Email marketing matters more than ever if you want to have a successful handmade shop and a profitable business. Studies show that emails have a higher conversion rate (meaning people reading it end up buying your products) and a better engagement rate (people actually clicking through links on your email) than Facebook or Twitter posts. Say whaaaat?
It is THE number one marketing tactic you should set up for your handmade shop if you don’t want to leave money on the table. Not convinced yet ? Or wondering what the heck I mean by ’email marketing’ and how to get started?
No problemo amigo – I shall explain.
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Email marketing is way of communicating a message, promotional offer, or information to your subscribers and customers via email.
It can be anything from:
– a transactional email (like a ‘thank you for your order’ message);
– a brand pitching email (information about your brand, your story, behind the scenes, etc.);
– an educational email (selling handmade skincare products? how about an email about the benefits of face masks?)
– a promotional email (get 10% off your next order / valentines’ day special discount / etc.);
– an informational email (new product collection, new shipping policy, etc.);
– and anything in between!
Literally anyone surfing the web has an email address these days. It’s just how it is.. There are three times more email accounts than Facebook and Twitter accounts combined (source). Now that’s a lot of email accounts.
Getting started with email marketing doesn’t have to cost anything at all. Most email marketing providers offer a free plan for small businesses that don’t have a big mailing list yet (ex.: Mailchimp). Even if you pay a little amount for their service, the results you get from them are well worth it. The average return on 1$ spent on your email campaign is $38 in sales!
And isn’t that exactly what we all need? Caching! In fact, emails can be so great at bringing new customers to your handmade shop that they generally outperform social media campaigns by 40% in customer acquisition.
Everyone will receive that email you sent. They might read it, or they might not. They might click on the links in it and shop your products, or not. But, what they will do is receive it in their inbox. With social media, how many of your fans will actually see your post in their news feed?
If an email was more successful than another, you will know. If a coupon/promotion worked very well at turning your fans into first-time buyers, you will know. Any decent email marketing providers have great analytics tools included in their plan and you can quickly understand what works and what doesn’t.
If you are in their inbox, it’s because they invited you in. They maybe subscribed to your blog, downloaded that free patterns ebook you were giving away for free, or simply signed up for a promotion. In any case, they already showed interest in your products – so you know they are more likely to buy than any of your social media fans. And if they don’t like you all that much after all, they’ll unsubscribe – and that’s perfectly fine!
The great thing about email marketing, is that you can automate the whole process. Meaning you set it up once and it works for you while you have time to work on something else. Pretty dam convenient.
Here a the main email series you can set up:
These are the people that sign up for your newsletter, downloaded a freebie on your site, took part to a giveaway, etc. They are interested in your products but haven’t purchased anything yet. The goal: turn them into first time buyers.
This is your order confirmation, invoice, shipping comfirmation, etc. These emails can be sent automatically and you can use them as a marketing tool. They have a great open rate so it’s a good opportunity to market your brand and services at the same time and turn them into repeat customers.
This is to try to bring someone that would have left your site without finishing the checkout process back to the site.
There are many more email series that you could use to grow your handmade business. I picked these 3 as I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much information and I think they are the most important to start.
Here’s an article on what’s really possible with email marketing – both on Etsy and in your own online shop.
I put together a free workbook that will guide you through the process of creating a simple email series to turn your subscribers into first time buyers.
You can download it for free right here. I hope this helps!
Let me know in the comments if you are already using email marketing and/or if you have any questions! You know I am always happy to help 🙂
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[…] I actually wrote an entire post about email marketing for handmade shops, where I also explain how t… […]