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Email is an important part of your strategy for marketing art. It is often overlooked or neglected in lieu of the quick responses from social media networks. To keep it simple, think of email as part of your overall strategy:

Social media network > Website > Email

Collecting email addresses is one of the most important things you can do to grow your professional practice. Collect them at every opportunity – prospective buyers at an art fair, visitors to your website, corporate and non-profit contacts with whom you have engaged. It starts out slowly and grows exponentially over time.

Email Growth Strategy

First, just get started. That’s usually the hardest part. It can be a dedicated notebook where email addresses are collected or a digital spreadsheet like Google Sheets. It’s okay if there are duplicates or something is spelled incorrectly, that will be addressed later.

Next, pick an email marketing provider. Most offer entry level pricing based on the number of emails saved. Plans scale based on how many more addresses are added.

Email Marketing Providers

If you are brand new to email marketing, Mad Mimi is a great place to start. It is brilliant in its simplicity. There are standard templates and limited options. Just right for testing the waters.

Is your email list growing quickly, then it’s time to upgrate to Mailchimp. Rich with features, customize all aspects of campaigns and keep the simplicity of functionality.

Constant Contact is a great way to start your email marketing if your technical skills are more advanced and you’re the type of person that loves tinkering with design, features, and apps. It has robust integration features for all kinds of other services.  Plus, the reporting and analytics will give you a heads up about what is and is not working.

Frequency and Content

There are two more aspects for your email strategy: frequency and content. There are no set rules for either and the following are simply suggestions to get you started.

Frequency

Just starting out? If you have under 1000 addresses, once a month is a good start. Up to 5000, twice a month. Hit the 10000 mark, do what you want – weekly, twice a week, or whenever new content is available. The important part is being consistent. Start out by sending on the same day at the same time each month. Over time, you will figure out how to optimize your sending strategy.

Content

Show more than tell and give a clear call to action. Show images of new work for sale and provide a link or method to purchase. Tell a story by showing a series of pictures of a work in progress and describe each step along the way. Inform followers of where your work is shown or sold including upcoming art fairs, gallery exhibitions, or other retail/wholesale events. Share something about you that informs your artwork – why and how – such as a recent trip or social activism.

The more emails that are collected, more content can be sent. The more reasons there are for followers to click through to your content, and increase the likelihood that they purchase or share your content with others (who may, in turn, become followers).

There is fine tuning in terms of segmenting the list, A/B testing, geo-location, and so on. Advanced users can explore to their heart’s content. It’s a learning curve, most users have an intuitive sense as to when to take it to the next level. First things first… just get started!