Do you sometimes worry that you are invisible?

As I always like to remind everyone, marketing is a verb.

It’s a set of actions. It’s about creating campaigns, sometimes with some advertising, and actively reaching out to your market. It’s getting your brand seen, understood, and then trusted enough that someone will consider doing business with you. It’s staying top of mind and becoming a friend – albeit a “cyber” friend”.

It’s about building a quality relationship with people who have shown interest in you and whatever it is that you are offering for sale. It’s simply taking a little time, here and there, and sharing things with your potential buyers and collectors that will “strike a chord”. Marketing is all about staying “top of mind”.

One of the best and truly easiest ways to meet those goals is through email marketing. It’s the tool that keeps working even when you least expect it. Its strength is in its routine use and how easily your clients can participate. Effective emails are generally subtle and easy to digest. The results can be tracked in easy-to-understand marketing statistics.

However, it’s the instant feedback that makes the whole thing so powerful. You know who reads your message and you know who takes your suggestions to “click-through” and visit your website or shopping cart. Easy statistics and other simple tools that are inherent in a professional program like Constant Contact, or others of that kind, have revolutionized and personalized our marketing efforts today.

As someone who has used email marketing as my main tool for over a decade, I have been preaching and teaching the benefits and best practices for email marketing for nearly as long as I have used it. That’s because it worked almost instantly the first few months I put it to use in my wholesale business.

Then, as I began initiating and creating accounts for my clients, I really began to see the powerful outcomes. I get great feedback from my consultation clients who take the time to get started with email marketing.  However, I recently had a very sincere testimonial from an artist. And it happened in a face-to-face moment with an extra fabulous surprise ending.

A share-worthy moment

It all happened in the lobby of a fine hotel on Maui where I show my wearable art jewelry and where several other fine artists and makers show off their skills each Sunday. We are under full-year contracts and many of us have been together for years.

Over the years, I have a great relationship with one artist who is always up for a quick chat about marketing and strategizing. She is an award-winning painter and very successful. She is also a client of mine who uses Constant Contact and is keen to use email marketing’s many advantages. As she walked up to me, she began with, “McKenna, I want to thank you and share something you truly deserve to hear.”, and then she went on to say:

“I just sold a painting this week to a woman who said she had been getting my emails for a couple of years. She said that she had been following my career, watching me progress and feeling like she was really getting to know me. When she saw my work in person after seeing it only in emails and online for so long, she quickly moved from viewer to buyer. “

How cool was that? This is exactly what I tell all my clients. Emails are powerful at building relationships. We continued to chat about how much we both love emails and how well they do the job.

Then I said, “And you know, she might not have read every email or always clicked through to see your website, but just seeing your name in her inbox keeps that flame alive and keeps that relationship growing. Unless she actively deletes them, she might see your name for a few days – every time she opens her email browser to check her mail – she can be reminded of you.”

And then it happened.

Just moments later, as we stood together and I continued to preach to the choir about how effective emails are, one of her newest clients came walking towards us. The back and forth between them was darn near spooky!

Artist: “Oh…Hi. I am so glad you found time to come by before you to go back home.”

Woman: “Oh yes! I just got your email. Thanks for sending it to me.”

Artist: “Well I knew you had a busy schedule and wanted to stay in touch before you left. I am glad you enjoyed the email.”

Woman: “Oh”, she said sheepishly, “I didn’t have time to read it, but it reminded me that you are here today.”

I nodded and smiled and the artist looked in my direction with a big smile as she led her client towards a specific piece in her display that she had included in her email; the one that never got opened.

The testimonial was complete. I was ecstatic.

Bottom line: these are marketing messages that reach their intended targets

What is important to understand about emails is that they make it into your subscriber’s inboxes 97% of the time. Or put another way, 97% of emails that are sent via professional email programs and via professionally established servers, like Constant Contact, arrive in an inbox. There is no other way to be sure that your “message” will make it to your desired recipient when using social media. Facebook is barely allowing any of your fans to see anything you post anymore. Last I checked, it’s still averaging a 2% reach and you still don’t know who was among the 2%. Is that any way to grow a business?

Plus, you can encourage those genuinely interested people – AKA “prospects” for future sales – to sign up at your events. With the summer shows are right around the corner, can you afford to let people walk away without getting their email address? Is there some way that they will magically think of you in the future if they are never reminded of you and your art again?

When they sign up, you know for CERTAIN that they want to stay in touch and hear whatever news you have to share. And have no doubt about it; it’s really pretty easy for people to be inspired and excited about signing up. Just give them a little incentive.

 

This Instant Access PDF will help you get more sign ups, grow your list, and sell more art!

Free downloads are updated monthly to help small businesses.

If you are already rocking and rollin’ with email marketing, will you please share some success stories in the comments? Or maybe you would like to share what your best tips are for signing up new subscribers.

We would all love to hear YOUR testimonials!

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