Email marketing for artists and art galleries

Email marketing gives artists like you a platform for communicating directly with your target audience on a personal level. Once people sign up for your email list, it’s up to you how you want to develop the relationship further. You control the conversation.

You can get one-time buyers to become repeat customers and converse with people who showed interest in your work but weren't ready to buy at the time.

Read on to learn why email marketing is the best channel to nurture relationships and sell art. We’ll show you how to build your email list, what email marketing campaigns to send, share some email marketing tips, and inspire you with great examples!

Creating a buzz for yourself in the art world and getting your work out there is super hard! Many artists try their digital luck by creating a website and claiming their handle on diverse social media platforms.

While all of these initiatives increase your reach, you’re not building your audience in one safe place. You depend on them to come back to you. When people do click follow on social media, you have to rely on the platform in question to work in your favor.

Nowadays, the algorithms are so unreliable that even when you gain a new Instagram or Facebook follower, this doesn’t guarantee that your content actually ends up in their news feed.

So far for your artwork being seen.

The solution? Use an email marketing strategy to build your email list. By collecting email addresses, you can talk to people directly and sell more art online.

Your main challenge is to make your email subject line stand out in the inbox, so the subscriber opens your email. Once you’ve managed that, you’ll have their undivided, 1-on-1 attention—and potentially higher open rates!

Artists can collect email addresses in a spreadsheet document and send regular emails using the BCC option. Smart art sellers, however, use an email marketing tool.

The perks of using an email service is:

• Minimal manual work: Email subscribers are automatically added and removed (when they unsubscribe) from your list.
• Target groups: By segmenting email subscribers, you can send personal emails to different groups (from art fans to magazine editors).
• Email templates: With predefined templates, you can easily add text and images/videos of your art and send beautiful, professional newsletters.
• Real-time reports: After hitting send, you can see popular stats such as who opened your email, clicked and viewed, or bought something.

From defining the ideal target audience to collecting your first email subscribers—let’s discover the 3 steps to building your email list as an artist.

1. Define the ideal audience for your email marketing list

When building your email list, you want to target the right audience so you can focus on conversations with interested fans, valuable connections and potential prospects.

For an artist or art business, your email list audiences could be:

• Family and friends
• Business contacts
• Fans and frequent visitors
• Clients and future clients or prospects
• Art dealers, designers, artists and other art professionals
• Influencers in the art scene, including bloggers and critics
• (Local) news and magazine editors

2. Collect subscribers online via web and social media

The easiest way to grow your email list as an artist is to focus on the interactions that take place every day. For example in your inquiries on your website, messages on social media, email and phone calls.

To collect subscribers, add email signup forms on different pages of your website or integrate a link in your email signature. By letting your fan base opt-in to your mailing list, you're increasing your email deliverability, that is, landing straight into their inbox.

If you want to learn more, we explain how to grow a high-quality email list for your art business in this in-depth guide.

Social media is also a fantastic way to grow your email list. You can direct people to your website and get them to sign up through pop-ups and embedded forms, or create an opt-in landing page and simply add the link to your profiles.

Want to explore how to make email marketing and social media work like best pals to promote your art business? We break it down for you in this handy guide on how email marketing and social media work together for good.

3. Collect subscribers beyond your website

Apart from people who seek out your art on your website or social media, you can also attract new subscribers by promoting new works with third-parties or even in person.

Here are some ideas to collect email subscribers beyond your website:

• Promote artwork on an online marketplace for artists, such as Etsy. You can integrate it with MailerLite to collect more subscribers

• Partner with other artists to promote each other’s artwork 

• Participate in an art fair online or in person and invite interested attendees to sign up for your mailing list on the spot

• If you operate out of a gallery, invite visitors to sign up using a landing page on a tablet

After gathering more email addresses, it’s time to release your natural creativity and craft a beautiful newsletter for all of your new subscribers to read.

Art is a luxury good. That means people aren’t buying pieces regularly, but rather invest in art occasionally. Keep this in mind when emailing your newsletters and selling artwork online.

Instead of focusing on fast sales, put your efforts into building a long-lasting relationship. Let subscribers get to know the artist behind those eye-catching creations. Make your newsletter content equally unique, engaging and must-have as your art pieces.

So, how do you leverage art content in your email newsletters? We tell you how to make them compelling reading and browsing in this guide.

As a museum, art business or artist, you could send newsletter content like:

• Email press releases to media contacts
• Take membership or “friend of our gallery” applications
• Calls for volunteer opportunities
• Exhibit openings information
• Calendar with events
• Short personal stories or essays
• Reviews
• Artist background information
• Links to videos, books, people or anything that inspired you
• Round-up of the most-liked social media posts
• Contest or “meet and greets” with the artist(s)
• Promote articles from the gift or online shop

For this article, we’ll focus on 5 art newsletter ideas and show real examples from our inboxes and customers.

Newsletters announcing upcoming vernissages, shows, artist panels or exhibitions are common in art email marketing campaigns. Make your email aesthetically pleasing by inserting the announcement flyer or other related images. Use the text to make the reader curious and excited about coming to your event.

We personally love these beautiful newsletter designs from our customer, NAVA Contemporary, and the New York Academy of Art.

👉  Tip: If you regularly share updates on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, you can add this type of dynamic content to your newsletter to boost engagement. Read here how to embed social media posts in your newsletter using MailerLite’s drag & drop editor.

Give your readers the privilege of always being the first to know about openings, new collections or installations, local events, premium or limited edition prints and more. This exclusive benefit also makes for a good call to action for people to sign up for your art newsletter.

In the examples underneath, you'll see how Art Basel and JUNIQE share the latest art news.

👉  Tip: Do you organize events, but you're unsure how to promote them using email marketing campaigns? Our email marketing guide for event organizers tells you exactly how you can attract visitors and make your event a great success!

People love peeking into an artist’s process. Show people a sliver of what it’s like to live that creative life of yours! It piques people’s interest and is an easy way to get them primed for the new artwork you’re about to launch.

The Met does a great job of sharing stories about what’s happening inside The Met. They make their newsletter interactive by adding videos.

Berlin-based art gallery Gregor Podnar announces their Art Basel booth and gives readers an exclusive link to see first-hand what artworks are selected for the event.

Why not reveal some tricks of the trade? We bet your readers would love to know about your techniques, what tools you use and what best practices you follow. Use your art newsletter to share your secrets or promote an upcoming workshop you organize, just like Dot Kids and the New York School of the Arts do below.

Now that you’ve built a substantial relationship, you may go ahead and promote your work. You could start by giving away a freebie or offer a discount. Let your art shine with well-chosen imagery and create clear call-to-action buttons so people are drawn to click, thus raising your click rates.

We love the newsletters of our customer, Marc Johns. His tone of voice, high-quality images and modern layout make his newsletters always a joy to receive. The Met also steals the show (once again) with eye-catching images and striking call to actions.

When you feel familiar enough with your newly learned craft, you can take it up a notch with these two art newsletter best practices.

Now that you’ve seen what newsletters other art galleries, museums, art schools and artists send, it’s up to you to take your tools and get artsy. Just like with your own creations, we encourage you to make your newsletter unique!

Though it is good to note a few things that each of your newsletters should contain.

Before you click send, make sure your newsletter includes:

• Attractive visuals
• Visible call to action (like RSVP, redeem my discount or visit online art shop)
• Contact information
• Existing email address to reply to
• Links to your website or social media platforms
• If applicable: Address of your gallery or studio
• If applicable: Opening hours

Use your available art content to design emails that your followers will read. Not sure how to go about doing this? We break it down into two main design elements in the following guide on how to design emails people will read.

In this guide we explained why email marketing is the best digital marketing channel to grow relationships and sell art. And we showed you how to build your email list, suggested some newsletter campaigns to send, and shared some inspiring art newsletter examples. So what are you waiting for?

You're now ready to bring out your artsy side and start your very first email newsletter!