Artdomain Art Marketing Blog

Hands up those of you who have a mailing list where people can subscribe to receive regular info from you on your art?

Hands up those of you who don’t?

Active mailing lists are a very under used marketing tool by artists.  By keeping in touch with people who have either already bought a piece of your art, or who have shown an interest in your art, you really expand the number of opportunities to sell your art ……put your hands down now by the way !

Firstly I should say that you have to ask the permission from the person before adding them to any kind of mailing list.  If you have sold a piece of art to someone then it is natural to offer to let the person know when new art works are available to view.  If it is an exhibition of yours where a gallery is not involved, then you can have a guest book with column to indicate that they want to be put on the mailing list (if there is a gallery involved they will control the mailing list side, as they know it is very valuable to them!). If it is the Internet then you can have a sign up to mailing list form.

By keeping in touch with people on your mailing list you can let them know about new art work that you have completed and let them know where it is available to view, or give them a newsletter update on what you’re up to.  Not too often now…don’t be contacting them by email several times a week.  Nothing is more sure to have them clicking on the unsubscribe button.

Artist Linda Blondheim did a great blog post about how her mailing lists was growing and that she saw an active mailing list as “gold, pure gold!!”  She also notes that she uses email less as the sole way to communicate with her mailing list.  Her preference for direct marketing is to send postcards by post as there is a greater chance of the content being read than when sent solely to a busy email inbox.

What do I need to start a mailing list of my own?

Well you need to give people the opportunity to subscribe.  We covered above how to get the offline community to be on your mailing list…just ask them and get their details!   If you are doing an exhibition then make it easy for people to sign up to receive info from you.  One great way to encourage sign ups is to offer something for free i.e. tell all those at an exhibition of yours that if they sign up to your mailing list, you will draw names from a hat to receive a free print etc.

For your online venues you need to offer a subscribe box where they can fill in their email address.  Don’t go over board asking for too many details as people are reluctant to give info at first on a website.  You can always ask them for their mailing address later to allow you to send stuff by post.

You can do a simple contact form on your web page (make sure it is high on the web page to be visible without scrolling down).  Unless your contact form has some spam protection get ready for it being filled in with spam as well as legitimate contacts.  One good service Artdomain uses is icontact.com which allows you to put a sign up form on your site, then manage the contact info from within your icontact online account.  You can then do mail outs via icontact to all the people on your mailing list and track how your mail-out was received i.e. how many people clicked through any links in the message to go to a web page you are promoting.  Also, by using a service such as icontact you stand a better chance of your message being delivered and not marked as spam by other email hosts.

If any artist with Artdomain would like a simple sign up form on their web pages on Artdomain, just let me know and I’ll put it up for free.  It will let you receive the contact details of those signing up on your page.  Just email me for details art@artdomain.co.uk.  If you would like the bells and whistles of icontact then sign up with them for their free trial.  We can use your icontact form also on Artdomain if you would like.

What are your thoughts on mailing lists?  Do you have one?  Do you see them as value?  Let me know below.  Thanks.