* Updated December 2024

We can’t say it enough: email marketing is one of the most powerful tools at your fingertips. Yes, even for you, an artist!

Email newsletters work as a great way for nurturing your existing clients by periodically sending out useful, interesting information about yourself and your art practice.

Knowing how and why to use email marketing to your advantage sounds like an intimidating pursuit, but with the right tools it’s as easy as sending a regular email.

In a time when your inbox is likely flooded with uninteresting, unsolicited emails, we’ll show you how to be an email that subscribers look forward to opening.

Why Email Marketing Is Important

We’re living in a time when following someone on social media is as easy as clicking a button and then forgetting all about them. There’s no guarantee that you’ll actually end up on that person’s feed because of how many of the algorithms social sites use work.

How crazy is it that you can be out there creating great content, and the people following you might not even see it?

Emails are a tried, true and reliable solution to this predicament. Communicating via email lands you right in the inbox of the people you want to reach the most. And, importantly, these people have willingly and intentionally expressed interest in keeping up with you!

Email marketing is known as having one of the highest rates of return on investment when it comes to making sales – and that includes selling art online. In fact, according to Digital Strike, the average email campaign has a median return on investment of 122%!

So yes, you’ll need to spend a little time thinking about what you’ll write about in your emails, which pages on your website to link to, and what images you’ll use. But if you sell something from that email, you’ll be making a lot more money than you spent creating the email!

What should you use your email marketing for?

Finding the most effective ways to use email marketing is easier than you think.

Nurturing Leads. Keeping in touch with collectors, announcing new series of works, available works and more. Maintaining a high client touchpoint is often synonymous with having higher sales, because the people who collect from you feel involved and nurtured.

In fact, this type of communication is often referred to as nurturing leads, which means that you are cultivating relationships with people who might spend money on you. A great practice to start and keep up as an artist!

Special Announcements. Making important announcements through your email newsletter. People won’t necessarily know about important events or happenings in your professional life unless you let them know.

Great times to send an email newsletter include: when you’ve secured a new artist residency, if you are starting or have completed a new series, participating in an open studio, attained press coverage, are part of an upcoming exhibition, or received an award.

General Updates. Sometimes, there’s a big gap between really exciting, novel things happening in our lives. That doesn’t mean you should hold off for months and even years at a time from sending out a newsletter. When there’s not much to say, a monthly or even quarterly or seasonal newsletter is a great option.

You can always send out a new video of yourself working in the studio, a general studio update, or your thoughts and musings on something contemporary. Remember - people signed up for your email newsletter because they’re interested in hearing from you.

Which email marketing program should you use?

There are many email newsletter programs that will help you start and grow a subscriber list – some of them even offer free options!

Mailchimp has a free option that lets you easily create, schedule and send email newsletter and the paid version, which is priced based on the number of subscribers, even tells you which subject lines work best and when to send your email out for maximum engagement.

Klaviyo is another email marketing tool that many who have Shopify hosted websites use. This program may be useful to you if you are thinking of starting an online store. With programs that easily integrate with the technology you’d like to use, you can streamline your operations and ultimately make less work for yourself. How cool is that?

Flodesk is another easy to use, low maintenance program for writing an email newsletter. While there’s no free version, it’s the same low price per month no matter how many subscribers you end up with.

Our advice? Do your research and find out which email newsletter program is best for you. Take into account what platform your website is hosted on, what your skill level is when it comes to design, and how much time you’re willing to spend on creating your email newsletter.

How do you get people to sign up for your newsletter?

Independent artists need to be top-notch at marketing themselves. Here’s how:

Promote Yourself. Use every opportunity you have to promote your newsletter! Always have a sign-up sheet when you have a booth at an art fair or exhibition, ask the gallery if you can have access to the emails of people who have RSVPd or signed the guest book at your latest gallery show.

Put a link to sign up for your newsletter in your social media biography. Include a signup form that is obvious and easy to submit for your email newsletter on your website.

And of course, talk about your email newsletter! If you are a guest on a podcast, write a guest blog for a friend or colleague, or participate in a talk or lecture, make sure to mention you have an email newsletter.

Offer Incentives. By incentive, we don’t mean a cash prize or discount but rather exclusive information. Give newsletter subscribers the opportunity to sign up for your Patreon account, access to exclusive videos, if you’re a poet, send them your writing… the list goes on!

Determine what “incentive” means for your art business and make that part of your promotional plan for getting newsletter subscribers.

What Artists Need For A Successful Newsletter:

Interesting Content. When writing your newsletter, think to yourself: is this something that I would find interesting to read? If so, then good job! You’ve most likely created an engaging newsletter. If not, think about why and decide if you should maybe write about something else...
Informative Content. There’s enough useless information floating around on the internet. People usually respond favorably to information that they deem useful, which could be anything from an insider view of your studio practice and a special technique that you use, or a brief history lesson on the subject matter of your latest series.
Good Design And Ease Of Reading. Most email marketing programs like Mailchimp and FloDesk make it easy for you to create a sleek, good-looking and engaging email template for your newsletter. If your newsletter is difficult to read, people won’t stick around for more. There are also easy design programs like Canva and even Photoshop where you can create simple, enticing graphics to make your newsletter look professional and nice! When in doubt, however, it’s always a good idea to support a fellow artist and hire a graphic designer for the job.

What NOT To Do With Your Newsletter:

Send too many emails. Make your newsletter something your subscribers look forward to, not something that will end up in their Trash folder without so much as a second glance. What you don’t want is people to feel fatigued at the thought of opening another email!
Send too few emails. Likewise, if you send too few emails, subscribers are likely to forget about you – and why they signed up for your newsletter in the first place. If you’re not sure how and when to send an email or are hesitant to send because nothing notable has happened, think about sending out a general update about once a month.
Send emails that don’t include useful information. Just like sending too many emails, sending emails that don’t have any useful information will have people second guessing why they signed up for your email newsletter in the first place. Give them material that is informative and inspirational!
Your emails don’t include links to your website. Lastly and arguably most importantly, always have an obvious link or “call to action” button that sends subscribers to your website or social media account (where, of course, you’ll have all your latest works featured and your website information up to date!). Every email you send should be filled with the intention to nurture your leads and, ideally, sell your art online.

The key for artists to create a successful email newsletter involves intention, attention, and dedication. Just like you’d send an email out to your past collectors about available works they might be interested in, email marketing is about converting interested parties into dedicated collectors.

Make them feel special by providing exclusive information just for subscribing to your newsletter. And remember to make things easier on yourself by investing in tools that will help you easily and quickly create a great experience for them!

Like what you’ve learned today? Superfine creates great marketing content for artists that’s second to none. Keep in touch with the latest information by signing up for our Artist Business Newsletter and by listening to The Artist Business Plan, our podcast for artists with new episodes every Monday.

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