When someone buys something from your Bandcamp site, we now email a receipt to both you and them. Sounds painfully obvious, we know, but it’s something we intentionally avoided up until today because both parties already get a receipt from PayPal, and adding any more mail into the mix struck us as unnecessary noise. A few hundred thousand downloads later, our thinking has changed a bit.
We now email a receipt to the fan because:
a) It’s an opportunity for you to thank them for their support. Sure, it’s an automated email, but in terms of nurturing your fanbase it’s a lot better than the norm nowadays, which is no message at all (and we’ll eventually allow you to customize the text to give it your own voice). The email, by the way, is sent from support@yourband.bandcamp.com, so if the fan replies with any technical issues, we’ll handle it (and in the event that they reply with nekkid pix we’ll forward along any good ones).
b) It further reduces the likelihood that you’ll ever get a support email. Before, a fan trying to download a 262 meg FLAC file to their Blackberry from a cruising altitude of 34,000 feet who ran into an issue would have to find the Help link in your site’s footer to get support. If you happened to have your own contact info prominently displayed on your page, odds are they sent you an email instead of (or sometimes in addition to) us. You should always feel free to forward those messages our way, but our goal is to keep you from getting any in the first place. The receipt brings us one step closer to that objective, since it includes download tips and a link the fan can use to retry their download.
We also now email a receipt to the you, the artist, because:
a) It gives you a quick way to know that you sold something from Bandcamp specifically, as opposed to the seven other sites where you still sell your stuff.
b) It allows us to reliably provide you with purchase details in the format we, rather than the payment provider, consider best (which is directly informed by the details you guys have asked for). Our receipt has the name of the track or album that was purchased right in the subject, including the price and currency, with a link to the full transaction details in the message body. (The receipt goes to the PayPal email address specified on your Profile page, so if you’re currently filtering those messages to your Never Read folder, please watch out.)
Just signed up recently, so this was in place already and I’m glad that it was. Looking forward to the ability to customize fan thank-you “receipt” email soon. Cheers for all your great work!
It’s a very welcome service – one appreciated by, both, artist and audience!
thank you, Ad