How to find the email of (almost) anyone in the music industry | Pt. 2 Tools & Process
**DISCLAIMER**
Some of the tools and strategies I’m about to lay out in this guide will allow you to pull extremely valuable music industry contacts from LinkedIn.
These tools and strategies have been well documented in the Startup, Sales and Recruitment industry for years now and all I’m attempting to do is frame it within a music context here. Scraping is essentially pulling data from LinkedIn that wouldn’t usually be accessible to you. It’s legal but it’s a little bit of a grey area so make sure you proceed with caution because people can be very touchy when it comes to receiving emails/phone numbers from people they don’t know…
Anyone who decides to use tactics such as automated scraping and emailing of contacts at scale does so at their own volition and should always remember that with great power comes great responsibility.
I can guarantee If you SPAM or harass industry professionals your reputation will be ruined before you know it!
However, if you offer value and approach them in a professional manner you have the opportunity to create hugely beneficial relationships with key industry gatekeepers.
No one is out of reach
Technology has made the world a much smaller place, no one is out of reach if you have the right tools and know how to use them.
To try and illustrate this point I scraped Billboard’s Power 100 for 2019 off of LinkedIn and uploaded their LinkedIn profile information and work emails here.
This was only a quick test to demonstrate what is possible with the method I’m about to show you. It took me about 2 hours to set up on Wednesday night and by the time I’d woken up on Thursday morning, my scraper had generated a list of 96 of the 100 most powerful people in today's music industry.
Of course, the majority of the contacts I pulled from that Power 100 list are CEO’s at huge global companies and most likely have a personal assistant that manages their emails. So if you’re looking to use the spreadsheet I attached above to try reaching out to them I doubt you would actually get through to them.
But when we start to target the right niche’s and reach out to people that match our level people will be far more likely to respond.
To begin with, you might need to send 100 Emails to get 5 responses, which takes time and effort but the more you do it the easier it gets.
At the end of the day, marketing is a numbers game so you’ll need to approach outreach at scale if you want to see results.
If you haven’t already read part 1 of this series you should probably go back and give it a once over before you start part 2.
$80 well spent
First I’m going to show you the combination of tools that I use to create my LinkedIn scraper. All these tools have ‘Freemium’ access but costing around $80 a month, it’s not too hard on your budget if you have the means.
- A LinkedIn account — It’s Free to create an account. If you haven’t got one just yet, go sign up now (I’ll wait) otherwise you won’t be able to follow along with the rest of this tutorial.
- A PhantomBuster account — Their free version gives you access to one API and 10mins of execution time a day which could just be enough for this tutorial. However, I would definitely suggest investing in an account if you’re looking to scale/automate your marketing in any way. It’s an excellent tool and an account starts from $30 a month — this will give you access to 5 API’s and an hour of execution time a day. I intend to show you that this is an excellent investment in the following tutorial.
- A Hunter.io account — Hunter.io is my preferred tool for scraping emails off of LinkedIn. It has an inbuilt connection to Phantombuster that makes it extremely easy to pull emails off of LinkedIn. Hunter will also allow you to send personalised emails at scale from their dashboard, you can easily connect your personal/professional Gmail account, attach an email template and send to 200 contacts at the click of a button. The Free version allows you to pull 100 emails a month from LinkedIn. Their starter account allows for 1,000 a month for $50.
- OPTIONAL Contactout — The best tool for pulling personal email addresses and mobile phone numbers off of LinkedIn. Contactout is a chrome extension in your browser that allows you to extract information from LinkedIn profiles without having to connect with them first. You can pull 50 contacts a day using their Free version. I do pay for the service (I use it for work) I wouldn’t suggest you do as it costs around AUD$150 a month.
- OPTIONAL MailChimp — By the end of this tutorial, you should have a large list of contact details and emails you can reach out to. How you choose to approach them is up to you, you can email them individually or if you’re confident in your pitch and ability you can reach out at scale sending 200 emails at once using an email marketing service. MailChimp is an easy to use bulk emailing service which allows you to store and email up to 500 contacts on their free version. There are plenty of other providers out there but MailChimp is probably the most intuitive. Alternatively, you could set up a mail merge document using MS Word & Excel.
As I’ll hopefully demonstrate in the following sections a small investment in these tools for your marketing can give you a serious return on investment.
PhantomBuster
I’d also like to take this opportunity to dive a little deeper into Phantombuster as it’s one of my favourite tools that I use on a daily basis as a marketer.
PhantomBuster is a growth marketing tool which allows you to automate a lot of manual work and process MASSIVE amounts of data efficiently. In this guide, we’re going to link Phantombuster to our LinkedIn account and use one of their pre-made API’s to extract contacts and contact information from LinkedIn automatically and at scale.
Beyond the scope of this guide, Phantombuster hosts a growing range of custom-built API’s, which are essentially custom built code templates that make it easier for non-technical marketers/managers/musicians like us to manipulate our social accounts and pull data from platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
This is my go-to marketing tool. If you’re looking to save time, process massive amounts of data and scale your marketing efforts to the next level I really can’t suggest this tool enough. It’s super simple to set up and it’s free up to two API’s and an hour of execution time a day.
I’ve recorded a Phantom Buster walkthrough that you can view below, it will show you the step-by-step process I go through to pull music industry contacts from LinkedIn.
To follow along you will need the above tools I mentioned.
How to find their contact details!
Now that you have your accounts and tools prepared you can watch the tutorial I’ve created below that will guide you through my process of identifying industry contacts and pulling their contact information from LinkedIn!
I hope you find this video easy to follow. If you’re unsure of anything or I brushed over a step please let me know in the comments on this article and I will respond to clarify for you :)
Also, it should be understood that these tools don’t work 100% of the time.
I’ve experienced success rates of 50% of emails found to more than 80%, hopefully, we’ll be able to hedge our bets by combining two scraping tools to get the best possible results and highest hit rate for contact details.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: from around 38:05–39:30 I say that you need to update your spreadsheet after each launch.
You no longer need to update your spreadsheet input file manually, Phantombuster has made an update that will do this automatically for you!
What this means is that after Phantombuster scrapes contacts 1–10 during its first launch it will AUTOMATICALLY go and scrape contacts 11–20 when it next launches and so on. You don’t have to update your spreadsheet once you’ve set up your scraper, it will work all the way through the list until it finishes :)
Scraping Process
- Generate your list of LinkedIn profiles/URLs you want to target. This is done by using Phantombuster’s LinkedIn Search Export tool.
You can refine your search based on Company Name or Job Title and any other descriptors you want. In the above Tutorial, I used the search term “Booking Agent” in Australia to generate my list of target URLs. - Add your target URLs list to a publically available Google Sheets document.
- Use that Google Sheet document as the Input for Phantombusters LinkedIn Profile Scraper tool. Attach Hunter.io to your scraper and set it up to work through the list of URLs and pull all their profile info and any emails connected with their account. Depending on the size of your list this could take a day or so. Setup your account to scrape LinkedIn twice an hour searching for in between 5–15 contacts per execution (you’ll need to test what your limit is here). Let this run in the background.
- Once your list is finished and generated into an Excel Spread Sheet you can enrich your contact data by going back through that list with Contactout and individually scraping profiles for personal emails and Mobile Phone numbers (if available).
5. Clean, consolidate and qualify your list in preparation for emailing.
MAKE IT CLAP FOR ME
And there you have it, I know this is potentially a difficult/technical guide to follow but hopefully, you found it valuable.
If so, feel free to GIMME DEM CLAPS on this article below and share it with your friends.
With a bit of practice and some trial and error, I’m sure you’ll be able to master this approach to building databases of key industry influencers/gatekeepers. The scope for applying this approach is massive and the pay off can be huge (if you execute correctly) if you end up putting this method into action, let me know how they went in the comments!
BONUS SECTION | How to reach out to these contacts
Ok I know I said I wouldn’t cover how to structure your pitch to these contacts because there’s already so much good information out there that covers that… but I feel a little guilty about giving you these contacts and leaving you to find your own way.
Since we scraped some booking agent contact details in this article let’s take the example of reaching out to a booking agent to book some live gigs.
Remember you need to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re reaching out to.
Bookers are busy people and will have hundred’s of promoters/artist’s emailing them each week so to improve your chances you need to ensure you provide them with all the info they need up front for them to do their jobs and generally make their lives easier.
If you’re serious about getting booked, here’s a few tips:
Subject Line
Your subject line is make or break for any email pitch.
NEVER send an email with a soft/generic subject line saying “Hey…looking for gigs… let me know what dates you have”.
Keep it targeted and intriguing for a better chance of them clicking through to your email. If it’s a generic, “Hi just reaching out to see if you’re interested in blah blah blah” they’ll scroll right past.
You could try using some FOMO, time-based demand, curiosity, an element of surprise or let them know that by opening this email their status will be raised, it’s really up to you.
A good technique is to always include the receivers first name in the subject line. If someone is scanning their inbox their own name will most likely jump out at them in the subject lines while communicating that the sender has done their research and actually knows who they’re reaching out to.
If you’re sending emails 1 by 1 this should be easy, if you’re sending emails in bulk you can simply input “Hope you’re ready for this act <First Name>…” into the subject line of the email and them mailing service will match the first name input with the email address.
Just remember that you’re not trying to sell in the subject line. That’s the job of your emails content. Your subject line is just trying to get them to open your email.
Email Content
- Always Email first
- Give a quick intro to yourself/your band
- Attach your bio, playlist, one Promo pick
- Include your availability
- Include the price you’re asking for $/Per Hour
- Include your Social/Chartmetric/Website links (Chartmetric is a great tool for them to follow your growth/progression as an artist).
- Include the names of other venues you have played at.
- A SINGLE LINK to your EPK (Electronic Press Kit) which includes all necessary files hosted on a DropBox or Google Drive Link (ensure that it’s accessible).
- Define a Clear Call to Action! Scheduling a call, interviews, next steps.
- Sign off & thank them for their time.
What’s Next?
Ensure you follow up!
I can’t stress this enough, bookers are busy people and might not answer at first, so ensure you send three emails at least!
You can follow up with the same email but a different subject line saying “Hey <First Name>, just wanted to ensure you saw this from the other day!”
Space these emails out over the course of a week.
For Example, you could send Email 1 on Monday morning, then wait two days before sending email 2 on Wednesday, then wait another two days before sending email 3 on Friday or the following Monday.
If you found a mobile number you can send two emails then maybe follow up with a phone call — this is a risky tactic but if you’re up for it go for it, you have a much better chance of convincing someone if you can get them talking on the phone!
However, if you call them up and they ask where you got their number from… DON’T TELL THEM WHERE YOU GOT THEIR INFO, be as vague as you can and say you just found it on Google.
Know when to walk away!
If you’ve sent your three emails, tried calling a contact and they still haven’t responded it’s best to call it quits and move onto the next contact.
You can revisit them in a couple of months when you have your next big release or newsworthy story but odds are:
(A) You Have incorrect/old contact details
(B) Or they’re just not interested.
Happy Hunting!
