This is BFlat BSharp BNatural — a weekly newsletter on the unglamorous work of running a music project.
Last week I walked through my direct-pitch playbook — templates, where to find emails, the rejection that turned into a win two years later. This week is the part most people skip: the follow-up. Most artists stop at email one. The third email is where the placement usually lands.
If #18 left you with a contact list but no plan past the first send — this is for you.
Why the third email is the conversion email
A curator's inbox is a triage queue. Email one gets a quick scan — name, song, comparison. It's read in the middle of something else and forgotten by morning. Email two, a day or two later, is polite but rarely answered — the curator has new pitches piled higher. Email three is the one that lands because it's the first one the curator reads while thinking about your name.
That's the whole trick. You're staying around long enough that the third reading happens with attention, not a swipe. The pattern holds across every channel: tweets that go nowhere until the fourth one, Substack subscribers who don't open until issue seven, cold emails that convert on send nine.
What the third email looks like
Tone is the trap. Email one is specific and useful. Email two is usually a "bump" — restating the original ask in slightly different words. Email three has to be a different email, not a louder version of the first one. Here's the version I've sent the most:
Hi [name],
One last note — I know these pitch emails pile up. If "[song title]" isn't a fit for [playlist name], no problem at all.
If it is, I just finished another one in the same lane called "[different song]" — closer to [different comparison]. Link: [Bandcamp].
[Name]
Three moves in there: no apology for sending it, an out so the curator can say no without awkwardness, and a new angle — a different song, a tighter reference. The third email isn't a louder version of email one. It's a smaller, more specific version that gives the curator something new to react to.
Three follow-up tactics that actually work
These are the rhythms I've used most. Pick one and run it for a quarter before changing.
1. The four-day bump. Send email two on day four. One line: "Bumping this — inboxes are a mess. Link is still [link]." No new song, no upsell. The point is to surface the thread before the curator files it. Skip if they've already replied.
2. The seven-day pivot. Send email three on day seven, with a different song in the same lane. Pick one that's tighter in mood or genre than the original — something that solves whatever reason the curator passed on the first one. This is the email that does the conversion. Keep it under five lines.
3. The one-month check-in. If both pass, wait a month and send one final email with something genuinely new — a release, a feature, a co-write credit. This isn't a follow-up; it's a fresh pitch that mentions the earlier thread by name. "Wrote you about '[song]' a month back — just released '[new song]', thought of your [playlist]" works because the curator remembers even if they didn't reply. About half of my long-term placements came from this fourth send, not the first.
When to stop
Three follow-ups is the ceiling. After email three, silence is the answer. Don't loop. Don't send a "just checking in" with no new content — that's the email that earns you a polite unsubscribe. Save the thread, note the curator's byline, and treat the no as research for the next release cycle. That "no" today is the email you write differently next time.
If your last round of pitches felt like sending into a void, head to the store and grab a track from DMaeJer Sounds — every listen comes straight to the artist, no aggregator in the chain.
Next week — what to send your list when you don't have a release coming.
— D