Art Marketing: Do You Need a Mailing List?

Hi Friends! Another art marketing video for you tonight where I ask the questions: Do you need a mailing list? (Spoiler: yes, you do!)

Video!

I have had a couple of mailing lists in my day. I had a physical (snail mail) mailing list and an email contact list for my art lesson business in the late 90’s. The postal list was really effective for a brick and mortal local business! I had an email list through Your Mailing List Provider for a couple of years to promote my Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff line of graphics but I closed that list down when I switched to selling through MyGrafico plus it was costly for the amount of emails I sent. For my needs now I set up an informal list through TinyLetter, you can sign up for my mailing list here. I mainly wanted that one to announce classes that might happen across the country (or see if there is interest for me to come to a certain area) and to possibly notify people of new videos since YouTube does not notify subscribers like they used to. That is a rant for a different day LOL! Mail chimp is a good solution for a small business too because you can have 2,000 contact and send 12,000 email a month (as in 6 emails to 2000 contacts) before you have to pay. It is the best deal for small business email. the Tiny Letter service I use is free forever but not set up for e-commerce but perfect for me as a content provider to keep in touch with her crafty peeps-that’s you guys! 😉 *I am not affiliated with Mail Chimp or Tiny Letter, I just like them. 🙂

The thing I want you to understand about a mailing list is that it is a direct line to your customers. People might not check your blog often or follow you on social media but if you were to have an art opening or teach a sip-n-paint they would love to come but they have to know about it. A mailing list is NOT an excuse to shamelessly spam people either. It should offer value to them as well as you. Ask yourself “Is this info useful to the people on my list, if so send that email!” If not, they will unsubscribe or ignore it. Choose your emails wisely. This has me thinking…I had been having a hard time getting people to my free library art classes in the past, I would announce them on the library Facebook page, I think we need a library email list! Oh, and I need about 5 more hours in my week too, maybe there’s an app for that LOL! We have just touched the tip of the iceberg with promoting your handmade business with an email list, if you want more help making your handmade business a success (whether you are a painter, jewelry maker or papercrafter) check out Rich Mom Business’ free 3 video course at FreeHandmadeTraining.com, she will tell you what you need to know to go from sagging sales to a thriving business. She is the only career coach that I know of that deals solely with handmade businesses, I’ve taken the course and it is great, don’t miss out because I’m not sure how long it is around for and if you have already taken it and want more she has over 600 free videos on her YouTube channel. I’m subscribed, are you?

One more fun fact, if you are subscribed to my blog via email, that is different then being on my email list. If you reply to one of those emails your reply get’s posted as a comment here on my blog, if you reply to my email list email it goes directly to me, like we are best friends, how cool is that? Thanks so much for reading through this, I know it is a lot of info and not really interesting unless you are a handmade business or blogger like me but I know it can help a lot of folks trying to make an art career happen. Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Thanks to RichMomBusiness.com for sponsoring this post!