Welcome! Let’s start with a little intro and why it’s so important to have an email list as a creative.
Little bio and some handy stuff!
Hello my dear friends, this is me, Emma.
I just wanted to thank you for signing up to my creative hub! I’m blown away by how many have signed up in just a few short hours and the thing I love most- is how I know most of you! Either through Instagram or from my other mailing lists (I have three, four including this one, yes you read right FOUR). The beauty of an email list is being able to easily reach you and for you to not miss what I have to say (like you probably would on Instagram)
So, my lists are for my range of creative businesses, one for pottery, one for paintings and one for florals & garden styling. Some of you follow all of them so thank you!
Anyway I wanted to pop on today and write to you. Sometimes I’ll do video post or audio, today I just felt like writing. My aim for starting this creative space was to share for free how I run multiple creative businesses and to help you develop yours. Plus sometimes to just come on and have a good old chat. It just suddenly felt right and I thought hey I’ve actually got some useful things to share so here we are.
Most of you know me already on here, you know I’m an artist and creator of many things. I host workshops, have websites where I sell my wares and I attend fairs and exhibitions, I’ve even had my own proper bricks shop! I love creativity and have been self employed for over 20 years, a full time artist for four. It’s not easy but every day is different and I couldn’t live any other way. I’m fortunate to have a good support network, an understanding husband and grownup daughters, plus a good accountant as paperwork is not my strong point!
So you’ve probably heard lots of people going on about mailing lists and why they are important. They really are a key tool in getting started as a creator! Did you know that nearly all of my sales of pottery and paintings, not to mention workshop bookings come from my mailing lists and not social media. That’s because my subscribers get to see my posts and I am in complete control of sharing/showing what I have to offer. It doesn’t get lost on social media. I use Substack for all of my newsletters and i’ve used it for years. It’s free to use (no nasty surprises when you hit so many followers like Mailchimp) It’s simple to use, I can embed it into my website and share the link on Instagram. It acts more like a good old blog! I can choose to record video directly through Substack or upload from YouTube, yes I have a YouTube now, I’m learning a lot about video and my daughter is telling me I need to use thumbnails as intro images 🤦🏻♀️ it’s a learning curve, one I’m happy to share!
I can record audio so you can listen as a podcast or I can write and share images. It has buttons so you can send people direct to your website or wherever you want them to go. And probably most importantly it allows you to grow a loyal following as it’s interactive! You can start a chat, subscribers can leave you comments on your posts, it’s just easy to connect! It also has a perk in that you can offer paid subscriptions (if you were thinking of going down that route) they charge you 10% and you can set the price and have it monthly or annually. I’m not being paid to promote it 😂 I just genuinely love it and recommend it! And that’s basically why I created this newsletter, to share with you what I’ve learned/mastered in running a creative business and what I’m learning now. You will be forever learning, that is life, go with it or get left behind.
So, how do you start a mailing list? Will anyone be interested in what I have to say? What am I going to talk about? How will people find it? Where the hell do I even start…
One- stop thinking you’re not interesting! You are interesting! You’re a frickin creative, creative people are interesting! You are not dull, you are not playing and yes it is a real job! Just stop overthinking this! So with that out the way I start by writing in a lovely new notebook what I want to share and why I want to share it. For my businesses its as simple as I want to tell my lovely subscribers every time I’m launching a collection or workshops as that is what I promised them in the start. If you’re asking people to invest time in you there needs to be a reason they’ll want to. Basically if you don’t sign up to my mailing list you will miss out on my teacups as they all sell in minutes! Or, I’m sharing this hobby and I think you’d like it as I show my practice for making it. I’m an artist and not only will you get advanced access to my art when it goes live I share my daily inspiration and studio scenes too.
Take this one you are reading now, I’m offering for free to share my creative knowledge. There has to be a good reason for people to sign up in the first place as lets face it- inboxes are already overcrowded places.
So where do you find people that will subscribe, well a lot of mine come from Instagram, I use the link in my stories explaining what I’m doing and asking if people would like to sign up. I always put it in my stories as I can add the link there and my stories get seen more than my grid. I also have the link in my bio on Instagram and it’s embedded in my website. When I do fairs I have a pad where people can write their email for me to then enter manually or you can be really fancy and make your own QR code, you can do this for free then print it out and stick it to your stall or take a screenshot and if the conversation comes up ‘oh I have a mailing list, want to join?’ You can just share the code in your photos, easy!
The main thing is to just start! It’s like all these things, you just need to start and the quicker the better because social media isn’t getting any easier. It important now more than ever to own your presence and not leave it to chance. Then when you’re ready to launch a website or a collection or just need to reach out because Instagram is bloody broken, you will be all set to do so.
If I’ve missed anything out or you have any questions just let me know in the comments.
Thanks
Emma x
p.s If you know of anyone that would enjoy reading this, please feel free to share.
Hi Emma. Today I decided to look around substack and see what I can find. Your description on integrating the more complex blogesque feel to a social media type platform seems a good fit for creatives. Thank you and I look forward to more on this frontier.
Hi Emma just discovered your newsletter via insta and it looks brilliant. I’m a photographer who focuses on capturing her garden where I plant to support my bees. I’m trying to use my images and words to encourage people to do the same, to reconnect with nature and appreciate it all. Your newsletter will be so helpful. Thank you for creating it. Looking forward to learning heaps.