Afraid of Sending Too Many Emails to Your List?

You have a lot going on. Back-to-back-to-back exhibitions, openings, and events.

How do you make sure the people on your list receive invitations without bugging them too much?

©2013 Nadia Nadege, Caminus. Mixed media on wood, 42 x 62 inches. Used with permission.
©2013 Nadia Nadege, Caminus. Mixed media on wood, 42 x 62 inches.
 Building on my recent article about a schedule for your marketing tasks, I thought it might be helpful to cover a schedule for email – specifically for those times when you have a packed calendar.

Newsletter Content

Your newsletter or ezine is sent on schedule no matter what. If you promise monthly, you send it monthly, which, by the way, is a good timetable for most artists.

Your newsletter is for keeping your name in front of your list and building a relationship with the people on it. Most newsletters have multiple articles or sections, including an upcoming calendar of events.
If a newsletter isn’t laser-focused, it’s not ideal for encouraging action in your readers. That’s why you have . . .

Solo Emails

While your newsletter includes a number of headlines and topics, solo emails have one main purpose. They encourage more action because, upon reading, recipients make a decision about a single thing.

Solo emails are for invitations, sales, and reminders.

The decision is either to attend or not attend, to sign up or not sign up. There are no other options when an email is so succinct.

The other thing about solo emails is that they are usually time-sensitive – a deadline is fast approaching: there’s an event to add to the calendar for next week, a deadline to get the discount, or a reminder to show up.

©Frances Knight, Morning Walk on a Beach. Oil on panel, 20 x 40 centimeters. Used with permission.
©Frances Knight, Morning Walk on a Beach. Oil on panel, 20 x 40 centimeters.

Email Schedule for Artists

A common email schedule for an art opening would look like this:

  1. “Save the Date” announcement in newsletter calendar – 1 to 2 months out
  2. Email invitation to the opening – 1 week out
  3. Reminder to attend – the day before the opening
  4. Reminder to see the show before it closes – final week of exhibit

If you have back-to-back-to-back events, you’re probably thinking …

©2012 Leslie Sobel, Black + Silver. Encaustic and mixed media on paper, 6 x 6 inches. Used with permission.
©2012 Leslie Sobel, Black + Silver. Encaustic and mixed media on paper, 6 x 6 inches.

Yikes! That's a Lot of Emails!

This may look like a lot of emails to you, but remember that the people on your list signed up to hear from you.

Not contacting them isn’t of service to them.

They are also busy and your messages get lost in their inbox. Chances are slim that they would see all four messages.

This is exactly why you want to segment your list.

Everyone would get the newsletter, but only local people might receive the invitation and reminders.

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7 thoughts on “Afraid of Sending Too Many Emails to Your List?”

    1. Tracy: This sounds like you’re saying that you get emails from me every day. I send them twice a week. I am happy to remove you from the list. Or you can remove yourself at the bottom of any email.
      The format changed from weekly to bi-weekly in July and everyone was notified more than once.

  1. Hi Alyson,
    I have an opposite problem to sending email…I have too many addresses of collectors without email. Any thoughts on how to gather those emails? Has anyone figured out a clever way to do this?
    Janet

    1. May I suggest three options for you Janet: call the collectors whose telephone numbers you have (I have recently begun calling collectors and old friends, one per week, and the sense of re-connection is tremendous!), next is to send one of your art cards via snail mail, and the last, but I think least effective option, is to search for their contact information online.
      Good luck!

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