7 Tips to Create Great Email Campaigns for your Art Business
22 March 2022
Emails have been around since 1971 and with the growth in internet users are not only an integral part of our work communication but the number of emails sent and received shows a steady increase year on year. According to a Statistica report, there were over 319.6 billion emails sent and received globally in 2021. This is expected to increase to 4.6 billion by 2025. The average person receives approximately 120 emails a day excluding spam (Campaign Monitor). This proves two things:
emailing is still the most popular form of digital communication
email inboxes are hugely cluttered.
While emailing is still the most effective way to communicate to your buyers, collectors, and the artworld in general, an earlier study done by Sendmail in 2014, showed that 64% of the workforce felt that emails lead to confusion, anger, and resentment between senders and receivers. How many times have you received a mail that irked you, or you felt was aggressive or a little too hard sell?
It is therefore imperative to be mindful of how your mail will be received, particularly in the artworld where building and maintaining relationships is of key importance.
Here are 7 key tips to create high impact and engaging emails for buyers and collectors that will cut through the clutter and elevate your art business to the next level:
1. Watch that tone!
The tone of your mail is the attitude or personality you display to the recipient of your mail. The tone of your mail can make or break how the recipient feels about you and your art business. The tone of any digital communication, advertising, marketing should be the same ie. you need to speak coherently and in one voice. Some examples of tones are happy, formal, cheerful, cheeky, naughty, humorous, assertive, intellectual, professional.
If you are writing a one-off email to someone you know, it is easy to get the tone right. You just have to sit and get a clear picture of the person in your mind’s eye and start writing. You will naturally use the right tone. Getting the tone right can be a little more tricky when writing a blanket email to a number of people you may or may not know. Here is where your carefully planned email can all go wrong if you have not written it in the right tone. So take a minute to reflect. Try and imagine the most sensitive and or critical person you know and think of how they would respond to your mail. Would it fill them with confusion, irritation, anger, or ambiguity? If so, change your tone. Here are some tones that would be well received in the artworld:
Professional, creative, knowledgeable, trustworthy, engaging, unique, and quality.
Select the tones that work for your business and ensure every communication going forward adheres to these.
2. Keep it Simple
Fastidiously plan your email communication by identifying exactly who you want to speak to and what it is you wish to communicate to the recipients. To read more about how to define your target market in the artworld, read Understanding your target market in the Artworld. When writing the copy or body of the email, stick to the brief and keep it short. Less is always more. Respect the recipient's time and keep it to the point. The average time spent reading a mail is getting less and less. It used to be 13.4 seconds in 2018 and is now 10 seconds, according to a Statistica Report. So do not waffle. Short, succinct but meaningful sentences will increase your mail’s chance of being read and remembered!
3. Make it Personal
With all the email marketing software out there, there is no reason not to personalise your mail. You can personalise the recipient’s name, surname, company, the subject line, the copy, and any images/artworks you may wish to show. According to a recent study, recipients are 26% more likely to open a mail if the subject line is personalised. Recipients are far more likely to warm to your mail and your art business if you have used their first name. Create unique and personal campaigns that will elicit both trust and engagement.
4. Make it enjoyable and relative
Everyone enjoys a good and interesting read. Even if the content is technical or information-driven, keep your writing light and easily understandable. Always ensure your message is relevant to the recipient, otherwise, you will be wasting their time.
5. It’s all about Nurturing
A nurture sequence is a number of automated emails that are implemented to nurture a potential client through a relationship-building process that increases trust and the likelihood of converting them into a customer later on. Most successful marketers include nurture sequences in their marketing strategy. The great thing is that email marketing software does all the work, you will just have to plan and write the emails. There are many email marketing software packages available today. Artfundi’s inventory management and website software for art businesses offer an integrated email and CRM platform as well as a service to create, implement and run nurture sequences and email campaigns on behalf of their clients.
If you still have not bought into the idea of nurturing your potential buyers, here are some interesting stats from Invespro which may change your mind:
80% of new leads never materialise into sales and companies that use nurture sequences generate 50% more sales-ready leads than those who don’t.
Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts
Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.
We’ve all sent out emails and email campaigns with common typos. There is nothing more gut-wrenching than seeing a typo on a really important mail campaign you’ve just sent out. In a study done by Real Business, 59% of Britons reject businesses that have typos on their websites and communication. This makes absolute sense - would you trust a company that can’t run a simple spell check? The answer is no. So to avoid embarrassment and losing potential clients, simply run a spell check. If you do not have a spell and grammar checker in place, click here for more information on the top spelling and grammar checkers. On a lighter note, the top 10 misspelled words in English are: separate, definitely, maintenance, recommend, your vs. you’re, affect vs. effect, there vs their.
7. Go through the checklist
When all is said and done and your email/campaign is ready to go, take a brief moment to read through it and objectively reflect on the point of the communication and answer this list of 8 questions:
Has it achieved your reason for communicating?
Have you used the correct tone?
Could this email offend anyone?
Have you communicated in an easily readable and understandable manner?
Have you personalised your mail?
Is reading your mail an enjoyable and informative experience?
Is it part of a nurture sequence?
Have you done a spell check?
If the answer is yes to all of the above, you can happily press the SEND button and know that you have done your best to create a uniquely engaging, thoughtful, and highly impactful email that will undoubtedly get a response. Good luck!
Artfundi offers a host of marketing services including email campaigns and nurture sequences. Book a free consultation here.
