In a previous article, How To Turn Followers Into Art Sales, we talked about how as an artist your email list is a key tool to sell art and grow your practice.
Your email subscribers allow you to create an intimate and direct experience with them. They’re supporters, community and definitely collectors and VIPs who will become the main source of your art sales.
Once you have an email list started, it's time understand how often and what to send them to help you sell your art.
How Often Should I Send Emails?
You may feel it’s a lot to send out emails once a month. If this is you, don’t worry, you won’t be bothering people and you can send short and easy notes to your list.
To get a good rhythm going, can you start with an intention of one per month even if it doesn’t feel perfect? This will keep your from feeling overwhelmed by the task.
Once a month is better than only every so often. And that works out to be only 12 email notes over the year. That’s not too many, right?
However, if you’re up for it, I recommend that you consider sending a hello to your email subscribers more frequently, even if that means working up to it.
Why? There are stats behind this to show that you need seven to twelve interactions with a person before they feel comfortable enough to purchase from you. With this in mind, if you only send one email per month it may take someone a year to get comfortable enough to buy from you.
Sending more genuine, helpful and informative messages means that you can increase how soon someone feels they trust and know you enough to buy your work.
Also, if you are only sending updates when there is an event or you want something, your readers will stop opening your emails because they feel they’re going to be “hit up” with a request and not be given any value.
This approach isn’t a nurturing relationship and won’t foster a community where your reader feels comfortable buying from you.
Many artists I work with feel that too many emails will bother people when in fact, they are signing up for your list BECAUSE they want to hear from you.
The other piece about only sending when you have an event is that the email servers are more likely to mark your emails as “junk”, making it go to their junk mail instead of the coveted inbox. Infrequency like this can make it appear that you’re sending spam.
However often you choose to reach out to your email list, the most important thing is to connect with them regularly. It’s helpful for you to develop a routine and for your readers to know when to look for your emails.
What Should I Write In My Emails?
Speak to one person when you write.
Of course, you have multiple people on your list, but when you personalize your message the reader will feel you are speaking directly to them.
Pro Tip: Picture one person who is your ideal buyer that’s on your mailing list and write to them. This will keep you on track to speak directly and be specific in what you’re saying without sounding sales-y.
If you’re promoting an event or a sale, be sure to include details about where, when, and how they can attend or purchase from you.
Tell stories about your collection or individual art pieces to engage the reader with your process. This is how raving fans are created; they believe in the story as much as the finished piece.
Share behind the scenes of your studio and process. These are endlessly intriguing and inspiring to people.
You can also share testimonials from happy collectors and updates on past events - your favorite part of the event, who you met, share photos of you engaging with your community, and highlights of how wonderful it was to meet them in person.
What does your collector want to hear more about? Include that in your emails.
How Do I Sell My Work In Emails?
When you’ve kept your readers engaged with your art process, they’re already warmed up and ready to buy when you post a sale or show up to your opening reception or event.
Clearly tell them what action you want them to take and steps to do that one action. For example, if you want to invite people to look at your new body of work and decide to buy it, tell them “take a look at my new work and if there’s something in there that you want to have, reply to this email so we can make arrangements to get it to you.”
Explain why this action is helpful to them. What do they get out of coming to your opening reception or buying a piece of your work? Those are the benefits that you want to share in your email.
A benefit of buying an original piece of art is that they get to have something no one else has hanging in their home or office.
They get to have fun conversations around this piece of work with everyone who comes to visit them, share stories of how they know and connected with the artist who made it, what led them to buy the piece, and they get to share that one of their core values to support the arts, small businesses, artists, and all things made by hand.
Part of it is that they also get to enjoy the art themselves in a piece that reflects who they are as a person. Just like each person buys a different sweater that they love to wear and makes them feel good, buying art is also a personal choice and a way for them to express themselves.
Work Smarter
Once you create inspirational emails, you can break up the content and post it out to your social media platforms as individual posts to maximize the work that you’ve already done by using it again.
This is a process that I use all the time and I find it extremely efficient and helpful. If you like, follow me on Instagram and join my email list to see how it works in real-time.