Vision for your art career is one thing. Making progress with baby steps is another. In today’s Art Marketing Action newsletter, I give an example of how you can take baby steps to have a solo museum exhibit. Here’s another example.
Computerize your mailing list
The baby steps involved . . .
- Visit the ArtBizBlog to find a list of artist databases.
- Ask artists you know what they’re using and how they like it.
- Download trial versions.
- Dedicate 5 hours a week to testing trial versions.
- List advantages and disadvanges of each and prioritize the features.
- Decide on software that will fill my needs.
- Install software.
- Clean up current mailing list.
- Import mailing list from X program.
- Update mailing list on the final Monday of each month.
Do you have a vision you're having a hard time breaking down? Leave it in the comments and see if we can help.
11 thoughts on “Progress toward computerizing your mailing list”
Thanks for running this info again! I’ve been working with Flick but I’m not really happy with it, and have been wanting to review some other options. Great timing!
I’ve been putting this off for a year now. I am still confused as to which program will work best for me. I would love to hear from others what they have found works for them. Good timing on this as I was planning on tackling this thing in the next week or two!
As always, Alyson, you’ve inspired me to take another step forward. I have filemaker, but have not mastered it. I’ve spent a while with it this morning. I look forward to talking with you soon about the possibility of a workshop with you in Vermont.
Melissa: I wonder what it is you’re not happy with with Flick. ?? Nancy: There has never been a consensus, but I keep trying to find one! Liza: You can’t go wrong with Filemaker, although you can spend a lot of time formatting it.
Liza again: Would LOVE to come to Vermont!
I’m using a combination of paper files, a notebook with calendar tabs, and images kept as slides and digital. The older pieces are on slides, the newer ones are digital. At what point do I really need to have software to keep up? I suppose it might be more efficient to have it all in one place, but I’ve had laptops stolen along with my backup discs–so I’m reluctant to dump the dinosaur paper file system.
Sylvia: Do it now! It will only take you longer to implement it later. And you’ll be backing it up frequently, right?
I bought Flick! a year ago, had some problems downloading it, then had problems accessing it. I tried to input some things, then couldn’t find them again…. gave up. For me, I found it easier to just keep track of my artwork using digital files of the artwork in folders in my computer and using an excel worksheet which listed title, medium, size,… and I’ve been working with two mailing lists – one is my yahoo address book, the other my Outlook data. In the hopes of a better system, I ordered GYST just yesterday. I hope that it will work for me. It was expensive but the website impressed me – it seems to have included everything an artist could possibly want in an organizing system. I’ll let y’all know how it goes after I’ve spent some time with it!
I am using eartist, just getting to know it actually. I use a Macbook, and getting to know the iCal for my calendar and recently put all my addresses into the Address Book of the computer. So, my next question can I sync the eartist with the internal Address Book? Or do I have to input all those addresses into the eartist software? Feels like a lot of work and I would love it to be a little more seamless. Anyone know how to do this?
Wow–these comments are pretty discouraging. We went over this in the “Promote Your Art Class”. I don’t really need to track all my work at this point………but what I DO need is a program that can do my mailing list—both regular mail and email & can do group emails. I got a system called “Personal Mail”, but it doesn’t do what I need. Right now I have my mailing list in a folder–it’s a pain to update! And I have my emails on hotmail in groups of 50 each (also a pain) Does anyone have any suggestions for something that’s SIMPLE & easy to use? I wish someone out there (are you listening, universe?) would create a system in a modular form–that you could add what parts you wanted as needed–that was USER FRIENDLY!
Jeanne: Yes, please let me know about GYST! I might even be able to post your review. Susan: I’d Google those questions. You might have to export into a different format (CSV perhaps) from Address Book and then import into eArtist. There must be a way!