Building A Self-Sustaining Community
Keeping Fans Active Through Owned Apps
OWNING YOUR AUDIENCE
Today, engaging owned audiences in an intimate, unique way is essential for artists and brands to deepen their emotional connection with fans and increase loyalty. With the dynamics of social media channel popularity always shifting, and fans being increasingly mobile each year, it is more important than ever for artists to have owned media to house their audiences that fit into fans’ lifestyles. When done well, mobile apps can be the perfect answer.
Well designed festival apps are one example of mobile apps done right. Festival goers will download the official app to access sitemaps, artist schedules, and FAQ’s — providing clear utility for the fan. Now you have a massive audience to engage. It’s easy to incentivize fans to download the app during festival season, but the trick is getting festival audiences to keep the app by providing evergreen value beyond the event. Through push notifications, giveaways, games, or even hidden “Easter eggs” in the app, fans will be thinking about your festival year round.
While it existed separately from the official festival app, Mysteryland USA’s Gift Club ambassador program offered tickets and other prize incentives through user completion of point-based “missions.” Each social-based mission tied directly into the festival’s program goals of increasing sales conversions, boosting fan engagement with the festival’s social accounts and hashtags, driving user generated content, and growing the ambassador community and MLUSA social channels. Integrating a contesting feature such as the Gift Club into festival and artist apps can provide fans with incentives to remain in constant contact with the artist or festival all year long.
While the adventurous nature of music festivals lends itself well to this very active gift club program, this idea can translate into an equally effective strategy for artist and brand apps. Apps can be a space for musicians to house their music and videos in one place for fans to access on-the-go. Direct-to-fan messaging, presale ticketing, competitions, app-only merchandise, and social features are also important in connecting with fans. However, these features must be customized on a case by case basis for each artist.
ELEVATING A MUSIC RELEASE THROUGH OWNED FANS
Animal Collective fans were already hyped about their upcoming album Painting With, so when they dropped a digital painting app for iOS of the same name, fans were freaking out. After hearing the news via social media, we downloaded the app and fired it up, selecting two-player mode. As the layered harmonies of the app-exclusive track, “Lying In The Grass,” emanated from the phone’s speaker, we began painting with a stranger we may have had nothing in common with except one, definitive thing: we love Animal Collective.
After a few rounds of fingerpainting with strangers, our attention faltered and we were bummed to find no navigation to guide us anywhere else within the app. More disappointing, there was no chat functionality or social feed to be found. For once, the forum of fans humble bragging about how many times they’ve seen Animal Collective live or giving their unsolicited album reviews was actually missed. While the app itself was a unique, creative tool that elevated the release of their tenth studio album, its one-dimensionality rendered it wasteful space on an iPhone memory. Though maybe that was the point — “Lying In The Grass” is, after all, a fleeting moment in time fondly remembered — custom apps like this are expensive to build and likely generate little meaningful ROI for the artist other than a blip of press activity when released.
At the time of writing this, there are currently no strangers active in the app to co-create with.
After opening the floodgates to an artist app through social campaigns and strategic press partnerships, there are valuable opportunities to connect with this highly engaged audience even after the buzz has subsided. At the very least, email capture could have been a simple way of converting anonymous app downloads into an owned audience of Animal Collective fans. If these folks were willing to download the band’s app, then most would certainly want newsletters regarding the album release, ticket on-sale, and merchandise that ultimately drive the artist’s business goals.
BUILDING A SELF-SUSTAINING COMMUNITY
With artist apps, it is important to provide fans with a reason to download and keep the app, even if they already follow the artist on their social channels. Too many artists only connect when they need to push a release, tour, or offer and then stop talking to their fans. As a result, their community diminishes and they are forced to rebuild their audience every time there’s a new campaign. While the “Painting With” app is incredibly creative and perfectly on-brand, other artists have succeeded in expertly engaging with dedicated fans through dynamic apps that provide continued value for fans year-round.
With a feature as simple as an Artist Wall, ODESZA keeps their audience updated with announcements at least once per week. Fans are alerted of artist updates through push notifications if they’ve opted to receive them. Providing their in-app audience with exclusive first listens, presales, or a heads up about merch releases before announcing elsewhere provides a huge incentive for fans to download the app. Livestream functionality has proven to be an excellent tactic in acquiring new subscribers as well with app exclusive Q&A sessions with the band and livestreams of performances.
By rewarding the audience for their engagement with genuine exclusivity between the artist and fan, organic fan to fan conversations proliferate on the Fan Wall. Fans deciphering the meaning of the artist’s lyrics, shared fan art and photos from live shows, and even artist-branded tattoos are posted daily. This constant flow of organic conversation results in an incredible self-sustained community. The app audience and associated email subscriber list is steadily growing for future messaging around larger marketing moments.
Artists and festival brands should be activating their app audiences year round. Utilizing this audience for early access to tickets via pre-sale, especially through push notifications, will incentivize fans to download and keep these apps. Using push notifications for important announcements, geo-targeted ticketing announcements, and exclusive giveaways is essentially like texting your fans with news updates, and there’s nothing more direct-to-fan than that. Push notifications are faster and more seamless than an email, and they boast high open rates of 47–80%. They are an indispensable tool for reaching fans and are the future of conversing with your owned audience.
An app is not right for everyone, though. They can be expensive to build and maintain, and unless you offer real, tangible value for fans, it’s easy to not see any ROI on an app build. Before launching one, activate your audience through other channels in ways that foster a fan community, and build a clear strategy to ensure your app will consistently deliver value to the people who matter.
Co-written by Courtney Catagnus. Originally published in April 2016, from the Fame House White Paper, Owning Your Audience: Building a Direct-to-Fan Strategy in 2016. You can download the entire white paper for free here:http://famehou.se/1n.
