gently and considerately.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that the second half of the night is usually the intoxicated half – or to put it another way, people aren’t going to generally become less likely to dance as the night wears on! So planning your set in this way gives you longer to weave in those 4am techno minimal must-hears that have been kicking around at the back of your collection for months. Get everyone onside, then test your “good” stuff – you may be surprised.

2. Tease and test

Of course, you don’t want to just play a whole pile of tunes everyone knows, then bang into some UK white label dub country step (i just made that up – please tell me I made it up!) and expect the whole floor to come with you. Teasing and testing is your friend here. You can tease riffs, beats, intro sections, vocals, drum loops – anything that is reminiscent of what you want to play later, just for a few seconds or eight bars, repeatedly, to get people used to the sounds you want to move across to.

This teasing is your “test” – you’re watching the dancefloor, watching who maybe recognises stuff you didn’t think they would, getting a feel for what you may or may not be able to get away with. You’re priming and preparing people for the direction you’d like your set to take, in good time. You’re marking our boundaries, pushing things slowly, and always with the dancefloor on your side.

3. There’s a difference between “like” and “know”

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “like” and “know” mean the same thing. Just because your crowd doesn’t know a song, doesn’t mean it won’t necessarily like it. You’re a DJ, a tastemaker. Let people taste the new music – they might like it! Remember, every song wasn’t known by anyone, once. Use your judgement to decide if a song is going to suit the night or not.

Of course this ties in with points 1 and 2: You can tease and test new music, and you can save it for later in your set, but there’s nothing better than “breaking” a tune that goes on to become huge – it’s “yours”, even though it subsequently gets heard everywhere. People will remember it, and you for first introducing them to it. Having an ear for a commercial song before anyone else is a huge skill and one not to be sniffed at – just ask the likes of Pete Tong, who has signed hundreds of hits with his “record label” hat on over the years, to give just one example.

4. Mix it well

Throwing a different style in badly is one thing. But playing a considered build up to a surprising twist in a pre-planned mini-mix is something else entirely. If you want to play a different style, to try something new, to surprise the crowd, then it definitely pays to plan a little and make sure they way you are going to mix that new thing in is clever, or at least smooth and accomplished.

There’s nothing wrong with practising mixes; it’s not the same as sticking rigidly to a pre-planned set, which is wrong of course (in most circumstances, anyway) – many DJs play from lots of 2-3 tune mini sets, slotting them together as they go along, and this can be a great way of holding the crowd’s attention with more challenging material – plus of course it makes you look good as a DJ, and pulling off pre-planned mixes in public that are maybe that bit more technical as a result is a buzz in itself, whether the material is challenging to the audience or not.

5. Look like you’re enjoying it

It can be really easy to look sheepish when playing tunes you’re not sure of – or to look scared, or be rigid (“rabbit in the headlamps”). It can happen to us all – I remember several times throwing on a tune that just bombed while DJing, and being so embarrassed that I actually hid (crouched down, pretending to look for something in my bag)! Luckily it doesn’t happen too often…

Thing is, you’re the leader of the party. Most people (with the greatest respect) are usually sheep – they’re looking around them for clues and pointers as to how to behave, and will generally follow the crowd. And the leaders of the crowd? Well, on a dancefloor, they’re looking at YOU. If you’re confident, dancing behind your decks, having fun (even if the material you’re playing is unknown to the audience / suddenly challenging), they are FAR more likely to copy you. Make no mistake: when you’re DJing, you’re leading from the front. Be bold. Make it as hard as you can for people to NOT enjoy your music!

6. Use mashups and remixes to introduce styles

Classic advice, but very true. In “old times”, you’d throw a familiar acapella over a challenging instrumental. Crudely, girls can dance to the vocal, boys to the beats. Not always the case, of course, but hopefully you see what I mean: If you can introduce something familiar to your new material, people will more likely accept it – especially if you tie it in with 4 above.

Now, more than ever in this SoundCloud world, there are myriad version of all kinds of tunes available. Find remixes of commercial tracks in the style you love. Find clever or fun mashups where the remixer has done the hard work for you. Have a go at doing your own re-edits to meld stuff more to the way you like to play or mix. Music isn’t sacred; it’s a tool, there to be twisted into whatever shapes you can imagine for your floors. And don’t worry about not being “purist” – remember, this is meant to be fun! Break a few rules – you’ll be remembered for it.

7. Persevere

A DJ (who sadly I can’t recall) once said that he felt if he didn’t empty the dancefloor at least once a night, he wasn’t doing his job right. A bit extreme maybe, but you get his drift, no? It’s OK to like stuff nobody (yet) likes. Sometimes, a tune played one week will empty the floor, the next week it will fill it. Sometimes, the same tune played at the end of a set will work having bombed at the beginning. There are no hard and fast rules – if there were, everyone would know them! So it’s OK to mess up every now and then. In fact, it’s pretty much essential.

Bottom line is you don’t have to play music everyone loves all the time. For example, we all have our favourite comedian, right? But we don’t laugh at all their jokes. We don’t expect to. They’re allowed to push it too far every now and then, to “test out new material”. It’s the same with DJs – if what you do is part of a bigger picture, and you’re letting people glimpse parts of that picture every time you play, they’ll get it. They understand they’re not going to love everything you ever do. Be genuine, try your hardest, keep your vision, and you’ll at least start to work out where and how to get away with mixing the stuff you really want to play in with the stuff you have to.