How to Write and Send Unsolicited Promotional Emails

ArtBusiness.com receives plenty of unsolicited promotional emails from artists, fine art marketers, and artist websites. These include newsletters, images of art, exhibition and show notices, announcements, marketing requests, and invitations to visit websites. A good number of these emails are concise and to the point; some are confusing and raise more questions than answers; a handful have major problems; a few are totally unintelligible. As an artist advocacy website, ArtBusiness.com offers the following guidelines for writing and sending unsolicited promotional emails.

Sending an unsolicited email is similar to the real life situation of wanting to meet someone for the first time at an event like an art opening, art class, or other art-related function. If you're like most people, you introduce yourself, start up a conversation, and make your point pretty fast. Anyone who wants to continue talking does; anyone who doesn't doesn't. You don't ramble on for fifteen minutes to someone who obviously isn't interested in hearing what you have to say. Treat your email recipients the same way by making your point fast, inviting those who want to know more to "continue the conversation," and "walking away" from those who don't.

To begin with, make sure you have a good reason to send an email. Best procedure is to focus on a single newsworthy item like a development in your career, an upcoming show, an award you're receiving, a studio sale, or other event or accomplishment that involves you. Make your announcement and then tell people where they can go to find out more.

Always use a headline (subject line). Emails without headlines get deleted far more often than emails that have them. The best headlines give readers the most information about the who, what, when, where, and why of your message. For example, headlines like "100 New Paintings on Bill Smith's Website," "Susan Moore Gets Sculpture Commission," or "Mary Moran Show Reviewed in the Times" clearly state content and increase the chances that interested parties will open these emails.

Keep your message short, simple, and clear. The average person's internet attention span is not very long, and if you don't get your message across in your first two or three sentences, consider your email destined for deletion. Hardly anyone likes receiving lengthy, rambling, or vague, emails from people or organizations they've never heard of. Your goal is to grab the attention of anyone who's interested and hold it long enough to convince them that they want to find out more.

Stay on topic when composing your message. Don't go on and on about yourself, your career, or what you're doing with your life unless it relates to your headline. Some artists, for example, digress about individual works of art, how they're doing with works in progress, or how people are responding to their art. This information may be fine for artist discussion groups, but it's not newsworthy unless it has to do with the purpose of your email. Can you imagine the junk that would pile up in your mailbox if every artist emailed you every time they either started, worked on, showed, or completed pieces of art?

If your email is like virtually all art and artist emails, your goal is to get recipients to look at your art. Once again, stay on topic and resist the urge to advertise every single piece of art you've ever created. When you have a website, give the URL and briefly tell people how to navigate the site in order to see relevant examples of your work. Don't simply dump people on your homepage with a "look at my art" type of message; tell them why they should visit and what they should do once they get there.

When you don't have a website, but want to include attachments of your art in your email, be brief. Don't attach any more than one or two images and keep them under 60-80K each in size, preferably in the range of 20-30K each. Anyone who wants to see more of your art will hit their reply button and ask for it. ArtBusiness.com has received unsolicited emails with as many as 25 separate attachments and occasional single images well over one megabyte in size. The most excessive of these connection-clogging emails take nearly 30 minutes to download with a 56K modem and only make people mad. Good procedure is to include no images at all, but rather to send a great message, followed by simple instructions, that convinces people they want to see your art and tells them how to see it. Below are some additional pointers for sending unsolicited promotional emails that get results.

* Target your recipients. Make sure you understand who you're emailing and why. Avoid mass-mailings unless you know that everyone on the recipients list has a possible interest in either you, your art, or your career.

* Add a personal note to every email you send. Recipients who feel that they've been singled out are more likely to read them.

* Make no more than three announcements per email and preferably less. More than three announcements bore readers.

* Your entire email should be no longer than three paragraphs of two to three sentences each.

* Keep headlines factual and avoid over-the-top, misleading, exaggerated, or pie-in-the-sky claims like you see on spam.

* Keep content truthful. Misrepresent yourself or your career and, sooner or later, people find out. As always, honesty is the best policy.

* If your goal is to publish a regular newsletter or any other type of email with lots of content, invite people to subscribe by sending them short introductory emails first that offer trial subscriptions, or give URL's of current or recent issues where people can go to read and subscribe to them. Don't send large unsolicited emails.

* Be brief if you include any biographical or career information. Send or direct people to your resume only when they ask to see it.

* Put as much contact information as possible into your email including your name, address, phone number, email address, and website URL. The more accessible you make yourself, the more comfortable people feel about contacting you, and the more art you'll sell. The less contact information you provide, the more hesitant people are to contact you, and the more suspect they are of your intentions.

* Send no more than two or three emails to anyone who doesn't respond. In spite of what direct marketers say about how many contacts are necessary to make a sale, art is not like groceries, computers, cars, or other merchandise. People's tastes in art rarely change no matter how many times they see it.