Building your mailing list

Your mailing list is the one asset no algorithm can take away from you. Followers live on someone else's platform; your list is yours. Sonic Bloom helps you collect fan emails (and phone numbers, for SMS) right from your site, and you can export the whole thing anytime — no hostages.

Where fans sign up

Signup forms show up across your site automatically:

• On your /connect link-in-bio hub
• On your Coming Soon page (turn on the email signup option so you're building an audience before you even launch — see Live vs Coming Soon)
• Built into your theme alongside your music and content

A fan enters their email (and name, if they want), and they're on your list.

Double opt-in — clean lists, better delivery

When someone signs up, we send them a quick confirmation email with a one-click verify link. This "double opt-in" does two important things:

• Keeps fake and mistyped addresses off your list
• Protects your sending reputation, so your real emails actually reach inboxes

In your Fans list, anyone still waiting is marked Pending, and the Pending confirmation filter shows just those — so when someone says they didn't get your email, you can check in one click. If someone never clicks the link, that pending signup drops off your list after a week — it was never a real address, and carrying it only hurts your delivery.

Contacts you import are different. They arrive already confirmed, and we don't email them a verify link — you're telling us they opted in with you somewhere else, so we take your word for it and leave them alone. That also means they're never swept up by the week-long expiry above. It does put the opt-in on you: import lists you actually earned, not ones you bought.

SMS opt-in

Not switched on yet. Text messaging is still in limited testing — the carrier registration that lets us send on your behalf takes a while, and we won't turn it on for everyone until it's reliable. Everything below describes how it works once it's live. Your email list is unaffected.

Fans can also opt in to text messages — handy for show-day reminders and on-sale alerts that people actually see. SMS is a separate opt-in from email, because texting someone is more personal and you want their explicit yes.

The fine print is right there on the form — the few-texts-a-month cadence, that message and data rates may apply, how to reply STOP to opt out, and a link to your Privacy Policy — so fans see exactly what they're agreeing to before they check the box. Nothing hidden, no surprises.

Managing your list

In the Fans area you can:

• See and search your whole list
• Import existing contacts — upload a CSV exported from Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Substack, or a Bandcamp sales report, and we'll pull in the email and name from each row (Bandcamp's "buyer email" / "buyer name" columns are recognized automatically). Duplicates and rows without a valid email are skipped, and you get a preview before anything's saved
• Export the entire list as a CSV — it's your data, always
• Mark spam signups so they don't clutter your list

Free music = list growth

The fastest way to grow a list: offer a free or pay-what-you-want release. Fans enter their email to download, and you've turned a casual listener into a contact you can reach directly. See Selling digital music.

Then what?

Once you've got a list, you can email and text it — tour announcements, release drops, "we're playing your city." That's what Email campaigns and SMS campaigns are for.

Questions about your list? Get in touch.