Artists Email Newsletters
Email is still hugely relevant, and it’s a critical way to stay in front of your audience. People look at what’s in their inbox more than they look at anything else. Every business advisor will tell you to start a list and grow a list, and it can feel overwhelming—particularly if you don't know what to do with that list once you have it.
Too many artists only use their list when they have an exhibition to announce, and are thus missing many opportunities to sell to and engage with their subscribers between events.
A monthly newsletter at minimum is best, and you can increase the frequency when you have an exhibition or fair coming up. In the final section, I cover the types of content you can include even when you do not have exhibitions scheduled.
CRM software lets you collate all your email addresses, combining the names of the people that are interested in what you are doing into one usable list. Within the software, you can store the emails, segment the list so that each segment receives different news and actually send out the emails.
One of the things I get asked a lot is, ‘What should I write in my newsletter if I don’t have a show coming up?’
If this is true for you, you can still write about what you’ve been up to in the studio, something you’ve been experimenting with, or something that’s nearly sold out, so that if they want to get their hands on a particular print that you’re making they will know that now is the time to do so.
Remember, the message isn’t always ‘buy from me’ or ‘come and visit me.’ You may have heard the phrase that people need to know, like, and trust you before they will buy from you. Your social media, website, and email content are all about letting your audience know, like, and trust you through these digital formats where you are communicating with them. Keep this at the top of your mind!
Your email content can simply include updates about studio practice, an exhibition you saw that gave you food for thought, inspired your work in the studio, or an update on an ongoing project.
At the end of the day, your mailing list and email newsletters are a way to nurture and educate your readers about you as a practising artist.
You can also provide more information around what you’re doing and your influences or your experiments, because this gives further context and an insight into the hard work that goes into making your art. Remember that most people subscribe to artist emails because they want to learn more about them and their work, not just to be sold to. So, keep this in mind when you hesitate to send new content because you do not have a new body of work to present, or you are adding pictures they may have already seen.
Artist email newsletters do need to have a purpose, and often the purpose is to nurture your audience into being buying customers. Think about what other value that you could be adding to your audience by way of giving context of what you’re doing.
Provide the reader of your emails with something educational or informational so that you become an artist they want to continue paying attention to. They should feel that you’re sharing something that is of interest, after all that is why they signed up to stay in touch with you.
Emails are a core way to stay in touch with your audience and is covered in more detail in the upcoming Art Business School online programs. Join the waitlist here to be first to hear when the programs open for enrolment
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