3 Ways to Keep Your Artist Relevant with Email Marketing
Email marketing is the easiest, most consistent, effective way to keep an artist top of mind. Social media algorithms can change, print and paid media is expensive and one-off, but email marketing? That tactic is magical because once you get an email address, you can generally continue to communicate with them for years.
Why email marketing is important
Email marketing is one of the few digital marketing tactics that is owned and maintained by you. Once someone provides you with their email address and consent, they are a part of your database that you can continue to communicate with, build out their profiles, and finesse your targeting and messaging.
There are of course scenarios where someone may revoke their consent to message (opt-out or unsubscribe) and behaviors may change. But overall, once you have an email address gold. It is your email address to market to, and you can move it from service to service if needed.
As you use email marketing to communicate with your audience, you can build out their profiles to learn more about each person behind the email. This is great for both you and your community, allowing you to create kind marketing that better resonates with your readers. Some items to collect include:
Industry or job (and how it connects to your artist)
If they are owners of your artist’s works
Home city
Each of those 3 data points will help you learn more about your community, your audience, and what will help them remain connected to your artist.
Importance of email marketing for artist estates and trusts
As an artist estate and trust, one of your primary objectives is to maintain (and ideally increase) the status of your artist in the zeitgeist. At a bare minimum, you need people to keep your artist in mind and think about how they fit into the current cultural landscape.
Email marketing allows you to consistently get your artist’s name into the inbox of your audience (and ideally people who can help influence the industry). Whether it is weekly or monthly, you know that your artist’s name will be seen and will resonate with the community you are working with.
If they do decide to open your email, this is your chance as an artist estate or trust to manage the discussion and dialogue about your artist. You are able to choose the content and information to push out to your audience, and through those efforts you are able to be a primary resource for all things about your artist.
3 ways to use email marketing without creating unique content
Creating your own content is time consuming. It’s intimidating. But the magic of email marketing is that you don’t always have to create your own content to have something to share with your audience. Instead of creating your own content for your artist, use these 3 tactics to curate content that your audience will love:
Announce important sales or auctions
This is a critical one for any artist estate or trust. It is important to know how the market is reacting to your artist’s works, and if things are going well, share that information with your community. This is great for a few reasons:An owner of a work of art will feel they have made a great financial choice
Someone interested in buying the art will keep an eye out for other pieces they could afford
Recent auctions and sales provides social proof of your artist’s importance in today’s culture
Share upcoming and current exhibitions
Another great way to drive conversations about your artist is to talk about where their work is being showcased. If you know of an upcoming exhibition, work with the museum or gallery to get some information that you can share with your very interested audience. If there are no known upcoming exhibitions, look at archives of previous exhibitions and share information about them. People who attended or wished they had been able to attend will love learning about those exhibitions.
By promoting exhibitions, you become a partner for museums and galleries to work with.Highlight news articles and information about your artist
Hopefully you have a Google Alert setup for your artist’s name (and maybe even a Zapier integration that helps create a system you can use to filter through those alerts). With this constant flow of information and news about your artist, you can choose a few items each newsletter cycle to share with your audience. We recommend using between 3-5 each newsletter - nothing overwhelming, but still providing additional information for the community about your artist.
Email marketing as a tool for artist estates and trusts
Email marketing can be one of the easiest ways for an artist estate or trust to connect with their community. It provides direct connection, is managed and timed by the organization, and the information can be tailored in the interest of your artist. Plus, by using the 3 tips above, an estate or trust has to do very little content creation in order to create a compelling, interesting email newsletter.
If you’re looking to make your email marketing have a little extra oomph, we’re here to help. Connect with Bend at the link below and we can help you create an email marketing strategy for your artist estate or trust that fits your business plan.
