Many Etsy sellers feel challenged when it comes to building an email list because this is not a feature that Etsy offers. You can’t just set up a nice little signup form to get people to join your newsletter list, so how are you meant to actually build an email list if Etsy doesn’t really help you do it and also because Etsy has a set of policies that you need to follow? Can you email your customers and invite them to sign up? What about using Etsy conversations? Let’s jump right in!
To build an email list, you have to first set up an account with an Email Service Provider like MailChimp or Mailerlite or other company that will provide you with tools to bulk email your email list. You should never use Hotmail or Gmail or anything like that – you really need a separate account with an email service provider. They will allow you to create a page on the Internet with a signup form and you can then send people to this form so they can sign up for your newsletter. Once you have that page, the question is how can you share this URL on Etsy, so let’s take a look at what Etsy allows you VS forbids you to do. But before we dive any deeper, I want to do a little disclaimer here that I am not a part of the legal team at Etsy and that you should always do some research to make sure that you have up to date information. Etsy can update their policies at any moment so please check out their legal resources as well.
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Let’s start with the “can do” – and here is exactly what Etsy says about it:
“You may receive a buyer’s email address or other information as a result of entering into a transaction with that buyer. This information may only be used for Etsy-related communications or for Etsy-facilitated transactions. You may not use this information for unsolicited commercial messages or unauthorized transactions. Without the buyer’s consent, and subject to other applicable Etsy policies and laws, you may not add any Etsy member to your email or physical mailing list, use that buyer’s identity for marketing, or obtain or retain any payment information”
It’s a lot of legal talk, but the key is “consent” and “Etsy-related communications”. What does that mean for you as a seller? “Consent” means that you need to invite people to sign up for your list. You can’t ask them straight away cause that’s spammy and you definitely can’t just add them to your email list without asking. You need to invite them to sign up (e.g. for updates or a coupon code) and they get to decide whether they want to join your list or not. So how can you actually invite those shop visitors to sign up for your list? There are a few things you can do. You can use that link, that URL I was mentioning at the beginning of this video (that your email service provider is going to give you) and put it:
What I mean by “on the picture” is that you can design a little graphic that you include as if it was a product picture so that when people browse your listing and they look at all the pictures of your product, they will see a graphic saying for example “hey, to get 10% off / to get updates (or whatever it is that you want to write on it) sign up for a newsletter”. That works really well because people look at the pictures before they even read the product description. You have a lot of options, but remember that you need to invite, not ask.
Let’s look at what you can’t do on Etsy. These are the things that you really shouldn’t be doing if you don’t want to get kicked out of the platform. The first thing is to not automatically add customers to your email list without their permission. That’s really, really important. You definitely don’t want to just grab their email address and add that to your list. Instead you want to have either an explicit request from them saying, “Hey, please use my email and add me to your email list” (preferably in written form) or (and that’s the best way) you want to send them to that URL that we mentioned a few times already where your form for signing up is so that they volunteer this information to you themselves.
You also don’t want to be using Etsy conversations to ask your customers to join your list because that is spammy. The last thing is to not email old customers. I see a lot of people doing this and it’s really bad. I know that if you’re just getting started with your email list you may be thinking “I have 200 customers that I’ve worked with and shipped products to in the past, I’m just going to email them and tell them all about my list”. Don’t do that – those transactions with past customers are over and this is not respecting the terms of use that we’ve read before. This is not an Etsy related communication so it will be considered as spam. That’s why it’s important to you start that email list right now so that you don’t feel like you could have done that 200 customers ago.
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