How to Grow Your Etsy Shop’s Email List on Autopilot
SO email marketing.
It’s one of those things that you know you should be doing (since everybody and their dog coins the phrase “the money is in the list”), but if you’ll permit me, I’m going to make a guess that it’s probably been at least 6 months since you last emailed your list (no judging here—we’ve all been there and I'm currently digging out of an email marketing rut myself).
Your growth is probably feeling a little stagnant as well. Did you gain 20 subscribers last month? 10? 3?
If you’re just getting started with email marketing, it can be INCREDIBLY discouraging to try to grow your list from 0—because nobody really talks about how to do it-- they just tell you it's important to do (<-- worst advice ever). Add the fact that Etsy’s TOU’s make it EXTREMELY complicated to build a list and it’s no wonder you’re burned out before you’ve even started.
Well….
What if I told you that I could help you grow your list like MAGIC?
As in no more pulling-your-hair-out or screaming into your pillow about things.
And yes, I’m completely serious.
Once you implement the list growing strategies inside this post you’ll be off riding the teacups at Disneyland AND growing your email list.
At the same time.
Boom.
Why email marketing?
If you’re just getting started with marketing your Etsy shop, then starting an email list probably sounds a little….well….outdated.
You’re not the first to think that ;)
In fact, 3 years ago I was TOTALLY in your shoes. Email marketing was lame and social media was where it’s at.
And then I decided to give it a try because "everyone else was doing it."
Would you believe that this is a screenshot of my revenue after sending out some strategic emails to a list of less than 1,000 people (hint: you DON’T have to have 100,000 subscribers to make sales—a few hundred will amaze you).
And yes, those are a couple of $1,000 days.
I certainly don’t say this to brag—but to show you that there is a strong correlation between email marketing and revenue—and the larger your email list, the greater your revenue.
Social media can be a great complement to your email marketing (and a fantastic way to grow your list!), but it should NOT replace email marketing.
Bonus points: You own your email list—so you won’t ever have to bow down to some crazy algorithm like you do every few months with social media.
So what is kosher on Etsy?
Let’s get one thing clear though—Etsy does NOT allow you to add the email addresses of the people who have purchased from you to your list. This is 100% against Etsy’s Terms of Use and can get you shut down in a quick minute. So just don’t do it.
Straight from Etsy's mouth:
***note- you can view all of Etsy’s TOU’s HERE
Etsy does, however, allow you to send visitors to your Etsy shop to an opt-in form or page (outside of Etsy) to gather email subscribers.
So while you can’t manually add former customers to your list, you CAN advertise the heck out of it and encourage people to join—and that’s EXACTLY what I’m going to walk you through today.
Quick note - When advertising your mailing list, you’ll want to make sure you are NOT sending people directly to another ecommerce site—Etsy doesn’t mind if you send them to your website, but NOT to your direct ecommerce page*
This is definitely something of a bit of a workaround, but once set up, if your opt-in is good, it will bring you subscribers on autopilot every single day.
Putting it all into place
There are – literally—hundreds of ways to grow your email list, but we’re not here to give you alllllll the ideas (too many ideas = business paralysis). Instead, I’m going to walk you through some automated strategies that work behind-the-scenes (even when you're not!) to get you new subscribers.
Let’s do this!
Step 1: Create a list with your email service provider
First things first--you’ll need to understand that you won’t be sending emails to your list from your standard gmail (or yahoo or MSN or whatever) account—you absolutely need to get set up with an email service provider.
This is NOT an optional step—you can get in serious trouble for using your personal/business email to market to customers—so make sure you get this taken care of before sending out any emails!
There are dozens of options for ESP’s out there, but if you’re just getting started, MailChimp or MailerLite are great (free!) options to begin with for ecommerce sellers.
Once you’ve got your ESP all squared away, you’ll want to create a new list (this may be called something different depending on the ESP you’re using) for your new subscribers to be stored.
Step 2: Create a landing page
Once you’ve got your list, it’s time to create a landing page—because people need a place to go to sign up for your list.
This landing page is hosted OFF of Etsy and is usually on your blog/website (I STRONGLY encourage everyone to have a web presence off of Etsy), however, if that’s not something you are interested in doing, you can use a landing page software like Leadpages or even some of the standalone page templates in Mailerlite or Mailchimp to create landing pages. Remember—you can’t grab email addresses off of Etsy, so you need a place outside of Etsy that you can direct people to.
If you’re creating a landing page on your personal website/blog, you’ll want to use a page generator that doesn’t show up in the main navigation—remember—the goal is to get email subscribers, so you want to make sure that they don’t click off the page before they leave their name and email (cover pages in SquareSpace is a great tool for this!).
Here’s an example of what that might look like (this one was created in SquareSpace using their cover page feature):
Free opt-in resource library to grow LittleHighbury’s email list
Step 3: Publicize the HECK out of your email list
Again, you can’t grab emails off of Etsy automatically (boo), so you’re going to have to be a *little* creative here to help spread the word.
Not sure where to publicize your email list within your Etsy shop? I've got some ideas for you :)
Idea #1 - In the text of your listings descriptions as a URL:
Look at Rachel @IndigoTangerine showing off that URL link!
Idea #2 - In your shop announcement section:
@Flipthescriptstudios includes their email opt-in URL here in the shop announcement section!
Idea #3 - As an image for one of your Etsy photos (this idea comes from my friend, the ever-so-lovely Jenni over at Fuzzy & Birch):
Don't feel limited to just your Etsy shop, though! You should be mentioning your email list...
On social media
On your website
As part of your email signature
In your Etsy thank-you convos
In your your automated sales message
...and anywhere else you can think of.
Don't worry about being repetitive (in fact-- I strongly encourage you to be so!)-- people need to see that opt-in multiple times before they will act.
Step 4: Automate the delivery of your coupon code/ lead magnet.
And finally—the last step—hooray!
Now that you've got a bunch of different places for people to opt-in to your email list, it's time to make sure everything is automated so you don't have to stress every time someone new joins your list.
Once people head over to your landing page and type in their name and email, they’re going to be expecting something in return (because a CTA saying “join my list!” isn’t doing you any favors)—so make sure you’ve got an automated delivery set up with your ESP to deliver your lead magnet or coupon code the minute someone signs up.
I DON’T want you doing this manually—you’ll not only waste a heckuva lot of time, but you’ll also miss out on prime customer interaction time—which is the minute they opt-in.
Now what?
Follow steps 1-4 above and viola! An automated way to grow your email list—easy-peasy.
But building your email list up isn’t going to make you money itself—you need to regularly be emailing your customers, providing value, and then following up with strategic marketing sequences (that’s right: just sending emails when you have a promo going on won’t make you any money). These are allllllllllll strategies we go into SO much depth inside Mastermind Your Marketing (and yes, there are plenty of real-life examples of these strategies in use for those who enjoy that kind of thing ;)
Sound like something you’d be interested in? The doors to Mastermind Your Marketing are currently closed but will be open soon—and you know you want to be the first to know when they do ;) Join the VIP waitlist (and get all kinds of sweet perks!) HERE
Got any questions about growing your email list? Comment below and I'll be sure to answer them!
xoxo, Morgan