Bandsintown's messaging capability allows artists to connect with their Bandsintown followers directly through email and push notifications, ensuring a level of fan awareness benefitting both touring artists as well as artists promoting new music releases, videos, merch, and more!
After logging in on Bandsintown for Artists, go to your artist's Home page. In the New Message box at the top, click in the text area and start typing your message. Note that the message box is also available from the Messaging page, which you can access from the sidebar.
Typing your message
You can type up to 1,000 characters - use the character count in the bottom right corner of the message box to track the length of your message. As a rule of thumb, try to keep your message under 80 characters whenever possible. Concise messages tend to be the most effective at driving engagement.
Adding a photo
Fans love visuals! If you're promoting a show, be sure to attach your poster. If you're promoting a new album, attach your album cover. Want to share an emotion or special moment with your fans? A picture is worth 1,000 words. To add an image to your message, click on the camera icon in the bottom left corner, select your file on your device, make any necessary adjustments (zoom, rotation, cropping, etc.), then hit the checkmark icon to attach it to your message. It will be displayed in the bottom left corner for confirmation.
Adding emojis
You can easily add emojis to your message to spice things up a bit. In the text area where you're typing your message, move your cursor where you wish to add the emoji, then click on the yellow smiley icon in the bottom left corner of the message box to open the catalog of emojis. The catalog lets you scroll so you can see all emojis available and find the perfect one. Click on the one you'd like to use and it will be added to your message. You can also access emoji auto-complete while typing ":" followed by the emoji name (e.g. try typing ":metal"). Feel free to add as many as you want!
Promoting your shows
While messaging on Bandsintown can be fun to use and engage with your fans at any time, there's no denying that it's also a great tool to promote your tour dates and remind your fans of upcoming events, an approaching general onsale, an on-going presale operation, and more. Whenever promoting one or multiple events, be sure to include your Smart Link in your message, so your fans always have very direct access to your event list and tickets. We've made this easy for you: in the text area where you're typing your message, move your cursor where you wish to add the short URL of your Smart Link, then click on the link icon in the bottom left corner of the message box. This will automatically paste the short URL of your own Smart Link in your message.
If you'd like to learn more about the Smart Link, click here.
Targeting your message
Fans love and respond more to personal messages from their favorite artists. To help you with that, when sending messages on Bandsintown, you have the option to target your message by event or by location:
Targeting by event lets you communicate with your RSVPs: this is particularly useful to reach fans right after an event and re-engage past RSVPs
Targeting by location lets you communicate with fans in a specific city, state or country: great to promote an event or a tour!
Scheduling your message
Whether announcing a new tour, presale, album, video, or promotion, we know a lot of your announcements must be scheduled precisely. That's why Bandsintown enables you to schedule your message. Simply click on the Schedule button below the message box, and select your preferred option:
you can either choose from the predefined times
or you can select exactly what date, time and time zone you like
Posting on social media
When sending messages on Bandsintown, you likely want it to be seen by as many fans as possible. To help you reach a wider audience, you can connect your Facebook Page and Twitter account and post to all your followers there at the same time. To post on Facebook and Twitter, simply click on the checkboxes next to the Facebook and Twitter icons in the top right corner above the message box. If you haven't connected your social accounts yet, you can do so from the Settings page.
Scheduling also applies to social media, so you can perfectly time your announcements across all platforms!
Please note: These features are exclusive to your posts on Bandsintown — they are not available when posting your message to social media.
Previewing your message
Want to see how your message will look to your fans before sending it? Click on the Preview option in the bottom right corner inside the message box: this will show you how your message would be rendered on the Bandsintown app. You can also get an idea of how your message will look on Facebook and Twitter.
Note: When messaging your followers without any targeting, your latest message is also displayed at the top of your artist page on the Bandsintown website to make sure it’s visible not only by your fans, but also by anyone who visits your page on Bandsintown.
Ready to send?
Click on the Send (or Schedule) button when ready and we will indicate our estimated reach for that message. Please note that the estimated reach is different from the total number of followers targeted. To learn more about this difference, click here.
Fan engagement
You can check how many times your message has been viewed from the Messaging page. Scroll down to the list of published messages, look up your message, and you'll see on the far right the number of views. This data is updated in real-time when you load the page, and you can click on Refresh at any time to retrieve the latest stats.
Note: fans can also Like or Comment your message directly within the Bandsintown app.
If you need to delete a message for any reason, you can do this on the Messaging page by clicking the red X next to the message.
Now that you know everything about messaging your fans on Bandsintown, you're ready to get in touch with your fans! As always feel free to email us at ArtistSupport@bandsintown.com with any questions!