There are plenty of ways to promote your Etsy shop through advertising, social media, and SEO. But if there is one thing I would say that you should do if you ever want to grow your business like a serious entrepreneur, it’s that you should create an email list.

Why Email Marketing?

If you run any sort of online business, surely you’ve heard about email marketing and how it’s one of the most tried, true, and tested ways to communicate with your customers and make sales. I will admit that I didn’t start taking email marketing seriously for any of my businesses until about 2 years ago, and now I understand why people preach about it so adamantly: because it works.

Email marketing is one of the most efficient ways to reach your customers directly, even more than social media. When you reach someone through their email inbox, you don’t have to compete with ever-changing Facebook or Google algorithms. You don’t have to come up with a list of hashtags to help you get seen or spend $5 to “boost” your email to get it to the top. You just have to write an email and relax knowing it will be delivered to everyone who’s opted in to hear from you. 

You also have the added advantage of knowing that someone went as far as entering their email into a box in order to hear from you. In terms of internet relationships, that’s a much bigger commitment than a follow on social media, even if they only did it for the coupon (no shame). 

Email Marketing for Etsy Shops

Once my main Etsy shop started to take off, I knew I had to start preparing to scale my business. As much as I love Etsy, they ultimately call the shots when it comes to everything that goes on through their platform, so if they decided one day they wanted to shut my shop down (unlikely but not unheard of), I needed to have a backup plan. My shop was quickly becoming my biggest source of income, and once you start making a few thousand dollars a month off one thing, you start to really see your vulnerabilities and understand how it would feel to have the rug ripped from under you. I wanted to make sure I had a way to contact my most loyal customers and fans in the event something like that ever happened, so I started an email list.

There are dozens of email marketing services to choose from, but the two I’ve worked with are MailChimp and Mailerlite. Both have free plans up to a certain number of email subscribers, which is nice when you’re just getting started. I am partial to Mailerlite and plan to switch all my email marketing over to them eventually, but my shop is still tied to Mailchimp for now. You can do this process regardless of the email marketing service you choose. 

How to Grow an Email List for Your Etsy Shop

When you send someone a marketing email, they have to first give their consent to be contacted by you, which involves opting in to receive emails through a signup form. You can see examples of signup forms all over this site – there’s one on the right sidebar, to give you an example of what it is. As you’ll see, I encourage people to put in their email by offering a free Etsy SEO cheat sheet and free quote generator cheat sheet for people who make printables and physical products like t-shirts. Those two free pieces of content are called a lead magnet, which is what you’ll need to offer your Etsy customers to get them to join your list.

The easiest lead magnet to offer is a discount code. Here’s what I have written in my Etsy product description to encourage people to click through to my lead magnet:

“Want to save 15% today? Sign up for my email list by copying and pasting this URL into your browser and a 15% off coupon code will be emailed to you: (URL to the opt-in form here)”

A discount is the fastest and easiest way to create a lead magnet, but you could always offer a free product, like a printable, as well. Here’s a list of 20 types of digital products you can sell on Etsy; maybe one of those would make a great freebie lead magnet for your shop. Here’s a post with some tips on creating digital products if you’re unfamiliar.

If you choose to do a discount code, you first have to create the code in Etsy by going to marketing, then sales & coupons, and then create a custom coupon code with no expiration date. Be sure to include any products that are eligible to be purchased with the code (in my shop’s case, they can use it on everything). 

Creating Your Opt-In Landing Page

Next, you’re going to have to create the opt-in form that the link in your product description will go to. In this case, since you have to direct your customer to copy/paste an external link into their browser, you’ll create a landing page opt-in form. It doesn’t have to be fancy at all. Here’s one I’ve used forever as proof that it can look boring as hell and still work:

Your email marketing service will provide you with a URL to this landing page, which is what you’ll put in your product description. Since you can’t add clickable links to your Etsy descriptions, you have to tell them to copy and paste it into their browser. 

Creating Your Welcome Email

Next you’ll have to create a welcome email. Your welcome email is automatically delivered to your customer when they opt-in to receive your emails. If you are sending a coupon code as your lead magnet, you’ll want to trigger this to send right away because they’re probably shopping and waiting to use it. You can do this by setting up an automation sequence in Mailerlite or Mailchimp. Both have several automation options and you can choose the type of automation that welcomes new subscribers.

Your welcome email can be as short or as long as you want it to be (in my opinion, nobody has ever said “that email was way too short”). I like to keep things simple for my Etsy shop, so my welcome email says something to this effect:

Welcome to (Shop Name)! Since 2017, we’ve been creating (whatever you sell, i.e. “posters and t-shirts with an empowering feminist edge”) for (your target customer). Thank you for subscribing to our email list. Your coupon code is WELCOME15 (or whatever you want your code to be).

I recommend at least adding a couple of pictures of your products after that, so people remember who you are if they didn’t open the email right away. Pictures will help them say “oh yeah, I was going to buy that thing!” and then they’ll go use your coupon code. I also recommend adding buttons that click through to your shop throughout the email, so there is always an option for them to click and go shopping. 

Add the Link to Your Etsy Listings

Once you’ve set up this automation, you have to add a paragraph to your listing description to encourage people to sign up for emails. You can do this by going to your listings page in your Etsy dashboard, then Edit, then “edit product description.” Add the paragraph and signup form link to your landing page to any listing descriptions where you want people to sign up (I have it in all of my listings). 

The link will not be clickable in your description, so make sure you mention that they have to copy and paste the link into their browser. This can only be done on a computer, not mobile, unless they enter in the URL manually.

Add an Image to Your Listing

Another way I encourage people to sign up for emails is by placing a picture about the coupon code at the end of my listing images. 

Full disclosure: I did not come up with this idea myself, but discovered it on the Fuzzy & Birch blog, which is filled with valuable Etsy advice. I forever admire her genius for this idea. I had already been doing the discount code lead magnet for a while, then discovered her blog via Pinterest and read her post where she suggested to do this. It’s such a brilliant way to get people to read the listing description.

Anyway, what you do is add a picture to your last listing image, so that when people click through your photos, they will see this option to get a coupon, like this:

This also helps because it encourages people to READ THE PRODUCT DESCRIPTION, which I think only about 1% of sellers do (not actual science, but it does feel that way sometimes).

That’s it! Once you have some email subscribers you can contact them when you have a sale, when you add new products, you can create a weekly newsletter, you can tell them about upcoming craft fairs, you can contact them if you change your name or move platforms, whatever you want to do. 

Do you have an email list for your Etsy shop? What kinds of content do you like to send to your list?