The art of email marketing is all about balance. As a designer, you want to drive sales without being too pushy, and you want to maintain consistency without over-sharing. Creating email content takes time, so it’s important to justify your effort with engagement and inquiries. You might wonder if it’s worth the investment, especially in an industry increasingly driven by social media. Our take? A resounding yes.
In our own business, we’ve seen a direct correlation between newsletters and sales and inquiries. Plus, unlike social media, where the platform owns your content, your email subscribers are yours alone. If you’re ready to invest in email marketing, the first step is having a plan in place. Just as we recommend having an editorial calendar for your social media and blog content, we encourage the same for newsletters. We’ve put together ten ideas along with tangible takeaways to get you started.
Photography: Madeline Harper
Clients tell us about the blogs and articles they read online, encouraging them to focus their efforts on growing their email list. While we agree that increasing your audience is super important, having an extensive list of subscribers does little good if you aren’t sending out emails—or if no one is opening them. The key to newsletter content and sending emails that actually get opened is value. Your recipients want the exclusivity of getting first dibs and fresh previews of products and projects. They want to learn about something new or get a glimpse behind the scenes. Here are some content ideas to throw into the mix:
Interior Design: HAUS LOVE | Photography: Ash & Co. Creative
Photography: Madeline Harper
Finding the right email marking platform for interior designers can take some trial and error. For years, we used Flodesk and still highly recommend it for small businesses. Flodesk is one of the best for layouts you actually want to use, plus it’s very easy to navigate for beginners. But as our business and reach has grown, we recently made the switch to Klaviyo. This platform has helped us really take our email marketing strategy to the next level with targeted emails and lead generation. While it’s not a necessary investment for every business, it’s a great platform to consider if your email marketing plan includes sales.
As content goes, we encourage three educational emails for every hard-sell email. When we say “educational,” we mean emails similar to a branded blog post that share inspiration, tips, and industry or studio news. If you feel overwhelmed by the constant need for content, remember that it can be simple. Not every email strategy has to be elaborate with tons of links and photos and custom graphics. Open rates often prefer emails with fewer images and mostly text, and fewer images keeps you out of the spam folder!
The Identite Collective Weekly Edit Newsletter
Here’s the million-dollar question: how often should I send an email newsletter? It can be difficult to walk the line between staying relevant and overdoing it. If you’re just starting out, aim for one email a month to start and work your way up to one a week. If you’re selling products, you can even increase to two emails per week.
We also recommend keeping maintaining consistently in your email marketing schedule. For example, sending a newsletter every Wednesday morning or the first Friday of every month. This helps your subscribers know what to expect, and (best case scenario) they’ll even start looking forward to your content in their inbox.
Photography: Madeline Harper
The important thing to remember is that the people on your email list signed up to receive your emails because they resonate with something about you and your brand. They value your expertise and want to see your work. Don’t overthink it. Share what you know and do and watch the growth happen organically.
For more tips on elevating your brand and social media strategy, check out these posts:
IDCO Studio is a full-service creative studio for interior designers and boutique lifestyle brands. Offering bespoke branding, web design and social media content creation, we help brands built around beautiful living elevate their digital presence to represent the physical spaces they design. Our recently launched limited-release website templates are the perfect way for interior designers to get a luxury website on a budget. These templates allow designers to maintain control of their content. Want to work together? Shoot us an inquiry here.
@alexanderjames_SHOP
@JENNIKAYNE
@FREDASALVADOR
brands love
we
click to leave us a comment
we want to hear from you!