I resisted doing an email newsletter for years. It felt like something a corporation does. I sell records out of a shopfront in Fitzroy North. My customers come in, flip through the crates, have a chat, buy some vinyl. Why would I need to send them emails?

Then Instagram started throttling reach for business accounts around 2023 and I watched my engagement drop off a cliff. Posts that used to get a couple hundred likes were getting forty. The algorithm decided that record stores weren’t interesting enough to show to the people who’d specifically chosen to follow us.

So I started a newsletter out of spite. Two years later, it’s the single most effective thing I do for the business outside of having a good front door.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

I’ve got about 1,400 people on my mailing list. That’s tiny by any real marketing standard. My Instagram has around 6,800 followers. On paper, Instagram should be the bigger channel.

In practice, here’s what happens. I send a newsletter on Tuesday afternoons when the new stock arrives. Open rate sits around 48 percent, which I’m told is very good for retail. Click-through rate on the “this week’s highlights” section is about 12 percent. When I include a direct link to something on our Discogs store or a pre-order page, I can trace actual sales back to the email within hours.

Instagram? A post about the same new arrivals reaches maybe 800 people out of 6,800 followers. Engagement rate is around 3 percent. Direct sales I can trace to an Instagram post? Maybe one or two a week on a good week.

The maths is brutal. 1,400 email subscribers generate more revenue than 6,800 Instagram followers. And the email list costs me nothing except time, while Instagram keeps nudging me to boost posts for thirty dollars a pop.

Why Email Works for Record Shops

People who sign up for a record store’s email list are telling you something specific: they want to know what’s new this week. That’s a strong intent signal. They’re not passively scrolling. They’ve opted in to hear from you.

An email lands in someone’s inbox and sits there until they deal with it. An Instagram post lives for about fifteen minutes before it’s buried under food photos and memes. The attention quality is completely different.

The format also suits what record shops need to communicate. I can write three paragraphs about why a particular pressing is worth buying. I can tell a story about the record, explain why this version sounds better than the one from five years ago. That context sells records. A square photo on Instagram with a two-sentence caption doesn’t do the same thing.

What Goes in the Newsletter

Every Tuesday I send the same basic structure. It’s not fancy. I write it in plain text with a few images.

New this week - five to eight records, each with a sentence or two about why they matter. This is the core of the thing. It’s me doing what I do at the counter when someone asks “what’s good this week?” except I’m doing it for 1,400 people at once.

Staff pick - one record that either I or one of the other staff members is personally obsessed with. This often moves stock faster than anything else in the email. People trust personal recommendations from humans they know.

Gig of the week - one upcoming show in Melbourne that connects to something we’ve got in stock. Reinforces that Spank is part of the Melbourne music community, not just a retail operation.

One random thing - a Discogs listing I found funny, a turntable setup tip, a rant about packaging quality. Something that gives the newsletter personality beyond just being a stock list.

Getting Started Is the Hard Part

For any other record store owners reading this, the biggest barrier is starting. My advice: keep it short, keep it honest, and write like you talk. Nobody wants a polished marketing email from a record shop. They want to hear your voice. If you’re opinionated about music, which you should be if you’re running a record shop, you’ve already got the content.

For collecting email addresses, I keep a clipboard at the counter. Old fashioned, works perfectly. I also have a signup form on the website. One company doing this well recently pointed out that even basic customer data collection, done consistently, compounds over time. They’re right. My list grows by about 30 people a month just from the clipboard and word of mouth. That doesn’t sound like much, but after two years it’s a genuinely useful audience.

The tools are cheap. I use Mailchimp’s free tier, which handles everything I need for a list this size. There are plenty of other options. The tool doesn’t matter. The consistency does.

The Point

Social media isn’t useless for record shops. It’s good for vibes, for showing off the space, for quick stories about what’s playing in the shop. But if you’re trying to actually sell records to people who care about what you stock, email is where the relationship happens.

It’s slower, quieter, less flashy. A bit like vinyl itself, really.