Welcome to Office Hours #3, our third webinar that we've done. We're still kinda just finding our feet and getting the hang of these things and sorting 'em out. So we hope you had a chance to check out some of the other two. If not, we do have recordings of 'em. We try to get the recordings up. We've been running 'em on Friday, so we try to get the recordings up by Monday so you can go back and see it or, you know, if you couldn't make it. So, the recording for this one will be up, again, I'm hoping by Monday, that's what we're shooting for. And if you have questions, go ahead and fire with the box whenever you might have 'em and then let's just jump into things here. Assuming my slides work here.

So, the outline for today. So we're gonna talk about the Romance Email concept, get into it conceptually. I want to spend some time on how art actually sells online and point you toward some follow-up reading on these topics. I'm gonna do some email tear downs. Or just rip to and insult some sample emails. We'll hopefully give you guys some feedback. And then we'll finish it up with the Q&A. Alright, so Romance Emails, let's define it and explain it. And, you know, I always like to start with the why, right the concept. I mean, I think anybody can follow directions, but, you know, do this do this do this do this, but if you don't know why you're doing a thing, you're never really gonna be effective.

So I really do want to get into the conceptual aspect of why this is so critical, why Romance Emails are. And we've talked a bunch about the Discount Emails. We haven't talked about the Romance Emails as much. We've blogged about it a little bit. It's in the art marketing calendar. But I really, they're such a critical component of a well-balanced online marketing strategy throughout the year that it really is a big subject and this won't be the last time. It won't be the last time that we address it either. So, discounts we've covered, i.e. Valentine's Day. It's the question what do you send the rest of the time and why. So, when we say Romance Emails, they're our fancy way of saying it. It's content marketing at the end of the day, right. It's free, awesome content, with no strings attached. And let me elaborate on that.

Let's talk about how we do it at Art Storefronts. And, you know, we do this all the time and you can and should do it too. It's the exact same approach. But this will give you an idea of what it looks like. We write epic, amazing blog posts on marketing topics. It's content that is designed to help artists and it is 100% free. Artists read the content and get to know Art Storefronts. Artists start to know, like and trust Art Storefronts. Artists opt-in to the email list, follow us on Facebook, and our following grows. So it's really just about carpet bombing the landscape with good will. You just want to sew the seeds of this fantastic education, this fantastic content, this fantastic art to get people to know you, to like you, to trust you, to educate you, so that they are in a position to do business with you. Right, and that's like the core of it, the kernel of it.

When the time is right and, you know, in the case of Art Storefronts, we ask for a demo request, people fill them out because they know, like, trust us. We've crossed that barrier and it's the exact same for you. When they're ready to purchase art, do they know, like and trust you? That's the key to it all. And you know, I cite Gary Vaynerchuk 'cause, he's an internet marketer, but rah-rah guy but he's awesome. Really, really sharp guy and he ... He had this book “Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,” which is another way of saying this concept. And, you know, the jab jab jab is giving things away for free, the Romance Emails, the right hook is the Discount Emails, right.

And so, you can't have one without the other. You can't just be throwing right hooks all the time 'cause that's not gonna work. So you gotta be doing the jabbing, which is the Romance Emails that come in and, you know, I love the quote too. "Whatever your jab is, it doesn't entitle you to land "the right hook. It just allows you "to have the audacity to ask", right? So that's what we're after. We're after the audacity to be able to ask, to be able to send those Discount Emails and feel good about it because you're not just sending Discount Emails.

So, let me say it another way, give it another conceptual whack, another way to look at it, another way to think about it. That piggy bank, that is your art business and it's also your audience. It's a piggy bank, right. And you need to make deposits frequently to this bank. The deposits are the romance stuff. It is all free and not salesy. Right, all free, not salesy. And this allows me to go on two rants. And I hope this will further pound home the concept. But the first one is with Facebook ads. If I had a dollar for every time an artist, whether on our platform or someone else says, everybody says advertising on Facebook is so great. It's amazing, it's the best thing in the world.

So I went and tried it and I spent 100, 200, 300, 400 dollars and I got absolutely nothing in return. It doesn't work. I don't know why everyone says it works. So, how many times I've heard that. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that. And, again, we're gonna get into Facebook strategies, that's coming up. But the reason that you failed on Facebook, whoever you are, is you're on Facebook doing nothing but right hooks. You're just swinging right hooks everywhere. There's no romance, you're just going for the jugular, swinging right hooks and you're, what was the other thing I just said? Swinging right hooks, oh and just discounting discounting discounting discounting discounting.

And, so that gets me to the other two analogies which I love to use and which underpin this whole concept of the Romance Emails or the romance content is ... The analogy is you just met a girl at a bar. "Hey, I'm Patrick, what's your name? "Hi, do you want to go come home and sleep with me?" That's what the right hook is right out of the gate. It's like, here's this person that maybe just met you, just getting to know you, you blurt out of your mouth that you want to go home and sleep with them. It's like, you cad, what are you doing? You gotta get to know this person. That's where the romance comes in right?

Or, the same thing, guys, like if you're in a backyard barbecue and you meet somebody for the first time, it's like, "Hey Steve how you doin', Patrick Oh, nice to meet you Patrick "Hey, check this out." And you whip a giant canvas of your art out of your back pocket and you go "Buy this thing for 49 dollars right now, "I'll give you 50% off." It's like, that's no way to start a relationship, right? So, that's where these Romance Emails come in. And, we'll see if it goes back. Sometimes my thing goes a little wonky here, sorry guys.

So you gotta put money in the account. You gotta put money in the account. You gotta put money in the account, right? And you do that, so that when you do want to make a withdrawal from your piggy bank, the money is in there, i.e. the good will that you've sewn with the Romance Email. You have a relationship to draw on. So, that's a whole concept that underpins all of this and it really is, I think, a critical concept to understand and have your head wrapped around why you're doing it. You can't be selling all the time. You have to be giving some stuff away for free and you've got to be creative about it.

So, let's keep moving on. So, I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and tell a further point in this whole story, right. And the slide is, How Art Sells Online, what most think versus reality. And so I'm gonna tell another story with this and I'm actually gonna use somebody else's story but you gotta just let me adapt this thing on the fly to selling art online. And let's talk about these content touches that, the slide show is for content marketing in general. It's created by this other guy and I've referenced this in the past 'cause I absolutely love it and I think it does such a great job of explaining things, right.

And this again, it goes back to why that person on Facebook that's just swinging right hooks with their ads failed. Right, like you believe the biggest myth in the content marketing world, ever told the world. So, this is how most people think content marketing works. It's like this, right. And, again, content marketing, marketing your art in general same thing. So, let's go on the internet and let's see what's on the internet today, right. Okay, here's an interesting post. I'm checking that out. Great. Oh wow this really is a cool site. That was interesting, I should sign up for the free e-book while I'm here, right.

And I saw a link, I read this thing, I like it, I'm gonna go sign up for the free e-book immediately. I'm gonna fill out their big form with all of my stuff and I'm gonna click submit. And then, that's right, these guys are so awesome, I'm actually gonna follow 'em on all the social profiles while I'm at it, on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Pinterest. I'm gonna follow 'em on all of this. You know. I don't know if you guys caught the sarcasm that I had there or the sarcasm of the show but this is what people think. Like, you make great art, you throw it online, often times at a discount or whatever, and people are just gonna click it, they're gonna buy, and that's the way the sale works. And the reality is nothing could be further than the truth. That's just not how it works.

So, let's talk about how it really does work, right. His typical day. Let's see what's on hacker news. Let's check Facebook, right. Oh boy, baby pictures. Let's try Twitter, I'm not really into Twitter. Let's check out Google+. That looks like an interesting link. And so what he says here is he's clicked after seeing 400 plus links in a day that he could have clicked. He finally gets to one article that he likes and it's, you know, can see this guy's got a beard and a mustache, he found this thing Beardbrand. He thinks that's kinda interesting, great. He saw the article. He forgot about it. Right, that's the point we're at now.

So he saw that article, totally forgot about it, couple more days go by and he sees another link to this article. And so he goes and he checks it out. And he checks out their blog and he's like ha this is interesting. He followed 'em on Google+, not that anyone uses Google+ anymore and he watched this video, right. So he watched this video, so. The point in this is that, he saw an article, he met these people for the first time, then he forgot about it, a couple days later he came back and he saw 'em again.

Then a couple days later he's on their Google+ page he followed, he saw this video he really likes it. So then a few days later his wife's like, "Sweetie your mustache looks ridiculous." And then you're like ha, where do I get that beard stuff again, right? So you go to Google, you search, there it is couple results down, yeah that's the company, that's the brand I was talking about. And so he goes on there, he orders, and he's like oh man that's awesome. So, if you see the chain of events that took place there, that's the critical thing to understand, right. And so, he's gonna go on Caveman Rand to explain it, right.

You make the content, humans click, if you like it you remember it, maybe they see more content and they visit again, you build trust, you build a relationship with real humans. When they're ready to buy, and this is so much a big part of art right. When they're actually ready to buy art, when they have it in their head to buy art, they're gonna go with who they love, who they think's awesome, so. It's, you know, it's not about the first visit. It's the multiple content touches. And that's the way it really works in the real world.

I mean, it's about that familiarity, trust and relationship, right. And so, on those first visits, on those first times that they get exposed to you, on the first time they meet you in the bar to use my earlier analogy, it's just about starting that relationship and about taking those steps forward. So, that's what the romance content is all about. And, you know, it's completely critical that you understand it and it' completely critical that you end up engaging in it. So ... In terms of follow-up content that we've already written and we're gonna go over more in a webinar, don't worry. But we've got blog posts that detail this even more. And more and in depth, right.

So there's the caveman or the romantic, what kind of art seller are you? This post is a play on that little slide show that you just saw but kind of nuanced for the art world. So yeah, the caveman a romantic, and again, we'll include the links to all of these if you haven't read 'em. But I really encourage you to do. There's the anatomy and effect, artist Romance Email right. But another critical topic on it. We've got how to sell art with creative newsletter content. Also a good one. We got the weekly marketing playbook for artists which includes how to do the emailing, how to do the Facebook posts all in a romantic fashion.

So, we've got some follow-up reading and immediately I put in there why should I read those. Patrick, I'm on the webinar, I don't want to read any damn content. I've already read your blog post, they annoy me, right. So the key to this is that we're, we as in, I say we, Art Storefronts, we are working on building your foundation. And this is a critical critical component which is why I've taken so much of this webinar already to explain conceptually about what we're talking about.

What does a foundation look like? And, again, your foundation is just as important as your focus, right. Your focus and your foundation. So how do you win at selling art online? Number one, you've gotta own your own website on a domain you own. Thankfully, you're all Art Storefront customers, you have this part covered. You capture emails. That's why, you know, having a lead capture tool is critical. It's why being able to capture emails when you're online and offline. You know, art fairs.

If you're having a gallery show, whatever the case may be and we've got future webinar topics coming up on that by the way. You send emails. Combination of Romance Emails and Discount Emails. You work at growing your traffic and driving more of it to the website. You stay the course and you stay focused on that and you have these proper foundational pieces in place. It's just pressure over time. That's it, it's pressure over time. You're not gonna be a millionaire overnight. You're not gonna make a million dollars in your first year.

Depending on where you are in your entrepreneurial and online digital marketing journey, whether you're starting at one email or a thousand emails or 10 thousand emails. It doesn't matter. You know how you grow the email list no matter what size you are? One email at a time. And that's the critical part of the romancing emails and the critical part of understanding it in relationship to this higher foundation. And, you know, I talk about this foundation and as we move forward, everything that we do on these webinars, everything that we're putting in the art marketing calendar is going to be iterations of these particular pillars, right.

You gotta capture an email. So we're gonna talk about some more creative strategies in which you can capture emails. Again, both online and off, contests on Facebook, everything. We're gonna throw the kitchen sink at ya. Sending emails. We're gonna go more into the Romance Emails as we are covering it today. And we're gonna go more into depth some more tricks with the Discount Emails and ways that you can take both those concepts to social media platforms and not just emails, right. And then we're gonna work at growing traffic and driving more of it.

The more traffic you get, presumably the more people are gonna get in your email list, then more of those people are gonna get emails, romance and discounts, they're going to come to know and like and trust you, and then it's just about staying the course and focus. Do not worry about anything else that you hear out there. Just stay the course, keep doing this, then it's pressure over time. And I think, you know, I think that's just a really really powerful thing to hear and understand.

So, it's our focus, it's where we're headed with all of these Office Hour webinars moving forward pretty much for the rest of the year, so. Okay, onto the next. So email tear downs. Let me insult your emails. I love that concept. I saw someone else in a marketing outfit do that. And they said let me insult your website and I thought it was pretty cool and so I didn't get a tremendous amount of submissions ahead of time. We're still new at this. I'm saying we, Art Storefronts are still new at this whole webinar game. So we're trying to get a little bit better and more intentional about how we get your questions and how we get your content ahead of time. This is only the third one of these that we've run. So, know we're gonna get better at this.

So, I've got two emails that we can tear down today that I received ahead of time that I'll go in and do some rants on. And then from there we'll do the Q&A. Now, big disclaimer, right. And now I've gotta give you what I like to call the mattress argument or to taste argument. If all of us walk, it's probably redundant 'cause I said it in the last webinar but I stick to my analogies, I enjoy them.

If we all together walk into a mattress store right now and we all had an unlimited budget, we wouldn't all buy the same bed, right. Because some people like mattresses that are a little bit firmer. Some of 'em like 'em a little bit soft. Maybe some of you guys want to get that sleep number one. Maybe somebody else wants to get the memory foam one. I say this is a disclaimer because I'm gonna tell you what I think as I'm ripping down these emails and I'm gonna rip 'em down in terms of best practices, what I feel are best practices. There's gonna be combinations of 'em though that might not follow exactly what I say and you could go a different route with it. So the point is is that, take all of it with a grain of sand. I'm gonna give you some good concepts but you gotta adjust things to taste as you see fit and what works best for you right?

So let me get out of this and go to the first email. And this one comes from, I think, Dan Green. And it's Regreen Photography, right? And so I want to break down a number of different things in this and just, again, give you my highly opinionated opinion. And let's do this so that I can actually draw on it, right. So, you guys all see this in MailChimp right? And it says, it gives you this little bar at the top and it says view this email in your browser and it allows you to put some text. Let me just give you my quick opinion on this thing. I hate these things. Pull this out. This just is impersonal, no one wants to view your email on the web, get rid of it, alright. So that's number one.

Good. In terms of Regreen Photography, the header, love it. Fine art prints of nature's wonders, let me go ahead and go out of this box for a second. He's got a photo here. He's got some text here. He's got some buttons down at the bottom, right. So now I can kinda start at the top. Let's see where he's linking in this thing. In terms of this, the header, you always just want to link that back to your site. That's usually a best practice. I think that's what he's done on his.

Great, he links back to the homepage. If you do have a specific image, let me come back to that and we'll see where it is, so. Fine art prints of nature's wonders. Alright, let's click on the image. Where's the image link to? Alright, so that's directly to his store. Good, alright. Same thing. To the same thing, yep, same thing, okay. Photo of the week Morning Mountain Colors great. Morning Mountain Colors is discounted 25% off until January 14th. And this is one of the first ego pieces that I'm gonna get into in this email. I, personally, depending on where you are in your, an argument could be made that what he's done here is completely correct.

He's not being too overtly salesy, right. 'Cause he's got some text in here and he's got some language about some other things and it's not, it doesn't feel like a straight Discount Email. But I think, you gotta be really intentional about it and if you're in a mode where you're trying to grow your email list and, you know, you're not trying to go for the big whack 'em, knock 'em out discount, I think I wouldn't do this. So, I wouldn't do this because I think, again let me get to my little drawing mode here. The minute people see this your BS meter comes on and you're like this is BS. I'm being sold. I don't want to be sold. Get this outta here, you're annoying me.

I believe that we're wired that way as humans and I think, by putting that up top and leading into it you're immediately making me think this is a Discount Email and I do not want to see a Discount Email. Alright. So, I wouldn't use that. Step two, and this is a big time pet peeve of mine. And it's something that everybody needs to learn and I'm sure someone else has a name for this technique. So I'm copying his text now, right. And I'm gonna go ahead and put this in here. Is that more or less what it looks like? Let's see. Yeah, I think it's more or less. It kinda pasted a little funky.

So, the snowball technique. And I think, you know, the idea is when you first get a snowball and let's say you're trying to roll it down a hill, like, you know, it's small at first and you gotta give that thing a lot of love, a lot of love lot of love a lot of love but then it just keeps getting bigger with every subsequent roll and then once it's rolling, it's gonna roll down the hill, right? This is absolutely a rule with text as well. And if you look at the majority of the Art Storefronts' blog posts, we start them in a completely different fashion. Right, a completely different fashion. And let me show this because I think, I think this is so powerful.

So you've got, and let me just do the spacing right, you've got these blocks of text in his email right. The exact same that they're in his email. What happens is when somebody looks at this and when I look at this and then, you know, let's just say, where's go back to it. Here I am, I'm going through all my emails in the morning, I get this, and I see this giant block of text like this. It makes me want to throw up. I'm like oh God do you know how much work I have to do today? Why do I, I'm not gonna read this diatribe right now. It's way too early. So here comes the technique.

Break up. Make it readable. Do the snowball thing. So do you see what I'm doing here? There's one line, there's two lines. Maybe, I'll let two or three sentences go in this. Hold on, hold on, hold on. And there we go. And you know what, I'll probably break this paragraph up too. And so when you do this and you know, you get better at doing this with time. It's not supposed to do that. That's good on my spaces right? What you do, you do the snowball technique, right. And again, look at the Art Storefronts’ blog for inspiration.

So, you know when you eventually get into it, you can roll into whole paragraphs. But as we look at this, Like, let's just do the side by side just for a second. Which one looks more intimidating to you to read? Don't worry, I'll wait. That one does right? Like, that's just a lot. That's just a lot. This breaks it up and at least lets me move into it a little bit more and, you know, the reading rhythm is so critical to whether or not anybody's gonna read your thing in the first place at all.

So, there's a little rant on the snowball technique. So let's see the rest of it. So, he's got links in here to ... other images and I'm not gonna do all of 'em for the sake of time but it's other images that are on his site. And then down here at the very bottom he's got, this is linked to his blog post right. And so here's his blog post. Look at that, by the way. Does that look intimidating? It's intimidating to me, I don't want to read this. I don't want to read this. So, break that up. So he's got a link to a blog post here where he's doing some romancing. He's got his language in here which kind of endears the image to you. So, there's that. "Do you like the story, let me know, drop me a line. "Please send this to your friends, thanks, Dan." And he's got the coupons down here.

So, if I was gonna do this email the way you're doing it, I would, like I said, knock this out, keep this down here, right. And, you know, explore this. I think, practically speaking this is okay. We've likely covered this on our blog, this same thing. It's pushed. But let me give you Patrick's version, what I would do, right. And again, this is me, hardcore saying I'm gonna discount, and I'm gonna romance, okay. And I'm gonna separate the two of them to the best of my ability. And I'm gonna think in my head, I'm romancing, the best way to romance is not, not be selling even in the slightest.

So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get rid of this. I'm gonna link the header to the photograph on my blog. I'm gonna link the image to this photograph in my blog. I'm gonna link this to my blog. This this this and this. I'm okay with that, like you know. That's something you could test and it could go one way or the other. It's not gonna statistically move the needle hugely or not. But I'm gonna have all of that goin' on. That's fantastic. Click here to continue reading, awesome. I'm gonna get rid of all this too and I'm just gonna say, thanks Dan. Drop me a line, I'm totally okay with that.

Why am I gonna do that? Why am I gonna do that? Let's see, I don't have it. This is why I'm gonna do it, right. Because what I'm doing, what I'm doing in this situation, if I have the Romance Email concept paired correctly with the lead capture on the site, is, they're gonna click it, they're gonna forward it, it gives me a chance to kind of go for the sale. Here's 20% on your order. You know, you're kind of going for the sale that way. So, I think when you think of a Romance Email as a single purpose thing and you don't try to split it into multiple things i.e. you know, it's really like what, it's like 80% romance and 20% hardcore discounting. And it makes it a combination.

I think, you know, I like a pure jab, right. I like a pure Romance Email. You have to experiment with it. You could, potentially, have some success. And again, I'm just giving you devil's advocate but I would send 10 of these and then every once in awhile I'd mix in one of these and I would see if I would get any sales out of it. If I didn't, then I would stick to sending these without anything except just the awesome content, the awesome text and just attempt to grow my list and attempt to, you know, endear my list to me, and get them to my work based on that. And then, you know, discount time's gonna come. Then you go for the right hook, right. So that's the type of jab that I would do.

So, to finish up, that's how I would do this email. Is giving this a shot okay? Yes. Is going for this this early a little bit too jugular? Yes absolutely it is. So, that's my two cents on that. Okay, switching gears to, you know, the last webinar we had we talked a hundred percent about our Valentine's Day and discounting day strategy. So, in this particular email, she's kind of sent the Valentine's Day one but I think it's a good email to kind of unpack and take a look at anyway. So I'm pulling it up right now, you guys gotta give me just a second.

Okay, yeah, so I got a question. I might as well deal with one of these questions from Doug right now, and it's, "Will you be doing another email template "with these changes in mind? "I think we are all working off "the initial template you sent out." Yeah, I think a lot of you are and I would say we do want to make it as easy as possible and try to give you the templates, right. And so we could potentially create a few more of 'em. But you guys are also, you know, you're kind of the franchise in creativity, you artist types. So, feel free to get creative with it. You know as long as you have the important elements to the email which is you're linking somewhere, you've got some great content in it.

The MailChimp like template builder, drag and drop, is pretty damn slick. I mean, that thing is, that thing really is impressive. And, you know, it can create some pretty good design right out of the box. So, I would encourage you to do that but yes, I'd like to, I'd like to create more templates for you guys. So to answer your question, Doug. Well said. So let's take a look at Kim's. I spoke with Kim on the phone. She's awesome. She's actually gonna be on an upcoming podcast but she's a mixed media artist, just to give you some context. So she does some, she takes photographs and then like collages 'em and paints on top of 'em. It's really killer. So, here we are with her, this is her Valentine’s Day email subject.

So let's just take a look at this. Let's see what this links. Let's pop it up on my other window, sorry guys. Alright, so that's her homepage. So, this links it looks like to her blog page. Let's see. Yep, so she's got a blog post about it and oh look at how close we got. "I met my husband like 40 years ago this year." We got close but then look at this gigantic paragraph. It's hurting my eyes. It's hurting my eyes. Gotta break that thing up. So, refer to my snowball technique earlier. But she's got some text here, right. And ... This is nice she took a bunch of this from the copywriter that Kimberly we had on last week. And I think it works really well. And then we've got an image, let's see where this image links to.

Again, sorry guys, it's opening on the other monitor. Alright, opens directly to the item. I like it. It's called Women In a Red Dress. She talks about the piece, gives a little bit of context, another link to it, and then here she gets into the discounting. True love sale, 20% off. Use this coupon. She's got it in French. Looks like she lives in the French part of Canada. Valentines20. Expiration date. We love a little scarcity. We love a little scarcity. And then she's also got shop shop shop shop. True love, save 20%, okay.

So this was, this is an interesting one because it's kind of like a little bit of a hybrid here. We've got some romancing going on here, right. And then we've got some hardcore sales going on here too. I like this email overall. I think it's simple and clean. I think when we talk, and we're kind of in a Discount Email now, but when we talk about Discount Emails, it's more than anything else it's about having the necessary elements, right. You have to have a subject line. I didn't look at her subject line. It's a test. Actually let's just grab this right here, hold on. And bear with me you guys, I'm trying to make this happen. I'm just gonna paste it here. I don't know if you guys can see this. No, that's not gonna work. Where can I put it?

Oh, I gotta think on your feet here. I'm gonna move this over. Alright, this was her subject line. True Valentines love story, right. In apostrophes. And so I talk about the elements right. And let me get back to this. More important than the template, more important than anything else, is that you have the elements. Let's talk about 'em. You gotta have a subject line, right. You gotta have a good subject line. You've gotta have the discount. So that they with the discount is and you have to have the scarcity right? So she's got the scarcity. She's done a good job with that. She's got the discount code, important.

And then has the nature of what money is off and all of that. But, you know, I think, I think the subject line misses horribly. And going back to that, all it said was True Valentines Love Story. You gotta have that discount. You gotta have that discount and that scarcity in the subject line too. So, we've got this detailed, like, to another level on the blog and on the art marketing calendar. So, I want to make sure, Taylor, will you make sure that that gets into the ... show notes. But overall, I think this is a pretty good email. I love her stuff, it's great. I love the story that she's got here. I don't know if I would link the blog post. Just because this is pure sales. I might, I might, depending on what she's got at the bottom of the blog post. Let's see what she's got at the bottom of the blog post.

Yeah, okay. So let me get some feedback here. So, I do like that she wrote this story, right. And I think a lot of people will be drawn from the email, from the email story. I mean, it's got, it's got some emotion in it which is really cool. "I met my husband Luis 40 years ago this year. I have received many Valentine's cards and lots of beautiful flowers. However, in the last few years we've started to give each other small paintings professing our continued and ever-evolving love for one another,” right. She goes on to talk about how awesome it is.

So, it's kind of a catchy story, right. You kind of want to finish that. So, if you're gonna hook that in there, keep that in there, here's what I do. One, I break this up, snowball technique. But at the end of this, ya left me hangin'. What do I to do at the end of this? I don't care that you're a trusted art seller. I mean these are lovely looking badges but I don't care about this. Put a big button at the bottom of this thing that leads them right into the store. Put some language about the coupon code at the end of the blog post. Tell 'em when it expires and then put the button and link 'em into the store.

So, overall, I think this one a very good email. Interesting little hybrid of the two techniques but, you know, as long as it has the elements, it's the critical part. So, that's what I got on the tear downs and, you know, let me know if you liked that particular portion. There wasn't probably enough prep on my part put in ahead of time to get that sorted. But if you guys want more of that, definitely chime in and let us know. I think, you know, the fancy webinar software will send you an email because you registered and you attended and we'll ask you if there's any feedback you can put it in there. But love to hear if you'd like us to do more of that, rip down emails in that particular fashion.

You know, I think it'd be pretty fun to get 10 of 'em, 15 of 'em cued up and then, you know, a couple of us inside the office will just trade off, go back and forth beating 'em up. From there, let's get into the Q&A. Again, if you got any questions, throw 'em in the box. I see there's a couple in there. We're getting to all of those in good time. "Where can we submit the content for future teardowns?" Somebody got that question in there really quick. You'll get an email. Doug, we'll email you on exactly how to do it. And how to submit and everything else.

Everything goes onto the, you know, after the fact goes onto the office hours and then we email you guys ahead of time saying what the subject is for the next one. And what we usually do is we email on Monday to tell you to register. At least it's what we've been doing so far, right. We email you on Monday to tell you what content of the webinar is gonna be on Friday and to register and everything else. So we would just put it in that email and say this is what we're gonna do next.

Okay, Karen Mayer of the savvyartmarket.com. "I think I'm getting the Romantic Email concept. I was wondering after I send out the 20th one.” Yes, Karen, I love this. The 20th one. That's what I'm talkin' about. Romance all the time. "I was wondering after I send out the 20th one, for example, if it might be nice to do one with a video." Absolutely, love videos. "Do you have any examples to follow for best practices using a video? Or maybe a video's not a good idea, look forward to your comments."

No, a video is absolutely fantastic way to do it. And there's about 50 different ways you can do the video. And there really is no single, solitary best practice. If I was gonna say there's one best practice, make the video awesome and make it entertaining. If you feel like you've, if you crossed that line then you're good. It could be a video of anything. You can do it nine different ways to Sunday. You can shoot it on Instagram and link directly in the email with a link to your Instagram page of just the video. You can host it on YouTube, screenshot. Well I guess there is a best practice there.

People like to know that they've got a video coming. People love video content. I know, I mean, if you think about it, when we see those in our email boxes we're so barraged with reading all dog gone day that when you see a video it's like oh yeah. You know, I might like to watch a video, why not? So, I would say a best practice is wherever you host that video, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Wistia, Vimeo, whatever, doesn't matter. Screenshot the player and the play button with whatever the thumbnail you're using for the video is and throw that right in your email program. I'm pretty sure that's how we do it in Art Storefronts. Pretty sure, I know that's how we do it.

And then, so they know it's a player and they see it and then when they click that they're gonna be taken to wherever the video lives. And it can be embedded in a blog post, a site, or it can be directly on YouTube, wherever you want to put it. But I think that's a best practice in that particular capacity. Alright, next question. Steve Sorensen of earthreflected.com, "Facebook is an obvious marketing tool. I'm trying to get my arms around Pinterest, Twitter, and others, and determine their marketing value. Also I didn't find a LinkedIn website icon available to me. Is this by design?" I don't think so. I'm not sure if we offer LinkedIn. I'm assuming you're talking about the social sharing icons. I think that's what you're talking about and I don't know what the answer to that question is.

Chris, if you're on here, can you try and trace that down? You know, I think we have his email, we'll respond to you on email on that. I'm not sure about LinkedIn. But I can tell, I can tell just based on the tone of this question, I've been doing this long enough, that Facebook is an obvious marketing tool, I'm trying to get my arms wrapped around Pinterest, Twitter and other things to determine market life. I think you're just getting started. I think, you know, there's all these other platforms out there and I think all of those are shiny objects for you right now and you need to focus on the basics. The basics is, the pillars that I talked about earlier in this webinar.

Don't go chasing Pinterest, Twitter, others, and everything else until you've got your basics sorted. You've got your website up. You've got lead capture taking place. You need to be sending Romance Emails to your list. You need to be sending Discount Emails to your list. I don't care if your list is small, by the way. We featured an artist on the podcast, by the way, that had a 400 person email list. She's been an artist for like 10 years and I think she sold a little bit under like seven or eight thousand dollars worth of art on her 400 person email list right after Thanksgiving.

So it doesn't need to be a huge crazy list. I don't care if you start with 50 or if you start with 10, you've got to start somewhere, start with your emails. So I think, you do that, you do the elements of the pillars that we talked about earlier in this webinar and then start worrying about Pinterest and Twitter and determining their marketing value. I would further say that Facebook, I include Instagram by association, because they're the same company, is the one place that you want to start. It's the bigger audience. The entire world is on it. I'm not knocking Pinterest, I'm not knocking Twitter. I'm not knocking anything else out there. I'm just saying on a macro level, the statistics are significantly better for those that are Facebook and Instagram and mastering those channels before they go to Pinterest and Twitter or wherever else. So I hope that answers that.

Okay, Christina Culverhouse. "Do we need different SEO keywords for every page and every item on every page? And if I'm naming the same image, say on an original and a print, can I give them both the same SEO name or do they have to be different even though it's the same image just on an original auction page?" You know, I think it depends on what type of artist you are in terms of the SEO. Like, you know, if you're just painting kind of to random things and giving them random names, then SEO's not gonna be a huge thing for you. And what do I mean, like? Let's say you, darn me I'm just gonna throw this out. Let's just say you painted an image of the guy with a town backpack running upstairs at six in the morning and you call it “Deeply Motivated” and that was your piece of art right?

Well, you're not gonna go and SEO title thing “Deeply Motivated” and spend a bunch of time and worry about that. Because nobody's searching for “deeply motivated” online is trying to find somebody running upstairs with a backpack. I don't think anyway, I don't think anyway. So, I think two things. One, is it best practiced to absolutely SEO your entire site and do basic keyword stuff? Yes, absolutely it is. And, you know, when you break it up, it's incremental work, it's one of those things that you just do every time you put in, you do the work initially, and you do the work as you put the new pieces in. You do it incrementally so you don't have to do it all at once.

It's not that big of a deal. But, unless you're like, you know, a photographer that is really looking to rank for, you know, I saw Jamie on the webinar earlier. Coastal Prince of Georgia, right. Well, that's way more important because Coastal Prince of Georgia's a very unique, specific thing. And if you're looking for Georgia Beach photography, he's gonna want to have his keywords as inline as possible to try and capture them in that search traffic. So, you do want to do the SEO work. It's just one of those things you do. It's a best practice. I know it's a little pain in the butt in the beginning but you gotta just do it.

So the original and the print, yeah you can give 'em both the same SEO. And that's gonna be fine. Or do they have to have different. No, they don't have to. They don't have to. And I know you had another question Christina. I'm gonna circle back to that at the end. Teena Stewart from the ASF Forum, "should everything I send go to every one in my subscriber base?" Oh, I love that question. "At this point, I have no way of separating out any of the people interested in art classes. Do you have any suggestions on what to do about my existing list? It feels like there's a lot of dead wood." Dead wood, dead weight, dead wood. "I'm still trying to grasp the segmenting idea. I wondered if I shouldn't send out an email via MailChimp asking people to reconfirm their interest and subscriber status. Anyone who doesn't will be deleted. So I will be basically starting over."

Great question, and no this is not unique to you. We have a number of people that are on our platform that say sell educational courses or run photography workshops or sell digital courses online or sell, whatever, painting classes, whatever. They have a fragmented business and such a fragmented email list. They're just now taking their email marketing seriously and you're like oh man, instead of having two neatly organized buckets, people that are interested in my classes and people that are interested in my art, they're not segmented. What do I do, do I just email all of 'em, right? That's what the kernel of the question and how do you segment it?

So, we can get into the technical part of MailChimp but, again, let's start with the conceptual side. I think, if the people that have taken your art class, and I'm gonna nuance it to you, but I think it'll work in every case, right. If these people that have taken your art classes like you and are interested in what you do, and I think there's probably crossover for you, whether or not they're, you know, your ideal art buyer. They're not your ideal art buyer obviously. They still like you. They still have a relationship with you. They still love to see your art. So absolutely, absolutely email all of 'em. Email all of 'em. Do not spend another minute stressing about it.

That's the other point that I would make is that the amount of people that are in this situation that start pulling their hair out of their head and stressing is mind boggling. You're so terrified they're not gonna like it. You're so bummed out. You know, what am I gonna do? I gotta think through, no you don't. Stop, stop thinking it out. Start sending emails. Start sending emails. You don't know if you would send an email to this whole group, whether they're stoked or not stoked or gonna unsubscribe or hate you for it. You don't know what they're gonna do, so quit being smarter than your audience. Do not attempt to outsmart your audience. Let your audience make the call on their own.

So send 'em all an email. See what happens. You know, if you have a bunch of complaints and you have a bunch of people emailing you and saying hey I don't want to be on this list, take me off your list, then maybe you're pushing it. But otherwise, hammer 'em all and see what happens. To answer your question in MailChimp, they're called, and this is too technical for a webinar, but they're called merge fields. Let me think about this way. If you knew who subscriber A was and subscriber B was and you knew that everybody in bucket A was art class everybody in bucket B was, you know, potential art buyer, you would just basically call 'em. You make an, this is how simple it is for MailChimp.

You make an excel spreadsheet, you put everyone that's in bucket A you call 'em art class and everyone that's in bucket B you call 'em art buyer, you upload it to MailChimp and then MailChimp will put two different fields in there and you can then send emails only to segment A, send emails only to segment B. We might have a blog post on this. If we don't, you can google MailChimp merge fields, how they work. MailChimp’s documentation is really really really good on this stuff.

Okay, next question. Mathieu Laca, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. This one is from the ASF Forum. "I recently ordered a case for my phone that I customized with one of my paintings. What do you guys think of offering customized phone cases with your art from a marketing point of view?” I think it's awesome by the way. I can say because, I hope I'm not, I'm compromising anything but, you know. We have this special feed that shows all of the sales and I can say this guy is kickin' butt. His art is unbelievable. I mean, look at that thing, it's amazing. I like it. I like this idea, personally. I'd be interested in hearing what everyone else has to say. But I really like it, conceptually, which is for a number of different reasons. One, yeah, I think cell phone cases are cool.

Two, the unknown, unwritten rule, especially when you're selling expensive art. Do you know the easiest sale to make is? The sale you make after someone's already pulled out their credit card. I.e. you have a way higher chance of selling somebody at a second time than you do the first time. So, a lower price point item, we talked about calendars, or in this case iPhone cases, gives you that ability to let people that love you and have been following you and want to support you, buy something that's in a, you know, a mellow price range rather than a couple hundred dollar piece of art or a couple thousand dollar piece of art. If they, you know what I mean, maybe they don't have the wall space and maybe they're not ready to buy.

So having an item that's a lower priced one is great. I love this. We would definitely consider it. I think, you know, the danger is we don't want to go too far down the road of, you know, are we just a giant Tchotchke shop? I mean where does that start, stop, right? Like, let's say okay. We go and find somebody to do the calendars and, you know, I'm just extemporaneously firing from my hip here, but we got the calendars, we got the iPhone cases, and then somebody shows, what about coffee mugs, okay we're gonna do the coffee mugs, okay we're gonna do flags, okay we're gonna do Christmas ornaments and pillows and koozies and handkerchiefs and whatever else.

It's like, where does that end? I don't want to become the straight Tchotchke shop. But the short answer is yes, we could look into it. It'd be interesting to find out who's the best person that does that. But that thing's awesome I really like it. Love to see others' responses about whether or not we should get into that, so. If you've got a strong opinion on this one one way or the other, go find that post in the forum and put your two cents on there and, you know, the more of you that comment, the more seriously we'll take a look at it and maybe start searching for a vendor. Thank you. We're not over and done with this thing yet. Let me see what other questions that we have in here.

Alright, alright alright alright. Q&A recently content to be ripped. Answered that one. "Will you be doing another email?" Answered that one. Okay, so this one's from Christina. "As an artist, I rarely know what to say about my individual art pieces "both for blog and content. Any suggestions?" Yeah, you know, it's funny you say this Christina, 'cause this was potentially gonna be the original subject of this webinar and going through it, I realized we gotta explain it better conceptually first before we can get into the individual ideas. But it can be anything. It's just gotta be cool. I mean, it's just gotta be cool. I think. Let me give you, okay, let me give you a two cent.

This is an artist I really like. I've been following 'em for awhile on Instagram. And yeah, this is their Instagram account and yeah, we're talking about Romance Emails but Instagram has a potential for romancing as well, right. So, let's just go through this. Every one of these could potentially be an email that you're sending, right. It could. You could talk about this piece and why you did it. You could talk about that piece and why you did it. You could talk about you in the action of painting something and, you know, put some cool text on it, whatever it is. I mean, this is cool, look at these colors. I love this guy. I love these wacky things. What is this wacky pile of rocks? I don't know. Look at that, I mean that's beautiful. This, the hiddens to note there, whatever.

So, this is a perfect example. He's not creating big diatribes or anything else. He's just showing you that hey, this is the cool stuff that I'm working on. Look, I draw these wacky little things, now I put it on this woman's eyes. Oh look at this I painted a BMW and a skateboard. And oh look I made shoes from Adidas. I don't think he's selling any of this stuff. Oh I look, I painted a door. So, you know, play to your strengths, whatever they need be, Christina.

Like, show a picture of your studio. Show a picture of your cat if you're painting your cat. Show a picture of your easel and your paintbrush or whatever medium that you might do. I probably should have asked that. But, I realize as these questions come in, we need to get like a serious sandbox going on in terms of ideas of great romance content and really put together some artists that are creating great Romance Email content and romance content across the board and so we'll work to that in future webinars for sure.

Okay, Vicki. "What frequency would you recommend on these? Weekly, more?" And this is a complicated question too. And here's how I answer it and everyone's at a different scale. If you're not sending any at all I'd love for you to send one a month. One a month. Could you do one a month? And you say to me "Patrick I'm sending one a month." You know what I'd love for you to do? I'd love for you to do two a month. And then you say "Patrick I'm doing two a month, what do you think?" I'd love for you to do three. Ideally, in a perfect world, I'd love everybody getting to one a week, one a week. And, again, as we build on this concept, you know, the romancing concept about just, whether it's Romance Emails or whether it's content marketing, it's the same thing, right. It's less about frequency and more about as much great stuff as you can create.

And it's not just email, right. I mean, we've got some social media here in front of us, so. In future webinars we're gonna detail this too. It's not just sending the Romance Email. It's sending the Romance Email and then creating a Facebook post and then creating an Instagram post with it. And there's your great content for the week, right. And then once you really start getting good at it, it's like, okay, you could have five posts on Instagram, and five posts on Facebook. Those five things get combined with a little bit of text and an email and there's your email. And so when you really start learning how to play the game effectively, you start breaking it up. So, the frequency question, just do more than you're doing. If you get to one a week, you're doing awesome.

Okay, Victoria, "I'm getting news, sent two Romance Emails, two right hook, one jab. Is it too early to send a Valentine’s Day email with a discount? Another right hook?" No, it's not too early. I mean it's the holidays, so the expectation is there. And it's one of those things we try and, no matter wherever you start, there's always gonna be a pitfall, right. Like, I just started two weeks before Christmas and I haven't romanced anybody. Yeah, I know, you're hosed. Just follow the plan accordingly. You know, it's why it's so critical to explain it conceptually, like. Be less worried about is it too soon and just be more understanding of what the concept is how it works and that you need to do it and you know, just don't catch yourself right hooking too much. People will forgive you a few extra right hooks but they will not forgive you if you're just swinging right hooks all the time.

"How do you give an email contact a nudge to forward on your Romance Emails to their peeps?" Yeah, so Doug you make an awesome email. There's no other way to give it a nudge. That's not true, you can say hey, I would love it if you, I would love if you forward this to a friend. Hey, enjoyed this email? Forward it to a friend. Sharing is caring. You can put that kind of language at the bottom but in my opinion, well you know.

If I had five hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend four sharpening the axe, right? I mean, make a really really cool email and you don't have to ask 'em to share it, they just do, so there you go. Junk in the lead capture tool. It's a good question, people putting junk into the lead capture tool. Chris, note that's Doug's question. That's really more of a tech support question. Yeah that's more of a tech support question and I'm sure they can answer it for you, so.

Alright, now now now. It's good these things seem to be having a natural one hour rhythm to 'em. Thank you, that's our thank you gift. So, hope you enjoyed this webinar. We're gonna get into more coming up here shortly. Should have the replay this thing available on Monday. And have a great weekend everybody.