Braxton Ballew of Valentine Wolfe
Money Maker
Braxton Ballew (Valentine Wolfe)
TRAININGS COMPLETED:
- The Buddy System
- Run A Successful Crowdfund
- Selling Tickets for Live Shows
- The $1-A-Day Traffic Plan
- Build The Perfect Artist Website
- How To Get New Fans Daily (Fan Finder)
- Fan Page Optimization
- Ones & Zeros 101
- Be Your Own Videographer
- Make Merch That Fans Want
- How To Turn Listeners Into Real Fans
- Email Marketing for Musicians
- FREE + S&H Funnel Strategy
- How To Generate Sales Year-Round
- Grow Your Email/Text List
- Spotify Field Guide
Tell us about your A-Series:
Our ascension series is part of our FSH Thank you emails, designed to generate user content to encourage a second purchase as soon as possible. For this past year, we've used weekly nurturing emails with soft touches to ascend customers.
EMAIL #1:
Thank you so much, {{contact.first_name}}!
Thank you so much for your order! Because of fans like you, we are able to bring our haunted music dreams to life! If you ordered more than one CD-we package all the orders into one envelope. Your tracking information will be on the Only Gossamer My Gown fulfillment email, which we send after we mail your CD.
I want to make sure you know what happens next so that you don’t miss anything: We like to send out handwritten thank you notes with each order because we love the classical 19th century feel of it. Are there any older traditions you love?
When you get your order, I’ll be reaching out to make sure everything has arrived intact and to your liking. Which reminds me-if your package arrives damaged or if your CDs won't play, email us at master@valentinewolfe.com.
We'll take care of it immediately.
We wanted to give you something to make the wait a bit more bearable: the digital edition of Only Gossamer My Gown, for free, to say thank you for finding our music. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XLaYDknaXsGswm-Wgg1nOh8gy-IjtCLQ?usp=drive_link
You'll also find liner notes, lyrics, lyric videos, and a bonus track in the folder.
Once again, thank you so much for this. Finding similar souls with which to share our spooky journey through music is the best!
I’ll reach back out in a few days!
-Sarah
Valentine Wolfe
EMAIL #2:
What's up {{contact.first_name}}?
We waited a few days beyond the average shipping time to send this email…
…hoping that your order has made it into your hands by now!
Did you get it? Do you like it? Is it everything you dreamed it would be?
We’re not asking to be funny - we really want to know! We get so excited to mail these packages off, and it’s the best feeling when we hear from you!
Reply to this email with a picture or video of you and the items you ordered - we would love to know what you think?
Sincerely,
Sarah and Braxton
Valentine Wolfe
EMAIL #3:
We appreciate all of our fans - every single one…
But fans like you who take it one step further and actually support the music we make by ordering from our store really make our dark hearts swoon.
Because of supporters like you, we get to explore even more haunting and ethereal music! To show our gratitude, we wanted to make your next order more special:
Enjoy this coupon code: Glittering Prizes
You can redeem this code over at https://valentinewolfe.store.
You can use this to buy any CD in the store for 50% off. Missed something in your first order? You can grab it now. We’ve also got music we didn’t offer you the first time around: we like haunted ghost story winter holidays, and if you do too, then you’ll want to check this out!
Just our way to thank you for your exquisite taste in dark haunted music!
But don’t wait too long to use it - we can’t keep the same coupons open for too long. Thanks again for your order, and we look forward to sharing more music and lore with you in the very near future…
Sincerely,
Sarah and Braxton
Valentine Wolfe
EMAIL #4:
How's Your October going, {{contact.first_name}}?
Recently, I asked Braxton about his thoughts on our brand new, Lucy t-shirts, available right now: https://www.valentinewolfe.store/collections/lost-to-the-night
Here's what he told me:
Is your daily aesthetic wearing a long white nightgown and carrying a candelabra and fleeing from a haunted Victorian mansion? (preferably owned by your creepy ancestors) Or, are you trapped in a castle with a vampire lord and you’re trying to flee from him and his three alluring yet strangely off-putting brides?
Well!
Have I got THE garment for you!
No, not another white nightgown. You have plenty of those already!
You need the Valentine Wolfe Lucy t-shirt.
Inspired by our song of the same name off our newest album Lost to the Night.
This shirt will tell the world of your spooky proclivities. Braxton himself has already been receiving many appreciative looks (is that what they were?) from passersby as he ventured into public wearing his shirt.
For now this shirt only comes in the unisex fit but if we can sell out of these then we can order more shirts in a girlie style.
● Unisex fit
● Soft style
● 100% ring spun cotton
● Printed by a small business located in the US.
● Art by Egregore Design
● Randomly complimented at the drive through
● And definitely one of Braxton's favorite t-shirts.
We're already running low on certain sizes, so get yours while you can!
https://www.valentinewolfe.store/collections/lost-to-the-night
Tell us about your Promotional Calendar:
We did four, tent pole style offers with smaller, more specific offers woven in between them. We double up on Q4 because thanks to The Nightmare Before Christmas, we can celebrate Halloween for three months. Also, we have three CDs of dark, ghostly Christmas music, so it works very well for us.
Major Promotions:
- Edgar Allan Poe's Birthday (T-shirt preorder)
- Queen Victoria's Birthday (new album Kickstarter, including vinyl)
- October-Halloween all month long! (new album release)
- Black Friday/Black Winter Music (buy our eerie holiday music! And other haunted eeriness!)
Tell us about your FSH funnel:
Our FSH is far and away our most valuable marketing asset. We began running an evergreen campaign in the middle of January and finally turned it off in November.
The core offer is a CD devoted to the works of Emily Dickinson, "Only Gossamer My Gown." We regard Only Gossamer as a hero product; our FSH went from break-even to profitable when we added it as the main offer. It's especially sentimental to us to see it be so successful: Only Gossamer My Gown was released on Halloween, 2020. This was pre-indeprenur and, well, in 2020, so we thought the album was destined to be forgotten.
Our copy emphasizes individuality and idiosyncrasies (you must be weird like us if you want a metal CD full of Emily Dickinson poems).
Our creative has featured variations on performances videos in our space: some feature Sarah, some feature us both, and some feature Braxton's bass solos. And our best creative has been one of each over the past year.
Screenshot
Tell us about your album launch:
We are still running our album launch, taking both an evergreen and first is worst approach. Additionally, our album launch was derailed by Hurricane Helene; we had no internet access during the warm-up and early access period we'd chosen.
However, we feel our UAL is still a fantastic nurturing and permission asset. The experience is a 4 day series of found objects/journals from an investigator who has disappeared. We were vague about the time setting, using both elements suggesting historical and futuristic (we were heavily inspired by the show Altered Carbon).
Through a series of riddles in the form of an acrostic (a device used by Edgar Allan Poe), our UAL unlocks a hidden lore page discussing process, influences, why we don't have a drummer, all in the form of short stories. At the end of the UAL, we reveal that all of our music takes place in a shared universe, with each album represented by a haunted, abandoned building.
Links:
https://valentinewolfe.com/losttothenightfirstevening
https://valentinewolfe.com/losttothenightsecondevening
https://valentinewolfe.com/losttothenightthirdevening
https://valentinewolfe.com/losttothenightfinalevening
https://valentinewolfe.com/lore
Tell us about your product launch:
The very first song we wrote that really seemed to capture the audience's imagination was Annabel Lee, based on Poe's poem. Braxton has joked (and like all jokes, it's really just the truth) that we cannot take it out of our setlist. Inevitably, someone will ask why we didn't play Annabel Lee.
So, wanting to start the year off with a good promotion, being overdue for a new t-shirt design, and Edgar Allan Poe's birthday looming, we launched a pre-order for our Annabel Lee t-shirt design.
The preorders paid for the first run of 100, and we had to re-order for our new album product launch/kickstarter.
We launched a new album this year, Lost to the Night. Our Kickstarter ran to IndiePro training spec, and raised nearly $10,000 from 171 backers. We also received a grant for $1500 for the making of Lost to the Night.
Tell us about your physical merch:
Our overall physical merch strategy revolves around merch tables at shows and nurturing our email list. We really have more work to do here, as many of our fans aren't aware of all the music we have available. This gives us topics of conversation for our emails (a soft touch example-we may have an entire email about our favorite bands and their merch, and then a PS will say-oh, btw: we've got new t-shirts in. Check them out!)
We've also done well at the merch table for online shows. We raised our CD prices to $20, and no one blinked. One of our successful sales strategies is the buy 2, get 1 sale at live shows.
We used to try very complicated bundles and deals, but we've found the simpler we can make things at the merch table, the more money we make.
Screenshot
Tell us about your digital merch:
We simply give digital files away these days. It's an easy way to fill the goodwill vault, costs us nothing, and the music is online for free anyway. We provide a free digital download with all FSH orders.
Our patreon is our primary source of digital merch: patrons receive a fully mixed and mastered song of the month and an online concert, even at our lowest tier ($3).
Revenue overview:
- 16% growth since 2023
- 2023 was a breakout year with 51% increase
- Music is now our full-time job
- Valentine Wolfe accounts for 75% of gross revenue/income
- Kickstarter raised $9,368 plus $1,500 grant
- Increased backers from 114 to 171
- CD sales approaching 300 with Q4 release
- Gross: $63,500
- Projected net: ~$42,000
Our Kickstarter and grant for Lost to the Night was nearly our first $10000+ single campaign (only missing because of a few dropped backers). We were able to do a run of vinyl for the first time, and have currently sold nearly 1/3 of that first run: and the vinyl has only been in stock for about a week.
We raised $9368 and received a grant to support the album of $1500. Our previous Kickstarter raised $5,186. We’re very proud of the number of backers too: we increased that from 114 to 171.
We offered an online listening party to backers when the mastered audio was available. In addition, our backers received two bonus tracks, currently exclusive to the campaign and our patreon supporters.
CD sales are already well ahead of our usual numbers; before Indeprenur a good year was around 300. We're already closing in on that number with a q4 release date (Oct 1).
Lastly, please tell us why you think you should be a finalist for the Money Maker Award:
There is a book we're fond of called "Lies My Teacher Taught Me" about history, and we think Indepreneur is essentially the content of "Lies My Music Marketer Taught Me." After years of the usual misinformation, when we started advertising and selling products like other businesses do, you'll all be stunned to know we started making money.
Many of our musician friends would rather grind pointlessly and lament that none of this marketing stuff works, and even if it did, "I want to be a musician, not a [insert literally any role here]."
We aren't unique here, but we'd like to advocate for ourselves because we've thoroughly lived this: from designing an album launch to writing a sales email to continuing to develop our FSH skills, it's all creative and it's ALL about the music. All of it. Every sales thought we have comes back to the idea of "we made this, and we think you'd like it."
We're getting paid to share our music with the people that need/want it. And while our peers may want to complain that no one buys CDs anymore, our nearly daily trips to the post office tell a different story.