The good news about email marketing: it’s an easy way to leverage data to better communicate with your customers and drive sales. The bad news? When you’re not actively adding new contacts to your list, you’re slowly losing them. (People opt-out of your communications, change email addresses, and abandon old accounts.) Even as you’re adding fresh emails, your overall list could be shrinking. That’s why it’s imperative to diligently collect contacts on an ongoing basis.
These two guides are incredibly helpful resources for creating a solid email marketing strategy. If you haven’t already, give them a quick read:
- Grow Your Artist Shop Sales with an Email Newsletter (written by our CEO Jake Nickell)
- The Anatomy of a Perfect Newsletter
Here are four painless tips for growing your email marketing list. They don’t require an intensive time investment and can easily fit into your current email strategy.
Real Life Signups
Don’t miss what may seem like an obvious chance to grow your email list and forget to capture emails when you’re at events selling your art. Whether you’re participating in a fair or tabling at a convention, you should have an easy way for people to sign up for your newsletter. (Really, anytime you’re physically in front of fans.) Use a tablet or the old-school, pen-and-paper method to collect email addresses. You can also thank fans for subscribing with a small gift. Incentivizing signups with a branded sticker, button or magnet is a simple way to encourage new subscribers and promote your brand.
Get Social
Social media is an excellent avenue for new followers to learn more about your work by signing up for your emails. Give your fans an incentive to sign up with a chance to win your designs. Running a giveaway on the social media platform of your choice rewards active followers and encourages more passive ones to take action. Before you get started, get to know the rules of the platform you’ll be posting on. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all have specific guidelines for contests. If you violate them, you could risk your account being reprimanded. If your followers respond well to your giveaways, it might be worth investing in a platform that helps simplify the process. Working with a subscription service like Gleam automates creating, promoting, and optimizing your social giveaways. Consider teaming up with other artists or complementary brands to collaborate on a giveaway. The prize package you could create together would be more enticing. Plus, you’d all share the email addresses collected from each entry.
Online, All the Time
Incorporate an email signup opportunity everywhere you promote your brand online. The homepage of your website is a perfect landing page to capture interested followers’ emails. Your Facebook page is another easy place to ask fans to sign up. Facebook features a call-to-action button for your page, just below your cover photo. You can update that button to read “sign up,” which could send followers to a form that captures their emails. Your Artist Shop should also include a pop-up that collects email addresses. Once you sign up with an email provider service like Mailchimp, simply create a subscriber pop-up form. Then email shop.support@threadless.com the code snippet—we’ll embed it in your Artist Shop homepage. Dig into this helpful resource to learn more about starting your newsletter and creating an email capture pop-up form for your Artist Shop.
Work It
Approaching your email list with a fixed mentality won’t help you grow it. Be flexible in how you engage your audience via email and the tactics you use to connect with them. Encourage your existing subscribers to share your newsletter and forward it to their friends. Put care and energy into each email you send. Make the content interesting and uniquely relevant to your audience. Your newsletter is an exclusive opportunity for your followers to hear directly from you, so don’t forget to infuse it with your voice. Keep the language warm, fun, and conversational. Use an email layout that tells a story and directs the reader to eventually follow through with an action like reading more in your blog, shopping your catalogue or sharing the content with friends.
Continue to grow your list by reviewing your email analytics. Switch up your strategy when you notice higher bounce rates, lower open rates, and less overall engagement. It’ll take time to add new contacts, but by continually working on your email marketing strategy, you ensure better engagement in the long term. Being responsive to how your audience interacts with your newsletter increases the likelihood that you are sharing interesting, meaningful content that people are excited to find in their inboxes.