How to follow up with music venues

Venues get a lot of emails. Your first email might have been read and forgotten, or it might have been buried under a dozen other messages. Following up is not annoying—it's professional.

Many bookings happen on the second or third contact, not the first. If you give up after one email, you're leaving gigs on the table.

Wait about a week after your first email before following up. This gives the venue time to read it without feeling pressured.

If you don't hear back after the first follow-up, wait another one to two weeks before a second follow-up. After that, move on—three contacts with no response means the venue isn't interested right now.

Keep it short. Reference your original email, restate what you're asking for and make it easy to respond.

Don't repeat your entire first email. Don't sound annoyed or desperate. A simple "just following up on my email from last week" is enough.

If you're contacting more than a few venues, you need a system to track who you've emailed, when and what they said. A spreadsheet works but it's easy to forget to check it.

The Band Planned's Get Gigs feature tracks leads through states—New, Draft ready, Contacted, Interested—and shows follow-up dates so you know exactly who needs a nudge today.

When you send an email and mark the lead as contacted, set a follow-up date for one week later. When that date arrives, the lead surfaces at the top of your list so you don't forget.

This is the single most effective way to stop leads from going cold. You never have to remember to follow up—the system tells you.

If you've followed up twice with no response, it's time to move on. Mark the lead as "not proceeding" and focus your energy on venues that are responsive.

You can always revisit the venue in a few months when you have new material, a new video or a new show to mention. But for now, spend your time on leads that are actually engaging.