Email Marketing vs. Print Promotion for Artists
(Illustration by Matti Kemppainen)
If you’re like most Illustrators, then you probably ask the following question from time to time:
“Which is more effective? Email or print promotion?”
Obviously, you want to spend your time and efforts on the marketing strategies that will yield the most amount of work for the lowest cost and the least amount of effort.
The thing is, all Art Directors are different in the ways that they like to receive submissions from artists, so there’s never going to be one universal answer to the question above. This means that it’s a good idea to promote yourself in a variety of ways while paying close attention to what works best for each particular client. In addition, it can be helpful to tailor your marketing strategy to fit your particular business.
To help you consider how much time and energy you’d like to devote to email vs. print promotion, here is a look at the pros and cons of each approach:
Pros
Low Cost – While crafting effective email promos and sending them to your contact list does take some time to do properly, this will always be the low-cost option, as opposed to the money you’ll need to spend on postcards and other print promotions.
Direct Link – One of the best parts about email marketing is that you can include a direct hyperlink to your portfolio website, where an Art Director can browse your work, learn more about you, and find the contact info that you’ve hopefully made easy to find.
Simplicity – Sending emails has likely become one of the most intuitive activities in your daily life, so sending more shouldn’t be a problem. You won’t need to agonize over which image from your portfolio to include in the email since you can instead send an Art Director to your entire portfolio.
Cons
Spam Filters – There will always be a chance that your email will get caught up in your recipient’s spam filter, which means they’ll never see it. Your chances of making it past the spam police are greater if you include less links and attachments in your email and don’t use punctuation such as exclamation points in the headline or body of text.
Risk of Annoyance – Even if you make it past the built in spam blocker, everyone has there own personal spam filter in their brains. It’s a well-known fact that some Art Directors simply don’t like seeing their email folder filled with submissions from artists, and therefore perceive it as spam and delete it without ever opening it.
AD Effort – Assuming an Art Director is open to email promotions, you are still requiring them to take the action of reading it and clicking on a link to your site before they ever get to see your work. This might seem like a minor thing, but keep in mind that Art Directors are busy people, and you’re not the only Illustrator sending them an email.
Pros
Instant Visual – Probably the best part about sending a postcard or other form of print promotion is that when an Art Director receives it, they see your artwork right away, without having to take action or visit your website. As with any approach to marketing, you only have a brief moment to grab the attention of your audience, so why not use that time to put your work in front of their eyes?
Keepsake – If you impress an Art Director with your work, there’s always a chance that they will keep your print promo, and even put it up in their office if they really like it. If you’re lucky enough to inspire an AD in this way, they’re more likely to remember you when that next project comes around.
Cons
Cost – Obviously, there is some element of expense when it comes to printing and sending your physical mailers, so you’ll need to consider the effect that this will have on your bottom line, while weighing its potential for bringing in new work.
Time – Unlike email promotions, there is more time involved in designing, addressing, and mailing your print promotions.
Slush Pile – Art Directors usually receive print promos just about every day, which means that yours will be somewhere in a stack of those sent by many of your fellow Illustrators. While this is also true with email marketing, it’s important to remember this when designing your postcards.
No Direct Link – Even though you are showing the Art Director a sample(s) of your work, and hopefully your contact info, they’ll still need to take action to visit your online portfolio or learn more about you. Without the direct link that is included in an email, they’ll have to like your print promo enough to take further action.
…
After looking over the list of pros and cons above you may be feeling even more confused about which approach to take, but hopefully I’ve helped to outline some things that you’ll need to consider when creating your promotional strategy.
As I stated earlier, every Art Director and every artist works differently, so I highly recommend trying a combination of print and email marketing, while paying attention to what works best for you. Also, some publications and other businesses list Submission Guidelines on their websites, so it’s always a good idea to try and figure out the best way to contact them.
Have you found one technique to be superior to the other for your own business? Please share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Special thanks to Matti Kemppainen for providing the artwork for this post.
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About Matti Kemppainen:
I’m a illustrator living and working in lovely Helsinki. I studied new media in Hyper Island in Sweden and have since worked in house at web design and advertising agencies, all the while doing freelance illustration at night.
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Related Posts:
- Promotion 101 for Artists
- 7 Elements of an Effective Portfolio Website
- Creating Your Promotional Strategy
- 10 Rules of Effective Self-Promotion
- How to Build an Effective Mailing List
- EFII Podcast Episode 27 – Promotion
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People who send email promotions:
How do you format your emails? RTF, Plain-text, HTML?
do you attach an image? or link one using HTML?
what size do your emails clock in at?
I’d love to hear what others have to say, but it seems to me that if you want your email to have the best chance of making it past the spam filter, and the best chance of being opened, then simple text with a link to your site is best. Some people don’t like opening emails with attachments, or html emails because they automatically see them as spam. That being said, if you get people to sign up for a newsletter, then you’ll have a little more leeway there.
Another good thing about linking to your site in an email is that you can track the email’s effectiveness pretty easily by viewing your website stats. With an attachment, you have no way of knowing how many people just trash your message without looking twice at it (much like when you send a postcard or other print promotion).
On the other hand, I think a well-designed postcard better presents you as a professional: while any fool can send an email, the fact that you spent some money on printed promos shows that you are serious. Plus, I think it’s beneficial for ADs to actually see how your work looks in print and a tangible object has a uniqueness and an appeal that you just don’t get from pixels on a screen.
Does anybody know of a good way of sending group emails without the whole list of people showing up in the headers of every mail?
You can put them all in the BCC (blind carbon copy) field instead of the “To” field. Although some emails clients might not let you send without at least one person in the “to” field. In which case it probably couldn’t hurt to address it to yourself.
Try testing first before you send the real thing. Maybe to some friends or or to multiple email accounts you might own.
I’ve done a lot of investigating in this subject as of late and recently attended the Nuts and Bolts conference for illustrators in NYC, which was pretty much all about how to market yourself and build a career. Based on what I’ve learned it seems it will usually take multiple impressions to get get noticed by an AD, so it’s probably best to try some combination of print and email.
I’ve talked to reps at a couple of those agencies that sell mailing lists. They suggest a strategy of emailing a large, yet targeted list, and tracking the click-thrus. Then you send the postcards to the propel who opened or clicked you email, since those people have shown some initial interest. That method sort of requires that you use their emailing system that can actually track clicks from individual recipients, and also for their list of potential clients that have opted to actually receive emails. Otherwise track who clicked individual emails is a pretty ethically shady thing in general and usually requires some sort of shady-feeling direct mailing software.
Though in you site stats you can glean where certain clicks are coming from, for instance big companies usually have their own ISP that woudl show up on Google analytics. And you can easily and at least track weather they were received thru an email or not.
Very useful information, Matti. Thanks. Also visited your portfolio. Fantastic vector illustrations and design. Well done!
I certainly can’t speak for every AD or art buyer out there, but I really dislike getting e-mail promos while I’m at my day job as a graphic designer.
Here’s why: E-mail is the primary form of intra- and inter-office communication. In a week there are literally hundreds of e-mails regarding work, meetings, deadlines and production issues in addition to spam that sneaks through the office filters. There is also work from illustrators coming in. It’s easy to lose track of things and the last thing I want is more e-mail.
Again, I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t have an inbox with the unlimited capacity of gmail. My inbox can only hold so many messages before I am prompted to start deleting messages or every inbound message gets bounced back.
I like getting postcards, I tend to hold onto them longer. I go through them during downtime and I’ll check out websites if the work is good or I think I might be able to use that artist in the future.
Another “con” to sending postcards is that you are limited to one image – and choosing that one image is very difficult. How can I possibly guess which image will appeal to the most art directors out there? With emailing, I can send out a couple of images a month showing a variety of work – and links to my website.
Well you can put more than on image to a post card but of course they be smaller. But I’ve seen mailed that fold out or as booklets. Of course then that costs more in both printing and shipping.
I’ve heard of people mailing more elaborate mailers to a select group of directors, dream clients the want to target and sending just postcards to everyone else.
So many nuances to this biz!
I employ both methods: strategic e-mails containing one or two links to my site or a link to my samples on twitpic, and I also have done a number of postcards over the years.
In this age of hyper-connectivity, I think e-mails often get ignored, buried, or forgotten. But it’s still a necessary evil, and can still get you noticed if done with discipline. I like postcards for their design flexibility and their low cost to produce and to mail. Landing just one project as a result of sending a postcard easily pays for the production of the cards.
Also consider doing something a bit more unique. Couple of years ago, I designed a two-color beer mat (fiberboard coaster) with line art of a Big Wheel on one side, and contact info on the reverse. Here it is: http://twitpic.com/o7g8m
They were more expensive to produce than a postcard, but were more unique and had a practical use. My goal was to keep my promo piece on AD’s desks, rather than just stuffed into a file folder. And the Big Wheel image garnered an emotional response from several people and proved to be a great conversation starter. Like….”I remember as a kid my buddy down the street had a Big Wheel and we rode that thing all summer.”