THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
You’re listening to episode number 171 of the Inspiration Place podcast. Today, we’re talking all about words that sell and the best advice from five top copywriters. So for that, stay tuned. Today’s episode is sponsored by my free eBook, The Artist Profit Plan. Discover the five things you don’t need to build a profitable art business plus the five that you do. To get your hands on it, go on over to schulmanart.com/profit.
Speaker 2:
It’s the Inspiration Place podcast with artist, Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast, an art world insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Well hey there, it’s Miriam Schulman, your curator of inspiration and host of the Inspiration Place podcast. You’re listening to episode number 171. I am so grateful that you’re here. Today, we’re talking all about what to put in your emails to sell more art. We’ve been talking a lot on this podcast about writing more emails. So, recently I had on Teresa Heath-Wareing about why you need an email list. A few weeks ago, we discussed [Mattis’s 00:01:34] selling secret. I’ll make sure I’ll link to both of those episodes in the show notes. Now that you understand why an email is so important, you might be staring at a blinking cursor wondering what the heck you should say. That’s why I’ve gathered up the best of the best advice from top copywriters. I pulled the highlights from five different interviews. I did. These are folks whose jobs are to write words that sell, and they get paid huge bucks for it.
So you’re going to love this episode, grab a pen because you’re going to want to take notes. In this episode you’re going to discover why your art collectors want to hear from you, and often, how to inject your personality into everything you write, and why you don’t need to use flowery language to sell your art, and what really works. First up is the founder of Talking Shrimp and co-creator of The Copy Cure. She’s a copywriting expert who helps entrepreneurs find the perfect words to express and sell what they do in a way that gets them to be paid to be themselves. Through her work with hundreds of clients, including online biggies like Marie Forleo and Amy Porterfield, she’s seen firsthand that putting you, into your copy. Here’s the one and only Laura Belgray.
Laura Belgray:
So, I’ll have a lot of artists say, “Only my friends buy my art.” And the first thing I’ll say to them is, “That’s probably because those are the only people who know about it,” right? You know, because they’re not emailing or putting themselves out there. But the whole point is, when you’re writing these emails, and that’s what we’re going to dig into today, is you want your collectors to feel as if you are writing to them as a friend.
Like if they say, “Oh, only my friends collect my art,” you could solve that easily by making thousands of friends with your email. You make those people your friends, they become your friends and then they will buy your art.
Miriam Schulman:
Here’s what I hear from people. And I have my ideas, and I’m talking about like the client who I coach, who want to sell their art. They say they hate writing the email because they feel like they’re talking to their computers. So what advice do you have specifically for those artists?
Laura Belgray:
Yeah. I think that you want to picture a person who is your ideal collector. It’s probably a friend, especially if you’ve claimed that only your friends collect your art, and a friend who maybe is such a fan of yours, such of the art, that they always want first dibs… anything that you put out there, and are furious if you’ve sold it to somebody else without telling them about it. Think of that person that you love so much that you feel comfortable around, who just loves everything that you do. If you need to, you can open an email from your regular email client on your desktop, or wherever you compose an email, right? So I use Mac mail. So I open up a Mac email if I’m having trouble picturing that one person, and I start an email to them, but truly to them, like, “What would I write to this person in what language?”
So I don’t start to make it [newsletter-y 00:04:40], I don’t have a big intro. If it were you Miriam, I would just say like, “What’s shaking?” if I’m writing about art, “just finished this piece. I know you’re going to want to see because you were so mad at me last time when I didn’t tell you about it. It is. If I do say so pretty spectacular, do you want to come see it?” I just like put it in the words that I would use with a person that I like and know, and then maybe you dress it up. And then, maybe you put more into it. But when you started off in the right tone, with the right person in your mind’s eye, it’s going to be a lot easier.
Miriam Schulman:
So, what is something that will make any email scream, “It’s a newsletter.” ?
Laura Belgray:
Oh, I love that question. If you use title case in your subject line, meaning the first letter of each word is capitalized as it is in a title, that screams, “newsletter,” it’s [business-y 00:05:32]. You would never capitalize the first letter of each word if you wrote an email to a friend.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Laura Belgray:
You capitalize the first word, if any of them. Sometimes we’re sloppy when we write to our friends, and especially now that we communicate with the people who we’re close to so much in text. Text is a place where even our punctuation drops off, we get almost intentionally sloppy because it, it now looks rude and curt to use punctuation, and to be formal there. So, you kind of want your subject lines to mirror that informality.
You want to make sure that you’re not using title case and you will see marketers, if you’re subscribed to a lot of things, you will see marketers using title case. You might find yourself turned off by it, now that you’ve heard this. Some of them get away with it because they have loyal followings and they’ve been doing it for years, and people love their emails so much. But I know most of them, like when I see those I’m just like, “Eh, I don’t need to open that today.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Laura Belgray:
It’s not to me. It doesn’t feel like it’s to me. It’s from a business to a business and I don’t need to read it.
Miriam Schulman:
What is your advice you have for putting in more personality into emails?
Laura Belgray:
So, you want to sound conversational. You want to mirror the way you talk. You want to read your stuff out loud and say, “Does this sound like a person talking? Does this sound like me talking? Is this the way I would actually say? Is this the slang that I would use?” So, you want that same tone, that same conversational feel in your writing, make it sound like a person. And then, my favorite little trick for adding personality, for injecting some flavor is, something that your artists are familiar with; painting a picture. So, I like to use concrete details, not to say that Jackson Pollock was not a great artist, but if Jackson Pollock were writing, his writing would not be as good. If his paintings were writing, it wouldn’t be as good because they are abstract. They are general, it’s a mass, it’s a blob.
Whereas, you want to be very figurative and clear in your writing. You want to use concrete details that paint a picture when we’re reading. So, for instance, instead of saying, “We met up and had a conversation,” that’s way more interesting if you say, “We met on a bench and talked over tuna sandwiches.” It shows setting, it shows, “What was the tone? What was the feeling of this meeting?” Like, “We met and had a conversation,” we don’t know. “We met on a bench and talked to tuna sandwiches,” says it was maybe really informal and intimate. It was somewhere outside, maybe where you didn’t want the other person to make a scene.
Like, there’s so much built into those concrete details, and we can picture it. For instance, you see a lot of people talking in big generalities, especially when they’re telling their life story. They’ll say something like, “For a long time, I was in a very dark place. It was the lowest low of my life, but I came out of it and I found myself on the other side, with a whole new attitude,” and that tells us nothing. It’s general, it’s blah, we don’t know what they went through. Whereas, if they said, “For three months of my life, I lived in unwashed sweats, eating nothing but Doritos from the bag, and stalking my ex on Facebook.” We know what kind of low they went through.
Miriam Schulman:
If you think about Norman Rockwell who did beautiful illustrations of portraits, every single one of his paintings tell a story. You know exactly who that kid is, or who that dentist is, or who that couple is. All of those little juicy details that he includes, is what makes his art so compelling. And that does not mean that art has to be representational to be compelling. But, if you are making representational art, you should be telling a story with it.
Laura Belgray:
Right. And you’re writing, I think, should always be representational. That’s how you make it compelling.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Laura Belgray:
You don’t have to tell every detail, but one perfect detail can make something pop, make it come alive for us and tell the whole story.
Miriam Schulman:
Next step we’re featuring content strategist, author of the best selling Kindle eBook, Make a Killing With Content. Listen to advice from my friend, the fabulous, Lacy Boggs.
What is content marketing?
Lacy Boggs:
My definition is that content marketing is any time you are having a conversation with your potential customers, with the idea that it might eventually turn into a sale. So, for that definition, that’s pretty broad, but that includes blog posts, podcasts like this one. It could be a tweet, it could be an Instagram post, it could be an actual physical conversation you’re having at an art show. But, anytime you’re having a conversation that you intend to eventually turn into a sale, I would consider that content marketing. So, for artists, I think you have a couple of different angles you can take. So, sometimes artists will share, behind the scenes type information, where they show the progress of a piece of being created, or they’ll show behind the scenes of their studio, or setting up a show or things like that. So that would be one option.
Another one would be talking about the inspiration or the meaning behind a piece of work. If your work has any kind of deep meaning or inspiration that comes from elsewhere, outside of the picture that we might not be able to see just from the piece of art itself, that’s a great thing to talk about. And sometimes artists can be personality brands as well. So, sometimes it’s just talking about what’s on your mind, literally what you had for lunch, where you went for a walk, what you’re doing with your kids, because all things being equal, we buy from people we know, like and trust.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Lacy Boggs:
And all things being unequal, we buy from people we know, like and trust. So, the more you can share your personality, the more your audience will learn to like you and trust you, and your art becomes that much more significant to them; when they feel like they are, kind of friends with you, and they have a window into your personality.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. One thing I notice some very successful artists do, which I struggle with a lot, and it’s not just artists but people who have big personalities online, who are successful, they are really willing to get vulnerable. Like they’ll share their infertility struggles, or their breakups, or their heartaches. Almost to the point where I feel a little bit uncomfortable. And yet, it really seems to work for them. Do we have to be that vulnerable with our audiences? What’s your opinion on that?
Lacy Boggs:
As you say, “Not everybody’s going to be comfortable with being that vulnerable.” I think also there’s a lot of people who worry about crazy people out there, like the more popular you become, the more crazies come out of the woodwork, right? And you don’t want to share every detail of your life necessarily.
Miriam Schulman:
No, I don’t even like sharing when I go on vacation. I am afraid people are going to rob my house.
Lacy Boggs:
Right, totally.
I talk, sometimes, about brand stories, which is where you come up with a set of stories or a set of topics that you’re willing to share and interested in sharing and being vulnerable about. And so like… whereas, I might not ever talk about like my marriage or issues with my family like that. For me, I’ve drawn the line where I’m happy to talk about things that happen in my business. My business is pretty much an open book. So, I do get vulnerable about like, “Hey, I tried this thing and it didn’t work. And it really stank.” I’ll get very vulnerable about that, but I’m not going to tell you if I’m having whatever, issues in my marriage or with my child or anything like that, because that’s not part of my brand.
Miriam Schulman:
Their stories are their stories. So, even if it’s causing me personal pain if one of them is sick or, or something happens, or something with my husband… it’s their stories too. I’m very mindful of not sharing other people’s stories.
Lacy Boggs:
Absolutely. But just, kind of, as an example, you could be vulnerable as an artist in different ways. So, if you were to go through a period of artist block, or you just didn’t have any creativity, or you were struggling with a piece and you couldn’t make it work, those are the sorts of things you might choose to be vulnerable with.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Lacy Boggs:
Whereas, you might not share your kids’ stories or your husband’s story or anything like that about your personal life. There are still ways you can be vulnerable within your brand. And I’m not going to lie, being vulnerable, those are the blog posts that will get the most comments, the most likes, the most retweets, because we as humans, we like it when other humans open up and are real with us, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Lacy Boggs:
So, I would absolutely never try to manufacture that sort of thing. But, if you run into those problems or even just hiccups in your professional life, or wherever you’ve drawn that line for your brand it is valuable in some sense to share it. Even if it’s sharing it after the fact, so you can say like, “This happened and here’s how I overcame it,” That can be good too because sometimes things are too immediate and we don’t have enough distance from them, to share them with the world.
Miriam Schulman:
I like the way you talked about dialing your personality up to 11, because I think what some people do, and this is myself included when I first started out, is you don’t think you’re supposed to dial it up. You kind of feel you need to dial it down.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I have a very strong New York accent. I’m like this Jewish girl from New York, and I interrupt people, and I make jokes, and I used to dial that back a lot. And now, I’m just like, “Oh no,” and just lean into it because people are going to love me or they’re not going to love me.
Lacy Boggs:
It helps them self select.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Lacy Boggs:
There’s certainly a case to be made that somebody could enjoy your art if they didn’t enjoy you personally. But at the same time, I think there’s an even stronger case that, when people connect with you on a personality level like that, they are probably even more likely to like your art.
Miriam Schulman:
So the email, really, is the main thing that is the storyteller. And you don’t have to create a brand new story every time you have Instagram, Facebook, and email, that can be the same story. Do you want to add to that?
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. I think this is such a funny thing about our egos as human beings, because we assume that like, “Oh, well, I can’t tell the same story on Facebook and Instagram because people are going to be like, ‘Ugh, I saw that already.'” But the truth of the matter is A, nobody’s paying that close of attention.
Miriam Schulman:
No, one’s hanging on to your every word.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. And one other little thing about email is I always suggest to people that you have no more than one topic per email.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, I like that.
Lacy Boggs:
And, for a while it was very common to have emails else that had lots of sections.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Lacy Boggs:
Where it had lots of different stuff. And I think that our attention spans just do not hold up for that, unless you’re like the New York Times. Probably, my best words of wisdom are simply that keep trying, keep writing. You don’t have to have everything perfect in order to post a blog or send out an email. The wonderful thing about the fact that there is a serial channel, is that you get to try again next week. So, don’t let your perfectionism around words, hold you back. Just post that blog post, go ahead and send that email. If it doesn’t work, that’s okay. That’s data to help you improve for the next time, rather than waiting for everything to be perfect. Go ahead and just hit the button and send it.
Miriam Schulman:
Our next copywriter’s motto is, “Creative integrity and profit are not meant to be mutually exclusive.” Here’s Kimberly Houston.
What would you say to that question, in terms of writing the copy for the actual art pieces?
Kimberly Houston:
I’ve seen it, sometimes, as long as almost a full blog post, or as short as two or three lines. I think shorter is generally better. As long as, again, you get some narrative in there about the work. So, not just, this is, 11 by 15 and it comes in blue and gray or whatever.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hopefully it doesn’t come in blue or gray.
Kimberly Houston:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
The artwork. But when I have not put stories on there, I’ve had collectors say, “I like this, but where’s the story.” Like, if they’re used to buying with the story they’ll ask me, “What’s the story. What’s the… behind this?”
Kimberly Houston:
People who collect art find artists fascinating. They want to know the back story. They want to know the back story about the artist and about the piece of work. So, I think artists often forget, people want to know about that stuff, they really do.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I think people just prefer more conversational story base, and I don’t know if that’s because of social media or if that’s always been true.
Kimberly Houston:
Oh, conversational, I definitely think so. I think it’s not artists. In fact, I’ve seen more people in corporate kind of settings do this, but copy… when you go to a website and the copy is very formal and not conversational, it just doesn’t pull you in.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Kimberly Houston:
Online, there’s that natural barrier between the website and the person viewing the website, because you’re not having a direct one on one with somebody, a person, in person. We always have to remember that that barrier is there and what helps sort of ease that, at least to some degree, is having a conversational copy. Or, you’ve gone to websites where you read the website and you feel like you know the person.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Kimberly Houston:
And that’s a good thing. So, conversational copy is definitely the way you want to go.
Miriam Schulman:
Is there anything that you can say, is like a big mistake you’ve seen artists make in terms of writing their copy?
Kimberly Houston:
Yes. I think the biggest one, is writing in the third person. That happens, not just with artists, it happens with a lot of people. But, I think it’s especially true with artists because, frankly, I think in art school, of those of artists who went to art school, that’s what they’re taught to do. You’re taught to write in the third person, like “Miriam Schulman is an artist who does this, and this, and her influences, or this, that, and the other.” And again, that creates even more of a barrier.
I was having this conversation with the artist friend of mine a couple of weeks ago, that people already feel, when they’re buying art, right? Especially if they go in person in a gallery, they already… a lot of us already feel a little insecure, because we don’t feel like we have enough knowledge to be a real collector. So if we’re being talked to in this really esoteric language that doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s just kind of a turnoff, I think. So…
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Kimberly Houston:
But I’ve seen that a lot, writing in the third person, which I would say don’t ever do that.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. That’s good to know.
Kimberly Houston:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
And I actually follow a lot of artists. One of my pet peeves or turnoffs is, I like whether it’s a copy for Instagram or a blog post or a newsletter that’s being sent to me, I get really turned off when I feel like they are writing to the masses. And they’ll use words like, “Hey, you guys,” I was like, wait a minute. I thought this letter… I prefer when I feel like it’s coming just to me.
Kimberly Houston:
Well, this is kind of getting off topic a little bit, about saying, “I can’t send a monthly newsletter because I’ve the got nothing to write about.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? You can write about your process. You can write about your inspiration.” There’s so many things, as an artist you could write about that’s going to be interesting to collectors. Pretend like you’re talking to your best friend about your week, last week. You spent some time in the studio, and you saw this thing, and it made you want to do this… just whatever you would be talking about, about your influences or your, again, your process. People love to see artists process.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I think that’s really great advice. Definitely.
But they like the process, but less technical, unless they’re an artist themselves, they don’t necessarily need to hear about that. I think even as an artist, I don’t always need to hear about that. Like I was in [Robinstown 00:20:57] with my family and we were in a studio and the artist was saying how he discovered the caulking, and this, and that. And even as an artist, I wasn’t interested. I just wanted to hear, “Well, why did you paint the tree instead of a flower?” That’s what I wanted to hear. Not like, “Well, you just… you suck the oil paint in this thing and squeezed it up.” Like no, I’m not interested in that.
Kimberly Houston:
Yeah, you’re right there. There’s such a thing as, too much of that.
Miriam Schulman:
It’s like learning how the sausage are made.
Kimberly Houston:
That’s right. That’s right.
Miriam Schulman:
Tell me how they’re seasoned.
Our next expert specializes in emails that are fun to read and more addictive than Netflix. The one and only, Tarzan Kay.
The thing I hear more than anything else, Tarzan, is they don’t want to bother people.
Tarzan Kay:
That doesn’t work. When people join your email list, they are actively saying, “Yes, I would like to hear from you.” So, when you collect these email addresses and then they don’t hear from you, it sends the message that you are not consistent and you are not a serious business person.
You have got to re-frame that, like rather than like, “What’s going to happen if I email my list?” like, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen if you don’t?” that’s actually a lot worse.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Tarzan Kay:
So, they do want to hear from you, and there are plenty of studies to show that people do want to get emails from their favorite brands, at least once a week. Like, there’s plenty of stats behind it. Let’s examine your own feelings about email marketing. Like, do you hate the emails in your inbox? Probably. You don’t hate all of them.
Some of them you probably don’t like, so take note of why you don’t like those, and you’re not going to send emails with a big flashing button at the top that says 10% off. And the other ones that you really do like, that you enjoy from week to week, and get excited about when they land in your inbox, what’s going on there? Maybe you could be that person, maybe you could be that bright spot in someone else’s inbox that they’re like, “Oh, oh my gosh, a new email from Miriam. I wonder what this is.”
Miriam Schulman:
They feel they have to be this… like they have to be the best, and they have to send the best email, and everything has to be perfect because their mother’s said so, or whatever their story is, they’re telling themselves things have to be.
Tarzan Kay:
The response to that email of when I messed up was like, I’ve never had so many email responses.
Miriam Schulman:
Wow.
Tarzan Kay:
And people were so grateful to see my humanity and that I also make mistakes. And, it gave them permission to try things and make mistakes. You will not be successful in business if you’re walking around all day long trying to not make mistakes, you are going to make mistakes. You’re going to make so many embarrassing mistakes and fall in your face so many times, you just have to get up and keep going. That’s what makes a successful business owner.
Miriam Schulman:
Finally, Daniel Weil is the best kept secret, until now. Her elegant narrative, driven and conversion focused copy has brought in tens of millions in sales for clients, which is why she’s otherwise known as the launch expert.
That limiting self-belief, Danielle, about writing flowery language.
Danielle Weil:
It’s… I have to make something that is super compelling and super hype-y, and sounds like the best thing in the world, and go on and on. It has to be perfect.
It has to sound amazing.
Miriam Schulman:
I never asked them what they mean by that, but I’ve heard it several times, that exact phrase. I think they meant like, sugary when they talk about the art that has all these extra adjectives and words.
Danielle Weil:
And it’s funny because…
Miriam Schulman:
It could be what you’re saying with the perfectionism. I mean, that could be it too.
Danielle Weil:
Well, because extra adjectives and saying, “This is all the superlatives, this is the best,” that’s actually the opposite of what you want to do in copy. My background is in creative writing, so every word that you’re writing should be there for a reason.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Danielle Weil:
So, you don’t have to put in lots of extra words that don’t need to be there. The other cool thing about writing to sell, whether it’s more of your art or courses, is that simple language works.
Miriam Schulman:
But there has got to be some happy medium between, the belief that I have to write flowery language, and then the belief that I just have to put the name of the course and a price. So…
Danielle Weil:
Absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
There’s somewhere in between.
Danielle Weil:
The way that I like to talk about it, is talking about a bridge that you’re taking someone across. On one side of the bridge, is someone whipping out their credit card and going, “Yes, please take my money.” The other side of the bridge are those people, your ideal collectors, your ideal people waiting over there for you to take them across. And it’s your job, with the words that you use, to build that bridge for them and make it really, really easy for them to walk across.
Miriam Schulman:
So how do you do that?
Danielle Weil:
How do you do that? It’s a very good question.
Miriam Schulman:
So how do you do that, Danielle?
Danielle Weil:
Where your ideal collectors are right now, Where are they? What are they feeling? What are they experiencing? What do they want? Where are they? Painting that picture. It’s interesting that you bring up this concept of objections.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Danielle Weil:
Because they’re always going to be with any buying decision or any decision, really. They’re going to be objections that come up in your mind. What I like to do with my clients is an exercise of thinking through and making a list of all of the things that your ideal customer, student, client needs to believe in order to buy. What do they need to believe? It could be things big or small, make that list. They need to believe that they can do it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Danielle Weil:
They need to believe that it’s going to be emotionally rewarding. They need to believe they don’t have to get involved. All of those things are your objections. And then once you have that list, as you go, are writing your description, let’s say, or writing your post. You can answer them in a way that just feels natural.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, I hope you enjoyed the advice from all those wonderful women. We’ve included links to their interviews in the show notes, and the other interviews I talked about, you can find all that we talked about at schulmanart.com/171. And don’t forget if you liked this episode, then you’re going to love the freebies I got for you. So, you can get your little goody bad, the Artist Profit Plan eBook. Get that at schulmanart.com/profit. Whether your goal is to profit from your passion, or to get more recognition for your art I’ve got you covered. All right, my friend, make sure you hit that plus or the follow sign in your podcast app. I don’t want you to miss a single episode and if you’re feeling extra generous, I would love a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Thank you so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week’s day inspired.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook, at facebook.com/schulmanart on Instagram, @schulmanart. And of course, on schulmanart.com.
Subscribe & Review in iTunes
Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. I’m adding a bunch of bonus episodes to the mix and if you’re not subscribed there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here to subscribe in iTunes!
Now if you’re feeling extra loving, I would be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes, too. Those reviews help other people find my podcast and they’re also fun for me to go in and read. Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know what your favorite part of the podcast is. Thank you!