In the age of instant messaging, voice notes and video messages, email might seem a little slow and quaint. However in the era of social commerce email is cool again! It’s been recognised now as the highest driver of online art sales, and is a central plank of any successful social seller’s strategy.
It’s all about visibility. An email sits patiently in your inbox, which isn’t as fast moving as a social media feed. For up to a day or more, each time you open your inbox you will see it there reminding you about that thing you really wanted, but perhaps were not in a situation to go ahead and buy. Maybe you didn’t have your card on you, you were on the move or were just too busy to give the decision the headspace it needed.
Here’s some email fun facts:
- For all of our very largest selling artists the average conversion rate from email clicks (that is sales as a percentage of traffic) is 5.39%. This compares to 1.32% for Instagram traffic. So a click from email drives 4 times as many sales as a click from Instagram
- Recent email subscribers deliver on average $1.61 each in the very next print drop you do. If you do 10 print drops a year, then a recent email subscriber is worth an incredible $16 each per annum.
- Our own Online Art Sales Survey of 2023 found that artists who send out email newsletters are twice as likely to experience art sales growth.
- An email marketing report by HubSpot states that 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month
Of course, not every email you send to your subscribers should be offering to sell them something. You should be deepening your relationship with them, and here’s another great benefit of email. Email enables longer form content than social media. You can use an email to describe a project, to talk about your inspirations or to show some unseen work, amongst many other possibilities. This develops your brand and deepens the engagement with people who love your work, and long term this will create great word of mouth for your work and increase your sales.
Lastly, the great thing about email is that it gives you independence from the algorithms. At the moment organic reach on Instagram has never been greater, but it is very concentrated on people who can make great Reels. For some artists that has been a difficult transition, but one that with an open mind you can, and you should absolutely make (start with this article we wrote). The thing about email is it is referred to as an owned channel, it should always be possible to reach your subscribers and therefore it forms a vital long term asset of your art sales business.
And for reference, our preferred email software is Beehiiv. They have some cool tools that help you to grow your list, which we wrote about in this recent blog. A recent report published by Beehiiv shared some insights in the email newsletter industry. Let’s take a look at some of the key points from the report:
- Average email open rate in 2023 was 38.7%, which is 4% less than what it was in 2022. It could be a sign of increased competition in readers’ inboxes which means you need to stand out in terms of your email subjects and the content you provide. This shows it is also vital to split test your subject lines, which we talk about in another article in this series.
- In 2023 click rates improved from 1.79% to 1.85% which shows that readers will still engage with content that they find relatable or that adds value, even when their inboxes are flooded with a lot of newsletters.
- Less is more: The more characters you add to your email subject line, the lower the open rate. Stick to 20 characters or less so the subject line visibility on mobile devices is not negatively impacted.
So what are you waiting for? It’s an incredible time for email newsletters, start yours now. And please go and read these other articles about email subscriber growth strategies and email design optimisation.
