Module 12 – More Email Marketing
Hey there everybody, this is Cory Huff with the AbundantArtist.com and this is the Content Marketing for Artists, Module 12. In this module, we’re going to talk more about email marketing.
So, let’s talk about what to send. After you have your opt-in box set up and you have your lead generation magnet set up and you start to get people on your mailing list, what do you send them?
Probably the easiest thing you can do is just automate the distribution of your blog posts. This just means that every time you put a blog post up on your blog, it automatically goes out to your mailing list. You can also schedule your blog posts in advance to do this. RSS to email is the tool that we’re going to use and we’re going to show you how to do that. Then, we’re also going to show you—talk a little bit about auto positing to social next week in the social media section of the course.
Most blog post software has a technology built into it that allows you to schedule the date and time that you want your blog post to go live. In this case I picked May 25, 2013. This is an old screen shot from an old blog post, but you get the idea that you can pick any date and time that you want.
So, the next thing you’re going to do is, if you set up your Mail Chimp campaign, you have the ability to create what’s called an RSS to Email Campaign. In the campaign section in Mail Chimp, you just go up to Create a Campaign. Then you’re going to pick the RSS Driven Campaign. Then, from there, you’re going to plug in your RSS feed URL.
Now, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it’s just a type of technology that allows for distribution of website content. In this case, it’s your blog. Usually that’s going to be something simple like, YourDomain.com/feed. That’s the—your blog domain. So, if your blog is part of your website, if you’re using Word Press for example, your feed is going to be Domain.com/feed. If however you’re using something like, Blogger or WordPress.com, your feed URL might be slightly different. You can find your RSS feed URL in the settings in your blogging software.
So, after you plug in your RSS feed URL, you can pick the date and time that you want those emails sent out to people. And, in this example it says every week but you could pick every day or a couple of times a month and all that means is the RSS to Email Campaign will happen at whatever time you set it at, so it will grab all of the new blog posts in that time period and put them into your email. I like daily, just so that every day, whenever I publish a new blog post, it automatically goes out to my mailing list.
Let’s look at some other examples of things you can send to people on your mailing list. Matt LeBlanc Art. Matt LeBlanc is a very successful artist in Canada. You can see he’s got a couple of things here—he’s got the nice big header with a plain background. Notice that the background is not very busy. He’s got his logo and a picture of himself there. Then, over on the left hand side, there’s a little guide to what’s in the newsletter. It says, Fusion 2013, which is one of his shows. A featured painting for the newsletter. Happy Anniversary and in your home. So, these are all different sections in the newsletter, he’s letting people know what’s in it. There are links that take you down to different parts of the newsletter.
Matt publishes very long, in depth newsletters. Some artists prefer to only publish one thing at a time. It just depends on what your preference is and what you find to be more effective for your list.
Joely Gillabough [ph 03:55] takes that tactic. She only publishes one thing in each of her newsletters. It is a new piece each day and a short one or two paragraph story about that piece.
Paul Loverny [ph 04:12] does a great job of asking people to buy his art. I like his newsletters. He shares his pieces and then he has a very clear call to action. In this case, it’s coming to an art auction at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.
Let’s talk about auto-responders. Auto-responders are made to send a person a series of emails designed to get them to take a specific action. In your case, it’s going to be to buy your art or come to one of your shows or something similar. It lightens your workload because it automatically sends these emails to people when they join your mailing lists so you don’t have to do the work. And, it gives you the ability to nurture relationships with people and collectors who come to your shows. If they come to your show and they get on your mailing list, you can get them on the auto-responder sequence so they start to get a better understanding of you who are as an artist.
So, here’s an example auto-responder sequence. A fan comes to your show and they sign up for your mailing list. They sign up on your clipboard and give you their first name and their email address. You manually add them to your list under the correct group letting them know that they’re going to get a series of emails about your work, just like we talked about in the last session. Then, that person gets maybe two to three auto-responders walking them through a brief overview of your art, your best blog posts and invitations to go and make a purchase.
Now, in this case, it’s 2-5 emails, or 3-5 emails. I’ve seen auto-responder sequences that are 15-20 emails. We’re totally not going to get that crazy and complicated in this lesson, but 2-3 or 3-4 emails is completely doable for somebody who is new to auto-responders.
Let’s look at a couple of case studies. Michael Whitlark. He started building his art career about 2, 2 1/2 years ago. Michael initially didn’t have any sort of mailing list, hadn’t really shown or shared or sold any paintings at all. Over the course of about 3-4 months, Michael built up a mailing list of several hundred people by showing his work in all kinds of places, coffee shops, small art galleries and other venues, and whenever he met anyone or talked to anyone about his work, he asked them if he could put them on his mailing list. Then, Michael sent them emails showing them a few of his pieces, letting them know about his birthday, letting them know about a painting giveaway that he was doing and now, here we are 2 1/2 years later, Michael has a thriving art business.
Let’s take a look at Ada Horne. We’ll go into a little more detail here. So, Ada compiled all of her former collectors into a list, like we had you do this week. She separated them into, essentially just two groups. Important collectors, those who had established a relationship with Ada, those—they had maybe purchased a few pieces and Ada knew who they were. It was a very small group, maybe around 20-25 people. Then, other collectors and then everybody else.
When Ada sent her first email newsletter out, it went to the everybody else group, the regular collectors letting them know about her new website. Then she sent a second email to the high-end collectors, by name, letting them know about this special section on her website with pieces reserved just for them. Ada was really helpful to her collectors in her newsletter. She did things like, teach them how to light their art in a way that would fit well for her style. She’s a watercolor artist and she gave them lamp suggestions and color suggestions for lighting and even fixture suggestions as well as a bunch of other ideas. She ended each email with a call to action, which was email her for more information about buying or visit her website.
So, final results from that email—Ada got $3500 from that first email. She sold two originals in the $700 price range and she got a new commission from an existing collector that she never would’ve gotten if she hadn’t reached out to the people on her list. Then, she also got inquiries about possible additional commissions.
Now, keep in mind, these were people that she already had a relationship with. They were already on her mailing list. A lot of them had already purchased art from her. And, by simply keeping in contact with them, she was able to make even more money than the original sale. And, for most successful artists, this is how they make money. They create a base of collectors who are interested and then they sell to them repeatedly over the years.
Homework for this session. Set up your RSS to Email Campaign. Then, start planning your auto-responder sequence, 3-4 emails. These can be existing blog posts that you wrote last week or existing blog posts that you already have on your blog, so that people sign up on your mailing list and they get emails with links to certain blog posts you think really exemplify who you are as an artist.
You don’t have to go ahead and create all of these emails in your mailing list program now, although you can if you want to. We’re going to spend time during the implementation week, next week, putting all of these into place. I just want you to create what you think is going to be your auto-responder sequence and then share that in the Facebook group. This will be the homework for today and tomorrow.
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