If you use email newsletters to announce gigs and communicate with your fans, you should read Jakob Nielsen's new article entitled Email Newsletters: Surviving Inbox Congestion. Some interesting revelations from Nielsen's survey:

• most people spend less than one minute reading a newletter

• they only read 19% of the content (wow!)

• 67% of readers completely skip introductory text

It's no secret that people are coping with information overload like never before, and are changing their reading habits as a result.

The lesson should be clear: don't waste your readers' time. Be concise, get to the point early. Don't flood your readers with too much info (personally, I prefer to include no more than three items per newsletter). And learn how not to use a mailing list. Your fans will thank you by staying subscribed!