I am convinced that 1 email subscriber is worth more than 100 social media followers maybe even 1,000 Let's talk about why email marketing works and how to set it up for your Etsy shop. Howdy friends my name is Abby, this is Type Nine Studio where I help you start and grow your Etsy shop into a small business I've been a full-time seller on Etsy for over a year and a half. First - why email? Email marketing is vastly more effective at reaching your customers To put it simply, when you send out an email to your email list that email goes directly into all of their inboxes and most people check their email every single day even multiple times a day. But what happens when you post on social media? Maybe 5% of your followers will see it and if you're lucky, if the stars align in your favor maybe a few people who don't follow you might see it. I'm not saying don't post on social media, because it does have its benefits as well But if you have information that you need to get out to your followers Email marketing is gonna win every time. Or a different... not so exciting scenario It's no secret that sometimes Etsy shops just get shut down for no reason. Or your shop or your social media could be hacked anything can happen. Later on, you may decide to expand your Etsy shop and start selling on another platform like Shopify as well You need to have a way to contact your followers that doesn't rely on something that you don't own because you don't own your Etsy shop, Etsy owns it You don't own your social media accounts Instagram, facebook, twitter, tiktok owns your account That's also why I think it's beneficial to move onto Shopify or something later on but that's not the point of this video. Before we get into talking about how to set up email for your Etsy shop If you don't hear anything else in this video please hear what I'm about to say. You have to collect email addresses from Etsy, or anywhere else, legally. It's against Etsy's terms of service, because it's against the law, to just take people's email addresses and sign them up for your list without their consent. You need your customers or potential customers to opt in to your email marketing Not to mention it is annoying as heck when somebody does this to you I can't speak for anybody but myself, but if this happens to me and somebody takes my email address without my consent that's a surefire way to make sure that I will never make a purchase from whatever the business is. My business inquiries only email address on youtube and instagram and stuff gets stolen all the time. From here on out, it doesn't matter which marketing provider you use you still are required to make sure that your customers are actually opting in to receive marketing from you The only time I can think of that you should just manually add people to your email list is if you do in-person events and you have a physical piece of paper that people are writing their emails down on or if you are taking cards at an in-person event and you ask people if they wanna sign up and they say yes that's fine, you can manually input them in those scenarios but I wouldn't do that any other time Alright with that disclaimer out of the way let's talk about how to actually start building your list. There are dozens of email marketing providers out there or different marketing services you could use it really just depends on your needs and preferences, which one is the best for you most of them are going to have a free plan to start out with to try it out, see if you like it The most common ones I see Etsy sellers using are Mailchimp, Convertkit, and AWeber. They all vary in terms of their initial free plan, the kinds of features they have the options they have, the pricing once you exceed the free plan so on and so forth. So let's talk about each one and see how they compare. This is gonna be a brief description and I'm gonna link all of them in the description box so you can take a look at them and see which one is best for you So I have used 2 of these myself and I will get into my thoughts about those I currently use Mailchimp for my Etsy shop and I just started using Convertkit to market Type Nine Studio which is what I'm doing here I'm integrating that with my blog and everything and I'll actually have a link in the description and in the pinned comment and you can sign up for my mailing list with Convertkit if you want I have not used the other one that I'm gonna talk about so this is based on my experience and what I read on their websites So let's start with Mailchimp Mailchimp is free for up to 2,000 contacts and 10,000 email sends per month So just as an example if you have 2,000 contacts you could only send 5 emails out to all of those contacts in one month, because 5 times 2,000 is 10,000... you know. They have very limited features on the free version You get basic templates and minimal analytics like it will tell you how many people actually opened the email, how many people clicked off the email to visit your shop, or whatever that's about the norm on any of the free plans it's pretty basic. You cannot segment your audience I don't think any of them allow you to segment your audience on the free plan either, which basically means you can't separate your contacts into different groups, so let's say if you wanted to have 1 group of people that have ordered something then another group of people that haven't ordered yet you can't send them different emails, you have to send everybody the same one You can make a landing page on the free version, which I'll talk about in a minute Also if you have a blog, most of them are going to allow you to create a form to put on your blog where you can have people sign up for your mailing list there Mailchimp definitely has the most contacts available on the free version I don't have anywhere near the limit for mine which is nice so it's been free for me this whole time. From my experience with Mailchimp though it was slightly difficult to navigate around if I wanted to do something specific with it I had to just click around the different menu options because I couldn't figure out which one I was supposed to go to but actually building the email itself isn't too difficult. Which is what you would do most of the time anyways you'd use it mainly for sending emails. And this will be the same for all of these, but the fee per month, if you exceed the free plan the monthly fee will go up based on the amount of subscribers or the amount of contacts you have Number 2 is Convertkit I've been playing around with Convertkit for the past week or two and oh my gosh it is so much easier to use than Mailchimp Now I see why it's recommended so often Though I haven't tried any others besides Mailchimp and Convertkit, so I can't say definitively that Convertkit is the best but it is pretty good. It's free for up to 1,000 subscribers so not quite as many as Mailchimp, but you have unlimited email sends per month and again it does have pretty limited features on the free plan but it is plenty, both Convertkit and Mailchimp the features are small but they are plenty for your average newer Etsy seller, which I'm sure you are if you're following me on this channel They have lots of templates for you to create your signup and landing pages and they're pretty straightforward, easy to use like drag and drop. Navigation is a lot easier, like I mentioned with Mailchimp was pretty difficult to find what I was supposed to be doing. One huge positive that I literally just noticed There were a few people that were signed up for my email list before I converted to Convertkit... and I wanted to just test it out and send an email to those few people that I switched over from Mailchimp to Convertkit and it let me schedule the email, I could send it at a specific time which you cannot do with Mailchimp on the free plan you have to use the paid one, so that is a huge plus. And again the price for the paid ones goes up based on the amount of contacts you have. Number 3 let's talk about AWeber. This one actually integrates with Etsy in a different way than the other ones do. It takes some of the legwork out of getting people to opt in. So AWeber is free for up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 email sends per month Of course it does have less features on the free plan and I noticed that it does have less features overall even on the paid plan. But a huge positive for Etsy sellers in particular with AWeber it will automatically, if you link it to your Etsy shop of course, it will automatically send an email to anyone that orders from you asking if they want to opt in. This does comply with Etsy's terms of service because you're only allowed to contact buyers immediately after, or regarding, a transaction that they made so you can't randomly email people that have previously bought from you it has to be right when the transaction takes place. So that complies with that requirement. Then if they ignore the email or if they don't click "opt in" then they never hear from you again. it's just an easier way for you to reach out, see if they want to be added. Here's why I'm not using AWeber like I'm not saying you shouldn't - if that's the best option for you go for it but here's why I'm not using it. It really is the better option if you are planning to stay solely on Etsy If you move off of Etsy and need more features, then you're going to have to switch anyways and currently the way I get people to sign up for my mailing list which is called my "lead magnet" is a discount code, and that is not necessary if you're using AWeber because it'll automatically ask people so they don't need to use the discount incentive feature And offering a discount does entice people to make a purchase that wouldn't have normally made a purchase so that trick kind of goes away. So I would possibly make less sales with that method but I could gain more email subscribers, which would lead to more sales later on so... it's kind of a toss-up It also has way less free contacts than the other two so cost is usually a big deciding factor, especially for newer Etsy shops You just kind of have to look at all of them and decide even ones that I didn't mention, and decide if they would be better for you and your needs and what you're wanting to do with email marketing. But all 3 that I mentioned, Mailchimp, Convertkit, and AWeber are decent for a newer Etsy shop not making a ton of sales... yet So all of that sounds great, but how do you actually collect emails? To collect emails, you're going to need a landing page. A landing page is a web page that doesn't require you to have your own website it's just a page connected to your email marketing provider that lets people type in their email and opt in to the service. All 3 of the platforms I mentioned before will allow you to create a landing page for free You can use their drag and drop features or I know on Convertkit they have templates you can edit and change the colors to fit your branding and all that stuff When you make the landing page, keep it simple, make sure it has your logo a little bit about your business, why they should sign up for your email list, and not too much other clutter. You want your customers or future customers to stop and enter their email address and not be distracted by links to other places. It's actually pretty difficult to get people to just hand over their email address because spam is annoying So you need to give them something in return to make them want to give you their email address This could be something like a coupon code or a free printable. For most Etsy shops, this is probably going to be a coupon code for free shipping or 10% off maybe, it doesn't have to be huge. So you go to Etsy in the marketing section and create a coupon code then you'll have that coupon code as part of the welcome email after they sign up for your list Don't put the code in the landing page because people will just take that and not put their email in You want to make sure they have to put their email in, submit, opt in and then get the coupon code. For my shop and a lot of others I've seen as well do it this way I will go on Canva and make a listing photo with text that says hey do you want 10% off, do you want free shipping, sign up for my email list to get your coupon code and have a short link to your [landing page] so they can type it in easily, also point them to the description and have the link there as well so they can copy and paste it. You want to have it in a photo because the majority of people browsing Etsy are not going to look in your description box they're going to see the photo and be like ooh 10% off ding ding ding discount [laughs] then they will go and check that out. I put that link also in my order confirmation messages my announcement page on Etsy, social media, pretty much anywhere you can promote it. To make accessing the link as easy as possible I went to bit.ly and made a short link with a customized back half you can do that for free on bit.ly just go to b i t . l y and create an account and you can even see how many people have clicked on your link through that bit.ly Just make the back end of it short and easy to remember so put something like bit.ly slash / whatever your shop name is + email You want to make sure it's easy to remember, easy to spell and doesn't have any capital letters because bit.ly links are case sensitive Links within Etsy are not clickable unless they are to Etsy itself so you want to make sure that people can just type it in or copy and paste it easily or if you put it in your instagram captions or anything that's not clickable either, so you want to make sure people can go type it in really quick and get access to their coupon code. So once you have your landing page and your link ready to go, you've posted it to Etsy what do you do now? You may sit for a while, a long time even, with 0 to very few subscribers and that's perfectly okay I would still send out an email every 1 to 2 weeks even if it's just to 1 subscriber that'll give you some practice on creating emails and it'll also keep that one subscriber engaged because they're important too. Here are some types of emails you could send just to get started doing it you could promote a new product you could re-promote an older product that could use some more love but maybe don't say that, just promote the product and don't say it doesn't sell very well you could announce a sale, you could announce that a popular product has been restocked You could give styling tips if you make wearable products you could give tips on how to use the products You could list this week or month's best sellers you could send sneak peeks of new products you could give your subscribers first access to a sale if you give them a secret coupon code The possibilities with sending emails are pretty endless I would be careful of sending too many or sending things that are kinda spammy just to get that 1 a day or 1 a week or whatever because people are going to unsubscribe if you're annoying It depends on the person but I think daily emails are kind of annoying I would limit it to 2 per week at max 1 every week, every 2 weeks would be okay I would bump that up to 2 per week around the holidays because that's when people start getting more emails coming in for advertisements and stuff and you want to make sure you're toward the top of their email list so they read your messages, you know Another thing I just remembered. You want to I've seen people say to create the whole email in Canva and just send out the photo Please don't do that You want all of the text in the email to be readable and to be readable to people who have screen readers because if it's just in a photo, a screen reader like for people who are visually impaired, cannot read the email Then also if somebody has a poor internet connection they can at least read the text but they can't see any photos, so make sure you have photos, and also some text that's within the email itself and not just over the photo because it's not going to be readable to people who are visually impaired or who don't have a good internet connection...so... just so you know. And make sure if you're putting photos in your email, or linking to products, make sure you actually link your products or your page everywhere you possibly can. Make every photo a link to that product in your shop Make your logo a clickable link to your shop Just anywhere they can click, do it. I don't know how many marketing emails I get especially from smaller businesses that the logo, and I have to if I want to click on something I have to open my browser and type in their website because they don't have anything clickable what's the point if you can't... that's just a pet peeve but also a best practice because you want people to actually get to your stuff easily the more they have to work to get to your shop the less likely they are to buy something. Anyways that is it for me today let me know if you have any questions about email marketing in the comments if you've watched this whole thing and haven't subscribed or clicked the like button yet, you might as well. I do new videos every Wednesday and Saturday even though today is Thursday. For more Etsy tips, follow me on Instagram and Tiktok both @typeninestudio, I have a Ko-fi at @typeninestudio as well I'm also doing Etsy shop reviews very very soon make sure you follow me on all of my social media and sign up for my email list in the description box below and in the pinned comment links.typeninestudio.com you'll be the first to know and the first to get access to those shop reviews That is it for me today, I will see you in the next video and in the comments, goodbye! [heavy metal music]
