Emailing consists of simultaneously sending direct marketing campaigns, addressed in a consistent way to a specific base of recipients, via an email. B.a.-ba of marketing and commercial policies, this act of communication plays a vital role in promoting your gallery, since it allows you to highlight your services and products, especially your artists and their works, by directly reaching users via their respective email addresses. Email is an extremely effective communication tool and it is easy to use, provided that you follow a few basic rules... In this article, Artsper shares its best advice to help you use this tool perfectly!

To manage your contacts

Tip 1 - Create your contact base

To start an email campaign, first of all you need to build a complete and carefully targeted list of email addresses. This set of recipients constitutes the contact base that will receive your emails.

How do you build this list? First of all, you must make sure that the emails you select are from people who have consented to be part of your database. Several tools are available to you for this! Opt for a collection of email addresses from various channels, in order to optimize your results. Social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, advertising or natural referencing are effective tools to expand your recipient base. Organizing a contest on social networks such as Facebook or Instagram is a quick way to recruit new contacts. Specify in the terms and conditions of participation that participants must agree to receive emails from you! You can also rent "Opt In " databases (in French "option d'adhésion").

Tip 2 - Separate your contact database

Not all your contacts are interested in the same type of content. This is why you must make the distinction between two types of emails:

• global campaigns, which are sent to all of your contacts
• personalized campaigns, each one addressed to a previously targeted section of your contact list

You can separate your recipients based on their interests and status (are they already customers or just potential customers?) but also according to language.

Watch out! A bad division of clients can push some of your contacts to unsubscribe from your email list.

Tip 3 - Optimize your mailings

Sending your campaign at the right time is essential. To avoid being caught out, prepare your emails in advance using easy-to-use computer tools such as Mailchimp or Mailjet. Also think about a preorganized schedule that can generate an optimal engagement rate. Keep in mind that Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday are the three best days of the week to send your email campaign.

We advise scheduling your mailings at the end of the afternoon (6pm) during the week, and conversely at the end of the morning (11am) for emails sent on the weekend. Don't forget to adapt to different time zones. A mailing scheduled for 6pm in France will have to be scheduled for 11pm to the United States, so that all your contacts receive your email at the same time!

Tip 4 - Regular management of your contact base

Expand and constantly update your contact base! The recipients of your emails may not feel the same enthusiasm for your activity anymore and may choose not to receive news from you anymore. They must be able to unsubscribe, it is a legal obligation. Thus it is imperative that an unsubscribe link appears in your emails (usually centered at the bottom of the page). To counter unsubscriptions, it is important to recruit new ones! Therefore, you should also include a link that allows people who have been sent this email to subscribe.

One last thing: find the right tempo! Don't overwhelm your contacts at the risk of them choosing to unsubscribe, but write to them regularly to avoid them forgetting you.

Develop your content

Tip 1 - An effective description of your emailing

Continually engage your readership no matter what your campaign is about! You can achieve this through a good level of competency in content marketing. This tends to build loyalty among your potential customers through the development of targeted editorial content. Think about using a short and intriguing e-mail subject. Do not leave out the "preview text", this short sentence following the subject of your email helps to maintain the curiosity of your reader.

Choose to be transparent in your descriptions! Stimulate the customer's interest without extrapolating the subject of your campaign. The goal is to avoid your contacts being disappointed when they discover content that is grossly different from what they expected. Make it clear what your email is about in a few concise introductory sentences.

Tip 2 - Vary the content

Make sure that your email campaigns are not boring. Avoid sending editorial content that is too similar to previous campaigns. Content that has little variation will disinterest your recipients, who may no longer read it, or even put your emails in the trash without even reading them, or they may report them as spam.

So think about diversifying the themes you address: upcoming exhibitions in your gallery, openings, new artists exhibited, arrival of new works, news that animates the art scene ...

Technical advice

The formatting of your emailings is crucial. Your contacts probably receive many emails, among which yours need to grab their attention. To do so, it must make them want to open it before they even read it.

Tip 1 - Optimize the display

50% of emails are opened on smartphones. The screen of a phone does not have the same dimensions as that of a computer, so your email needs to be adapted to it: this is called "Responsive Design", or "adaptive design".

Even with an email that fits the size of the screen of the device that it is read on, some of your contacts will encounter other display problems (of a different nature) when you open it. These problems may be due to their inbox settings. In order for your contacts to overcome these problems, always remember to include the option to open content in their browser. This link will allow your contacts whose display is defective in their mailbox (statistically, 5 to 10% of your recipients), to open the email from their web browser.

Tip 2 - Encourage concrete actions

Remember to include a minimum clickable button in each of your emailings, redirecting to your gallery's website for example. The message on this type of button should be affirmative and encouraging: for example, a "Come meet us" button displaying the page mentioning the location and address of your gallery.

This button is called a Call To Action (CTA), the purpose being to encourage your contacts to take a specific action (in the previous example, go to your gallery).

Graphic and ergonomic advice

The design of your emails is fundamental. It will allow you to distinguish yourself from all the other emails that your contacts may receive.

However, avoid a layout that is too complex and too busy, at the risk of it becoming completely unreadable. Alternate and harmonize text and images, approximately respecting the following proportions: 40% text to 60% images.

As previously mentioned, we recommend the "Mailchimp" tool, which offers its clients the possibility to personalize their campaigns according to the segmentation criteria of their contact base. Don't hesitate to hire a graphic designer to design the basic template for your email (afterwards, you will take care of the integration of text and images by yourself using this template).

Improvement of your shipments

Tip 1 - Test your campaign

Before sending your emailing, check that all the redirection links that you may have integrated into it, display the appropriate web pages. To do so, send yourself a test email and check all CTAs and links. However, make sure that the word "TEST" is not displayed in the final version to your contacts.

Tip 2 - Do not use a no reply email address

Do not use a "no reply" address to send your emails. Your contacts may sometimes appreciate being able to send an email back to your email. They will be able to let you know if there are any improvements to be made or if they are interested in the email.

Tip 3 - Improve your emails with statistical monitoring

Once your email campaign has been sent, don't forget to check its statistics: opening rate, click rate on inserted links, unsubscription rate, spam rate... Mailchimp and Mailjet are once again very efficient tools to measure your statistics!

Consulting these bits of data will allow you to understand what works and what your recipients like and dislike. In addition to allowing you to improve your future campaigns, this information could be used to sharpen the future curation of your gallery, by measuring the artists, news or types of works that most interest your clients.

In conclusion?

You now know the fundamental tools to ensure the success of your next email campaigns. In addition to increasing the visibility of your gallery and therefore of your artists, emails will have a major role in optimizing your sales, thanks to regularly sending targeted newsletters that demonstrate your activity.

Creating your first email campaign may seem complex, but once your first campaign is set up and your email design is ready, the following ones will seem all the more simple and quick to realize. So don't be discouraged and get started now!