Need Address, E-mail - Geographic Locator Icon

[musicfrisk]

*I may not have picked the right category for this post - please IM me if you move it*

 

I have a friend who is a musician - yes you are shocked I know...

 

Here's the basic business problem, since he is a below the radar artist playing a genre that is presently unknown to 99% of the population, he needs a cheap and effective way to stay attached to the fan base he gains as he plays in different places around the world. For example, if he is at a guitar convention and 100 people might walk up to him and say "Thank you! I thought your performance was great." Then they leave and he may never see that person again.

 

He might then return to this place in 6 to 12 months and he has no way of directly connecting with these people he met - the existing fan base - and with traditional advertising, which can be too expensive and does not guaranteee results. There is also no way at present to indicate to a booking agent a how many fans do I have in this area and I know from past history that if I send out info to my customers in this area XX% of them will show up and will bring their friends, it's a word of mouth thing.

 

Presently, this problem is attacked in two ways, both of which are inefficient and non-optimal:

1. E-mail address collection and non-targeted e-mails: These are great for getting the message out but they have two basic problems. It oversaturates the user with frequent messages and worse, if an artist does not travel extensively on a frequent basis it can anger and frustrate an avid fan. If I live in Chicago and the artist plays 90% of his shows in Boise, ID - I really don't give a rip, ya know? Alot of shows this artist adds are one offs so e-mailing a huge list all at once is not possible on a regular basis. It also does not allow tailoring of message to local tastes or instances. This is entertainment after all, people want to feel special and receive personal attention. If people change their e-mail address, they do not have the ability to come back and change it.

2. Old fashioned paper and pencil at shows. People can give you all the information, but then you have to transfer it and people move, etc.

 

I guess? (I'm not really sure) what I'm looking for is a CHEAP, mildly customizable profile/address collection system with an option to be able to target certain audiences based on location (i.e. there is a show in town x and I want everyone within a 250 miles of town x in my database to know about it 2 weeks in advance - so they can plan to go and talk about it with their friends and bring them to check him out <word of mouth advertising - the best kind and the cheapest - just like here at Total Choice!> - this would solve the problem of - oh, I heard this artist was here - AFTER THE SHOW and allows a growth of fan base. Needs to be customizable in that I'd want a field to ask - DO you play guitar yourself as this artist once more established could make revenue off guitar clinics and would ideally want to distinuish guitar players from non-guitar players.

 

The system needs to have international countries address ability, but the basic search engine (which I guess would be based on zip codes within some application of some sort) would ideally have this targeting ability within the lower 48 and then the rest you could target the country as he travelled to that country.

 

SO ARE YOU GETTING TIRED OF READING THIS YET? - HERE'S THE QUESTION:

Does anyone know of any off the shelf applications that would do this or could be mildly adapted to do this? It would seem that there must be some software out there that does something similar?

 

If not, does anyone have ideas or other potential solutions? Thanks as always for your ideas and time.

[musicfrisk]

anyone?

[Deverill]

I saw your message but nothing came to mind. As I reread it I think of the yahoo/mapquest/etc sites where you can put in an address and they tell you of every business within X miles. Also the personal/dating services do that too. I think it's based on zip code. Maybe something in that arena can help you but I haven't a clue where to look. Sorry

[musicfrisk]

bump...hoing someone with an idea sees this!

[surefire]

I don't know of an off-the-shelf program that does this... but basically what you need is a program that's driven off a database. Whether that's an excel spreadsheet, or Access, or MySQL online, doesn't matter too much.

 

I'd do it by zip codes. Not as automatic as being able to ask it to find everyone within a certain radius... but almost as good, I would imagine.

 

Once you have the database, the rest is pretty much a question of preference. There are plenty of online services that will send the emails for you. They're not free... but you don't ever have to worry about being wrongly accused of spam and losing your website too.

 

Anyhow, say you collected the info in an excel spreadsheet. Whenever you wanted, you could upload the list, sort by zip, and send out the email.

 

If you have a website you could have fans sign up and get some simple code to put the info into an online database so the work is done for you. But if most of the data collection is done at the shows, then someone is going to have to input the data. I don't see any way around that.

 

One way to avoid the manual labor would be to offer something of great value but little cost to you in return for signing up on the email list. What about a tape of the concert they just attended (or mp3). If not the whole concert, maybe just a song or two. On the signup form you just need to make sure you require the zip. I wouldn't require the whole address, but I'd ask for it. Sounds like you need name, email, and zip. Everything else optional.

 

Even if you don't know what software you'll ultimately use, it all comes down to a database. How you build it and what you use to send out the emails can be figured out later.