Magma Music

How we do things

November 25th, 2008

I’ve added a new category on the blog here called “Techniques”. I’m going to start posting here and describing how we get things done here. Right now, THE VITAL MIGHT is the only active band on our roster so most example will revolve around them.

I’m going to start with a fairly straight forward and simple one: email.

Email probably makes up 90% of the tools we use to book, publicize, and promote the band. In the past, it used to be using Microsoft Outlook but I’ve switched to Gmail, in my opinion one of the most powerful tools available.

Here are the reasons we think it’s the best and how we use it:

• Searching
  Finding emails in folders in Outlook was a pain in the ass.  Every time an email came in, I had to make sure I put it in the correct folder to find it in the future.  Up until the latest version of Outlook (or without a 3rd party plug-in), it was horribly slow and ineffective and searching for and finding emails.  I often times label emails in Gmail, but if I’m moving too fast or I’m too busy, it’s ok.  I can find it with a quick phrase, the same way I’d find something on Google.  It’s the same algorithm, so it works the same way.
• Multiple “from” addresses
  My Google account is for my personal email address, but I’ve added the band email address as a “from” address so I can switch to that when sending messages on behalf of the band.  It doesn’t require me to have multiple email addresses, so everything is in one place.  (Note:  you’ll have to setup with your band’s email provider to forward incoming emails to your Gmail address to get this working properly.)
• Labels & Filters
  I have a Gmail Filter to Label anything that comes to our band email address as “Band”.  I can scan my inbox quickly to see what is “Band” and what isn’t.
• IMAP
  It automatically sync’s with my iPhone (which I’ll get to later).  I can be sure that I’ve always read my emails, since when I read a message or Label it on my iPhone, it automatically does the same in Gmail, and vice versa.
• Threads
  This one was a little hard to get used to but I don’t know what I’d do without it now.  Instead of 20 emails back and forth from one contact, like a booking agent, you have 1 thread where you can easily see the history.  Even better, if I use the same subject to communicate with many people (i.e.  I used the subject line “the vital might - new record” for about 100 contacts this fall when we were doing PR for the new record).  When I’m doing followups with all my contacts, I can jump into one huge thread and hit reply, paste my response, change the name I’m sending it to, and Send.  WAY better than opening 100 separate emails.  I’ll get into more detail about my followup process in another post.
• Labs
  The new Google Docs and Google Calendar Labs plug-ins for Gmail are quite nice.  I haven’t taken full advantage of them yet, but I like getting Calendar reminders in Gmail and be able to jump into one of my band or label documents right from Gmail, rather than the extra click to open Google Docs.  (sure you say, “What’s the big deal about an extra click?”  Trust me, they add up over time)
• Speed
  Some of the time, I have things planned out and scheduled.  The rest of the time, I get things done based on what is foremost on my mind.  I find that if it’s important, it’ll trickle to the front of your brain and get done first.  Gmail makes it very easy to find emails, send a quick reply, and move onto the next TO DO in your head (or on Basecamp, which we’ll get to later)

You might be tethered to Outlook or some other contact management system like I used to be, but the searching and speed in my opinion makes it blow away any desktop or web email app out there.

Entry Filed under: Techniques