How To Build A Mailing List If You’re On Etsy
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This blog post is for any female small business owner who uses Etsy to sell products and services.
Introduction
Etsy can be a great platform to sell your products for a number of reasons:-
- It’s an easy and low cost way to start selling your products.
- Etsy has it’s own audience, visiting the platform in their millions each day, giving you a ready made in-platform audience to promote your products to.
- Etsy undertakes marketing strategies away from the platform to drive more organic traffic to seller’s products inside the platform.
- With the right Etsy strategy, you can put your products on the first page of Etsy, reaching an organic audience.
- The platform is fairly easy to use, without any deep tech knowledge required.
However, there are some pitfalls with Etsy, and for that reason it’s important to have some protection for your business, to ensure your business remains safe and stable for the longer term.
One of the biggest pitfalls with Etsy, is the inability to take any customer’s details and to automatically add them to a mailing list.
Why You Need To Bother With A Mailing List With Etsy
Quite simply, your Etsy store is not 100% safe. You don’t own your Etsy store, and you have no power to control whether Etsy will ever decide to shut your store down, without notice.
This happens. And more often than you might think.
There are many, many Etsy store owners who, for different reasons, have had their stores shut down, without recourse.
When this happens it can be devastating for the business owner, particularly if Etsy is the main place the business owner sells their products, and they don’t have any ‘back-up’ in place to keep their business safe and functioning, in the event they lose their Etsy store.
This is where the power of a mailing list comes into it’s own.
When you have strategy to move as many of your Etsy customers over to your mailing list as possible, you are, in effect, putting those people into a safe space.
This means that if, for any reason, you lose your Etsy store, you always have the back-up of your mailing list to be able to maintain contact with people on that list who were your Etsy customers.
Your business is then able to stay afloat and functioning through your list, whilst you sort out any issue with your Etsy store, or move to another platform (like Shopify), if you’ve suffered the worst, and your store has been shut down.
You shouldn’t run the risk of your Etsy store being shut down lightly. It’s a very real risk, and happens often – even to businesses that are performing well on Etsy.
So to have a mailing list is to give your business some protection as a safeguard, if anything negative at all should happen to your store over on Etsy.
Issues With Having An Etsy Store And A Mailing List
One of the biggest issues around having a mailing list and an Etsy store, is that you cannot set up a mailing list to integrate directly with Etsy.
And it is against Etsy’s terms to automatically add Etsy Customers to your list.
Hardly surprising – Etsy wants Etsy customers to stay inside the platform for their shopping.
So any time someone visits your Etsy shop to browse or make a purchase, you cannot automatically add them to your mailing list.
You do have the ability to send direct messages and emails to customers inside Etsy, but you cannot over-do this (it could cause problems with your Etsy store), and the customer (and their email address), still remain inside Etsy, rather than on your mailing list.
It’s therefore important to have a back-up and another means by which you can communicate regularly with customers that have purchased products from you on Etsy.
Your mailing list is a key way to do this.
Setting Up A Mailing List To Work With Your Etsy Store
To start to get your Etsy customers over to your mailing list, you’ll first need to set up a mailing list with a provider. This is a fairly simple process, and there are plenty of providers to choose from.
Ladies inside my community have tried and tested many of the mailing list providers. The two that they rank best are Convertkit (recently renamed ‘kit’), and Mailerlite.
Both of these mailing list providers give you the ability to start for free, and they have plenty of tools to help you grow your mailing list.
Once you’ve chosen your mailing list provider and you’ve set up an account, you’ll then need to create an opt-in form, and some sort of freebie to give away, as and incentive for people to join your list.
Please be aware – the freebie that you give away in order to entice Etsy customers to join your mailing list should be something of REAL and SIGNIFICANT value to your Etsy audience.
You cannot cut corners with this.
Make the freebie you offer insanely valuable to your Etsy customers, so that they feel obligated to jump on your mailing list, because they do not want to miss out.
Think about the freebies your best competitors offer, and how you can go one step further with your opt-in offer.
It’s really important to do this, because the greater the freebie you offer is, the easier you’ll find it to grow your list.
Your mailing list provider should have the ability to create an opt-in form or a landing page (that looks like a website page), so you don’t need a standalone website to do this.
When you’ve created an opt-in/landing page inside your mailing list provider you can then start to share the link for that opt-in with both your Etsy customers, and any potential customer who finds you on Etsy.
Let’s take a look at how you can do that safely, without impacting any of Etsy’s rules.
Adding Etsy Customers To Your Mailing List
You can add Etsy customers to your mailing list with some good strategy that I’ll cover here. It’s not a perfect science. But this strategy is a whole lot better than having no mailing list at all, and relying purely on Etsy for customers and sales.
- Make sure you add the link to your freebie inside your Etsy announcement. This is a safe space to showcase your opt-in, to encourage people to copy the link for your freebie, that they can then paste into their browser windows.
- You can have information about your freebie inside the ‘about you’ section of your Etsy store. It shouldn’t be the only thing there – but you can absolutely make reference to your opt-in in that space.
- Some Etsy sellers have a scannable QR code on their shop banner that goes to their opt-in. I have tested this, but didn’t really see any results from doing so. If you want to test this, you can create a QR code in Canva for free – it’s easy to do. I have a free Canva School training if it’s of use to you, and there is a QR code training there. You can find more details about my free Canva School here.
- You can also make reference to your freebie in your Etsy listing descriptions. Be careful with this. Make sure the freebie relates to the listing, and always add it at the end of your listing, once you’ve covered all the essential information about the product you’re selling in that listing.
- When any customer makes a purchase from you, you can and should send a message to them to thank them for their purchase, and to let them know what happens next. Within that direct message or email you can then also make reference to your freebie – go gently – letting your customer know that they might like something for free that is linked to the purchase they’ve made. Let them have the url for your freebie, so that they can go grab it if they choose.
Using the above methods to promote your freebie inside Etsy will help you keep your Etsy store safe.
Remember not to over-spam any customer with messages about your freebies. You do not want complaints about this, that might impact your customer satisfaction score.
More Ways To Add Etsy Customers To Your Mailing List
There are other ways you can encourage Etsy customers to join your mailing list, that are not promotional opportunities directly inside Etsy.
Let’s take a look at those ways.
- Have scannable QR codes that lead to your freebies on all of the packaging you use for your products. Remember you can create any number of free QR codes inside Canva.
- Have scannable QR codes that lead to your freebies on any labels you use for your packaging (not including the mail label).
- Have postcards you can include in your packaging that have a nice message to your customer, and make reference to your bonus/freebie. You can have both a QR code and a url for your freebie on that postcard.
- Have scannable QR codes on your products. You need to be careful with this, they must not interfere with the product itself. An example is a product that is contained in a jar – the QR code could go on the underside of the jar or, if there’s a lid, on the underside of the lid. You always need to indicate what the QR code is for to encourage people to use it, for example ‘here’s a great little bonus for you’, or ‘something extra special just for you’.
Other Places To Promote Your Freebie
Remember, if you’re in social spaces or have websites or platforms (like Pinterest!) outside of Etsy, you should also promote your opt-in there.
Anywhere you’re visible online where you can drop a link, have a QR code, or show up and talk about your freebie, will be of benefit to you.
The Benefits Of A Great Mailing List
When you grow your mailing list, and you engage with your mailing list in a way that your subscribers enjoy, your list is likely to become the place you sell more of your products and services than anywhere else.
Mailing lists typically convert 25% better than any other spaces.
So building a list from your Etsy customers and Etsy audience not only safeguards your business, but provides you with a huge opportunity to make more sales.
Best of all, you don’t have to be the greatest expert at composing emails to reap the benefits of your list.
You do need to have strategy to build your lists consistently, and to sell to that list in a way that is not over sales-y.
When you do this – you will earn money from your list.
Given that the purpose of your business, your products, your services is to make sales, if your list is one great avenue to do this, surely it makes sense to have growing your list as part of your daily business strategy?
Conclusion
I cannot over emphasise how important having a mailing list is in your business, and to have strategy to drive as much of your Etsy audience to your list over the longer term.
When you grow your list, and you start to see sales through your list, you’ll never regret taking action to set up a mailing list, drive people to that list, engage with that list through your emails, and market your products and services to that list.
Related Articles
WHY YOU NEED TO HAVE A MAILING LIST WITH AN ETSY STORE
Mailing List Tips To Help You Grow Your Small Business
HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR ETSY STORE ON PINTEREST
Bonus
Etsy Good Practice Guide – Your Free PDF To Learn How To Maximise Success On Etsy