While Etsy is a great platform for selling your products, it doesn't provide an easy way for you to collect email addresses. This might not seem like a big deal at first, but email is one of the most effective ways to market your shop since it allows you to speak directly to the people who are most interested in the products you sell.
While you can try to make up for not having an email list by promoting your shop on social media, it will be difficult to reach your customers unless you’re running paid ads. And reaching customers via social media can be hit or miss. That’s why it’s worth it to put in the effort to build an email list.
The Etsy sellers who run successful shops know the value of their list. While the best time to start building an email list was years ago, the next best time is today. In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps for getting started with building your email list from Etsy.
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This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my disclosures.
The first step to building your list is choosing an email service provider. While it might be tempting to use gmail, this could create some problems. For one, if you’re sending marketing emails, you need to give people an option to opt out. In addition, as your list grows, you’ll want to be able to make use of features like automations, segments, and tagging.
There are many different options for email service providers. The one that I use and recommend is ConvertKit. ConvertKit offers a free account for up to 1000 subscribers. The free account also allows you to build a landing page to collect email addresses and to send broadcasts to your subscribers.
If you’ve never set up a landing page before, don’t worry. It’s easy to do with ConvertKit. I’ve created a video tutorial that walks you through the process step-by-step. You'll find that video at the end of this post.
Now that you’ve set up your email service provider, it’s time to start collecting emails.
Etsy has strict rules about using customer email addresses and specifies that any communication you have with customers should be Etsy-related. That means you can’t use Etsy conversations to ask people to join your list.
It’s also important to note that you can’t simply add Etsy buyers to your email list without their consent. This can get you kicked off Etsy and is also a violation of spam laws.
Even though you can’t add people to your list without their consent or use Etsy conversations to ask customers to join, there are other ways you can encourage shoppers to join your email list.
Some great ways to get the word out and ask people to join you list are:
I created a short video that shows you exactly where and how you can add your email list landing page link in your Etsy shop.
One popular option to get people to sign up for your list is to offer a discount. When people enter their email address, your email service provider would send them a welcome email with a discount code. If you’re selling digital products, you can offer a larger discount than if you’re creating and shipping orders.
Discounts aren’t the only incentive you can use to get people to join your list. You can create bonus content that will help your customers get more value from your product. For example, if you sell a consumable product like candles or self-care products, you could create a relaxing Spotify playlist that they can access if they sign up for your email list. If you sell something wearable, like scarves or jewelry, you could put together a PDF with different ways to style your products.
Be creative and think about what would help your customer get the most enjoyment out of your product.
Congratulations! You’re growing your list. Now it’s time to create a plan for communicating with your subscriber.
The worst thing to do is ghost your list and then send an out of the blue email months later. Chances are they won’t remember you, and might even mark your email as SPAM, which you definitely don’t want. So the bottom line: don’t forget about them.
How often do you need to email them? That’s a great question. At minimum, I would suggest sending an email every month, although weekly or every other week is better. The idea is to build connections with your subscribers so you’re the one they think of when they’re ready to purchase.
Remember that the goal of your email isn’t to hard-sell your subscribers constantly. You’re also building the know, like, and trust factor. That means you can do things like share behind the scenes information about your products, showcase stories from happy customers, or offer inspiration for new ways to use your product. You can also ask for input about products you’re developing or even ask for non-business recommendations.
If you scroll through Etsy, you’ll notice that many sellers aren’t trying to build an email list and instead are directing people to their social media platforms and websites. But having a way to reach out directly to customers gives you an edge as an Etsy seller. It makes you less dependent on social media and the Etsy algorithm and gives you the option to begin building your shop on your own platform and bring your customers with you.
As I mentioned earlier, the only way to get started with your email list is to start. Create your landing page and incentive and share your list all over your Etsy shop.
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