How To Make More Handmade Product Sales with Email Marketing

As a creative, it can often be difficult to wrap our heads around marketing our products. We feel ‘salesly’ and icky sending email after email, posting image after image, of our products. Is there really a way to be more sustainable and authentic with email marketing, AND make more sales while doing it? The answer is YES, and I hope this blog post helps you learn a bit about how to make more product sales with email marketing.

Why Is Email Marketing Important for Handmade Businesses?

Email marketing is important for handmade businesses for several reasons:

1. Cost-effective: Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach a large number of people. It is much cheaper than traditional advertising methods and can be automated to save time and resources.
2. Targeted audience: With email marketing, you can segment your list into specific groups based on their interests, purchase history, and other data. This allows you to send targeted, relevant messages to your customers, which can increase engagement and conversion rates.
3. Builds relationships: Email marketing allows you to build a relationship with your customers by providing them with valuable content, updates, and offers. This can help to foster customer loyalty and keep your business top-of-mind.
4. Measurable results: Email marketing allows you to track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, giving you a clear picture of the success of your campaigns. This data can be used to optimize your campaigns for even better results. Did you know? 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month.
5. Increases brand awareness: Consistent email marketing can help increase brand awareness by regularly putting your business in front of your customers. This can help to build trust and establish your business as a leader in your industry.

In summary, email marketing is an essential tool for handmade businesses looking to reach a large audience, build relationships, and increase conversions.

Case Study: The $75K Handmade Product Launch

Early in 2020, I was working part-time as a Social Media Marketer and Communications Specialist for a small company that sold luxury handcrafted books, Facsimile Finder.

We were gearing up for a big Kickstarter campaign to publish a handcrafted, illustrated version of the Divine Comedy, with the most expensive copy being completely hand-colored by the artist and hand-bound in Italy by traditional book-binders.

There were many jobs I had in the lead up to launching the campaign – and the biggest one was email marketing. First, I built our email list with Facebook Ads and a simple Mailchimp landing page. Then, it was my job to craft a sequence of emails warming up our new email subscribers. I warmed them up with insight into the artist, his values, and his process. We announced when we were launching in every single email.

The first two days of launch, the campaign brought in $75K just from our email subscribers.

After 30 days, and after being picked up by a major marketing firm, the campaign made over $361,000.

Want to hear the full story? Click here to listen to my podcast episode about this experience! And click here to view the successful campaign.

To Start, Get a Good Email Marketing Service

Now that we’ve established the power of email marketing, I want to talk about email marketing services. All of them are different, and each have their pros and cons. Personally, the easier it is to use, the better it is for us creatives. That’s why I love using Flodesk for email marketing.

Not only is Flodesk easy to use, it connects to your domain so that your email are less likely to be caught in spam. They also allow you to segment your email subscribers. This allows you to better target who you’re reaching with each email and see how they became a subscriber.

My favorite feature of Flodesk is their Workflows. Makers can easily offer a downloadable freebie or a coupon code, and lead people through a workflow of emails that are automatically sent at specific times. As a creative, this can save you SO much time. Imagine if you had a pre-loaded email series welcoming people to your list and warming them up to buy without having to hit the send button at all. The more automation the better, and you can edit these workflows any time!

Click here to get 50% off your first year of Flodesk.

Once You Have an Email Marketing Service, What’s Next?

The next steps are to:

• Make sure your emails are branded and look attractive.

• Make sure you have a form on your website collecting emails. You can easily create forms inside of Flodesk and grab the embed code.

• Bring a clipboard to your craft shows and make sure to gather email addresses! A great way to do this is through a giveaway.

• Create a freebie of some kind. This could be a discount code or a PDF, or maybe a free mini-course or checklist. Promote it on Pinterest and social media to get more leads.

• Create a welcome series that warms people up to you and your work, and set it up as a workflow that runs on autopilot when people join your email list.

• Create a consistent posting schedule and get it on your calendar!

This may seem simple, but there are some technical steps to take. If you find yourself needing a step-by-step walkthrough where you can visually see how to accomplish all of the steps above, I would recommend joining Happening Hands! Our membership for makers contains a full course on DIY Email Marketing for Makers! You can click here to learn more about us and join our community.

To your success!

Kiana Jones, Founder & CEO of Happening Hands

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The truth is there are so many types of marketing strategies out there. As a small handmade business, we know it can be difficult to determine where to start. It’s all about identifying where you are on the journey, and finding a community of support that contains the resources you need to get to the next level. That’s why Happening Hands is here. Our membership for makers contains everything above and more! You can click here to learn more about us and join our community.

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