Email marketing for your Etsy shop is an underrated digital marketing method to seriously grow your Etsy shop sales.

All of the top Etsy sellers garner email subscribers, create email lists, and build automated flows and email campaigns to directly sell to previous buyers or highly interested leads.

Take advantage of this completely legal and Etsy-approved marketing strategy. Read below to learn how you can grow your Etsy email list for your store and increase sales as a result.

Why Build a Mailing List in the First Place?

Building an Etsy mailing list is the best way to get right in front of warm leads and directly communicate with previous customers.

This is an essential tool anyone in e-commerce needs to be using whether you have 10 subscribers or ten thousand!

You’re essentially talking about one of the lowest-cost digital marketing tools that has been around for decades and generated marketers, entrepreneurs, and yes even Etsy sellers millions of dollars in virtually passive income.

Why wouldn’t you build a mailing list?

It’s a no-brainer.

Here are 3 reasons you need to be building an Etsy mailing list right now:

1. Sell To Existing Customers

Selling to someone once is always harder than selling to the person again, especially if your product and customer service are good!

The easiest way to generate recurring revenue on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis is to re-engage existing customers with the same product, new products, and promotions.

Your customers don’t sit there and think about you and your business… That’s your job!

People need you to remind them about your shop so that they can come back for more and the likelihood that someone who has already purchased something from you will buy again is huge.

2. Direct Communication

The great thing about the internet is that it has removed so many gatekeepers and made many third-party organizations obsolete.

While Etsy will help you get your first sales, especially if you have highly optimized listings (more on this below), they technically own all the customer data prior to a purchase being made.

Once you actually get a sale you now have access to that customer’s email and with their marketing consent, you can now talk to them directly via email.

3. Algorithm Proof (Sort of)

Social media and organic search on Etsy are regulated by algorithms that change every few months.

When these platforms first started gaining popularity there was very little regulation and simple formulas allowed individuals to grow quickly.

Nowadays, platforms like Facebook and Instagram change their algorithms every few months leaving users playing catch up.

You now as a seller have to figure out what to do in order to appear in front of your customer.

When it comes to Etsy we can help with the latest in search optimization on Etsy; however, email marketing allows you to have a list of motivated buyers who you can email anytime.

That being said Gmail and Yahoo recently introduced new sending guidelines for emails but most platforms like Mailchimp and Klaviyo will help you set those up and they take about 5 minutes!

How Do You Get Shopper Emails the Correct Way?

Like anything, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about getting shopper emails.

Emails actually fall under personal information and there are specific rules and regulations that apply to email marketing.

We will cover those later on, for now here are a few ways you can gain email subscribers and start building your Etsy mailing list!

Use Your Etsy Shop

Etsy allows you to encourage shoppers to subscribe to your email list on your shop.

While you can’t message people directly asking them to subscribe, you can include a link to your mailing list sign-up form on your shop!

For example, you can include the link as well as an incentive to join in your “About Section”.

Something like, “Join our newsletter for exclusive deals and product drops!” is perfect.

Header Image

Just like putting your email sign-up form in your About section you can also include the link in your Etsy header image.

That being said, unlike other spots in your shop, this link won’t be clickable as the section is not a text section but rather an image section.

So you should try to create a URL that is short and easy to remember.

Thank You Message

Etsy will actually allow you to edit the emails customers get when they make a purchase.

Once a customer buys a product your store emails them a “Thank You” message.

You can include your email signup link in the message with added text to encourage customers to subscribe.

In Packaging

Go nuts!

Sending your products is 100% up to you so you can include whatever you like in the order itself.

Include a packing slip with your email signup URL.

Better yet, create a warm Thank You Card that looks incredible with a QR code on the back that leads people to subscribe to your newsletter.

Offering a discount code or promotion will definitely increase how many people actually sign up.

Through Social Media

Social is always a great way to connect with your audience.

If you have an engaged audience, you should have no difficulty asking them to give up their email and subscribe for exclusive deals and announcements.

What Platforms to Use for Sending Emails

You definitely don’t want to be the person who is individually emailing subscribers from your Excel sheet when there are dozens of platforms online that will do it for you.

In general, most email senders work the same way and really it comes down to price, integration, and functionality.

Some platforms like Mailchimp are great because they integrate directly with Etsy.

Aweber is another good one especially because it allows you to have 500 subscribers for free and the other tiers are fairly affordable.

Platforms like Klaviyo have some of the best flows and email automations which help build passive income but they are more expensive.

At this time of writing this article, Klaviyo does not directly integrate with Etsy so you would either have to use a third-party tool to connect the two or upload emails manually every week or so.

Rules and Regulations for Sending Emails

There are definitely laws, rules, and regulations that pertain to sending emails and they vary from country to country.

The good news is, that the United States is not as strict as Europe, and email marketing in the US is not as heavily regulated as SMS text messaging.

Still, you should do more in-depth research to ensure you do not break any rules or regulations.

Segmenting your email lists into US and non-US subscribers is a good first start.

In the United States, you need to comply with the FCC and the CAN-SPAM Act which includes things like having a way for people to unsubscribe/opt-out and providing your contact information.

PRO TIP: The US actually does not regulate sending unsolicited emails (for the most part); however, platforms like Gmail and Yahoo will flag your sender email if you receive Spam complaints, too many “unsubscribes”, or too few open rates.

So don’t just go randomly emailing people.

Incentives to Join Mailing List

Offering people on Etsy incentives to join your mailing list is the best way to gain more subscribers.

Here is a list of incentives you can offer:

• Special discounts and exclusive deals
• News about product launches
• Giveaways
• Free PDF or eBook about a topic related to your product
• Weekly blog articles related to the product
• Free stickers and printables
• Christmas and other holiday promotions

Remember customers are already getting dozens of emails every day so they don’t want to receive yours unless you can offer something really great in return.

Welcome Series to Onboard Email Subs

The email-sending platform you choose will likely give you options to create a number of series or flows that are automatically sent out to customers based on certain actions.

One of the most common ones is a “Welcome Series”.

These sorts of emails have huge open rates so you can actually warm your audience and set the tone for the kind of emails you will send in the future.

This is a great way to immediately offer your subscribers a discount code or a special offer.

Platforms like Mailchimp, Aweber, and Klaviyo will allow you to set up automated Welcome emails to immediately go out once a customer is added to your email list.

PRO TIP: The email that follows a welcome series also has high open rates.

You can wait until you have a big influx of subscribers, like after a holiday sale, and then send a value-based email like a blog post to inform and entertain your reader, not just sell.

Growing an Etsy email list is one of the best things you can do for your business.

It’s easy to start and relatively inexpensive with a huge upside.

Before you can gain email subscribers; however, you will need people visiting your Etsy shop.

To learn how to optimize your listings and what keywords to use get in touch with us today.

Our all-in-one Etsy optimization tool will let you know in real-time the most searched keywords with the least competition allowing you to exponentially grow your Etsy sales!