Email Marketing Made Simple: How to Nurture Your Audience Without Burning Out

In this solo episode, Kaylie breaks down how email marketing can help creatives build consistent sales without burning out on social media. 

Whether you're a handmade seller, artist, or digital product creator — this episode is your calm introduction to starting (or improving) your email list.

Kaylie shares why email is still one of the most powerful tools for artists and makers, even with a tiny list. She walks you through:

• Choosing the right email platform for your needs
• How to create a simple, heart-led welcome sequence
• What kind of opt-in freebie or low-ticket offer to use
• How to sell without feeling icky using soft vs. hard sells
• Bonus automations like abandoned cart emails that save sales

You'll also hear real-world examples for product-based creatives like candle makers, artists, and template sellers — plus free resources to help you get started today.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Free Email Marketing Workshop on YouTube
• Free 5-Day List Building Starter Challenge
• Kaylie’s Holiday Email Toolkit Bundle for Creatives 

🎧 Press play for a no-fluff, practical pep talk that’ll help you start your list with confidence and ease.

Transcript

 [00:00:00] 

Kaylie Edwards: Hey, lovely creatives. It's Kaylie here. Welcome back to Creative Juggle Joy podcast. Today I want to talk about a tool that can truly change the way you grow your creative business. Email marketing and before you switch off thinking, that's not for me, I'm just selling art or handmade goods, I want you to know email marketing isn't just for course creators coaches or online business people.

It's for every creative who wants consistent sales and a loyal community around our work. Whether you are a candle maker, an artist selling prints, or. Even commissioned work or a digital designer, an email list means you don't have to fight algorithms every day with social media, your people hear from you directly in their [00:01:00] inbox.

Why? Email lists matter for creatives. Think about this. Social media is like renting a stall in a busy market where the landlord can change the rules overnight. Your email list, that's your own shop where people have already chosen to step inside and you can directly have a conversation with them because social media is borrowed space.

The rules change daily. Email is your space where people have chosen to hear from you. And they can opt out if they don't want to hear from you. A tiny engaged list can outperform thousands of Instagram followers. There's only a small percentage of people on your follower list on Instagram or Facebook that actually see your posts.

But with emails, you can get up to 50%, sometimes 60% of that list seeing what you are [00:02:00] sending them. It's such a big deal when it comes to selling and connecting with the people who potentially will buy from you. If you sell handmade goods or print or demand, an email list helps you remind customers when new seasonal collections drop, give them VIP access or first dibs.

So first hear before your social media followers. If you sell art prints or originals, you can give early access to new collections, making people feel special and connected to your art. Share behind the scenes of your studio, your stories about your pieces. If you sell digital downloads, email is where you can share bundles, discounts, and sneak peeks of what's coming next.

You don't need a huge list. You just need the right people and email helps you reach them directly. Even a tiny list of 50 to a hundred people can outperform [00:03:00] thousands of Instagram followers when it comes to sales 'cause these are the people who actually want to hear from you and you have more quality on your list,

choosing your platform. Plus an incentive to get people on your list. So choosing a platform. I love Mailerlite for beginners and intermediate sellers. I have been with them for years back and forth, and I've just gone back to them again recently 'cause I was with an all in one platform, but then that was getting too clunky and annoying with tech headaches

so I thought, well, I need to simplify this and go back to Mailerlite. With a WordPress website, which that's what I'm doing. And it's simple. It integrates with most shops and it's affordable. Even on advance plan, if you have less than 500 subscribers, the free plan for up to a thousand subscribers, which is bonkers because most, email service providers don't do that.

Another thing I love about their features [00:04:00] is they have an integrated. Survey or quiz that you can put within the email itself, nobody has to click off the email. They can complete a quiz or survey within that email, which most email service providers don't do. You have to integrate it with like a quiz platform and it gets so complicated and expensive, especially with Typeform and things.

I was trying to do it for a client of mine Delores, was trying to do surveys and it gets expensive if you are not careful that's one of the features I, I went back to Mailerlite for because it's just so easy and so much cheaper to work with.

There are other email marketing platforms you can try out. AWeber is another one, which is great. I think they've got actually features. To do with integrating with Etsy. So if you've got Etsy, they integrate very well with Etsy and you can send specific emails about your shop and things.

ConvertKit is [00:05:00] brilliant if you want advanced tagging and don't mind spending more each month. They can be quite called complicated with ConvertKit, but my client moved to ConvertKit so we could have more control over. Personalization and tagging and segmenting her audience. 'cause she's got a lot of different segments.

There are obviously, like I said, other options, Flodesk. She moved from Flodesk. But for creatives it is. It is lovely platform for the design elements. You can create quite beautiful emails, but again, it can be limited the fixed fee is $60 a month. So it's entirely up to you which platform you go with.

You may already have a platform that you've already gone with. That isn't one I've listed, and that's perfectly fine. There are so many out there. It all depends on what features you want. Next, you need to give people a reason to join your email list. In today's world, people rarely sign up for just [00:06:00] tips or how tos in their emails.

They need an incentive to hand over their precious email address. Some freebie examples. You could do principal art card or like a downloadable principal art piece of one of maybe your best sellers. You can do it in A4 or 4x6. They can print off at home. You could do coloring page set. Just, it depends on your audience.

If you do candles, you could do a candle care guide, PDF, or you could even maybe do A PDF. That's safety tips for candles. 'cause people always forget how dangerous they are. You could do a free Canva template for candle labels that can be personalized. That was another thing I spotted on Etsy, which seemed to be doing very well, is personalized labels for candles.

And some of them were like funny labels. You could maybe do that for some of your [00:07:00] products.

You could even do a low ticket offer. So people kind of forget that. You can get people onto your email list by them buying a low ticket product and you need to be able to nurture them as well. So low ticket offers could be like a $7 brush pack or a discount code for your shop storewide, or for the best seller.

This small gesture says, I value your time and I want to give you something useful straight away.

If you want more examples for incentives, I did a email marketing workshop that's on YouTube. I will link it in the description if anyone wants to check that out. Then there's also, you need to build your welcome sequence. Some people say just do two to three emails for a welcome sequence, and some people are happy to do that.

But a five to seven part sequence builds the know, like trust factor you need for sales. You want to give them a reason to stay on your [00:08:00] list, and you want to give them connection and value. So here's a structure you can use, let's say email one. You want to send them a warm welcome with their incentive.

So you're delivering the freebie or the discount or the low ticket product. You're sharing who you are and what they can expect. So example. Hi, I am Kaylie. I am an artist. I like to bring more beauty to people's homes and lives. Here's your free Printable set. Enjoy.

Obviously not quite like that, but you get the idea. You also want to give them a question to get them to reply back to you. This is kind of more important these days. It helps with email sending over time and the deliverability rates, I, that's a big word. Most people might not know what that means, but it shows the email platforms, so like Google and things.

Your emails are being opened and are [00:09:00] wanted, so they will keep sending to the inbox and less likely go to spam over time. If you have more people replying to your first emails, it shows that you are relevant and not sending a load of spam. So it helps with your deliverability of your emails.

Then in the email too, you would want to do your story and your values. So you're sharing why you create what you create, or sell what you sell. Talk about your journey, your story. This could have an embedded video or an audio link telling your journey and why you create what you create. Video obviously connects more to your audience.

People will sit and watch a video 'cause it's quicker than reading through normally. You could put a little bit about your journey and things in the email, and then have the video as well, so people can choose whether they wanna read it or re watch the video.

And then you want to end with a [00:10:00] soft link to your shop or a low price guide on how to bring, more calm into your space, for example, you want to provide a bit more value. Within that second email as well. Even if you are linking to blog posts that are relevant and interesting,

then email three. You wanna provide even more free value or a quick win. So this can be tips behind the scenes videos, styling advice. So for example, maybe three easy ways to display art prints without drilling a single hole. Soft sell could be suggest a product that matches the tips in the email.

You could even provide, products. That you use or have an affiliate link for.

Supplies for putting up art prints, like, the no drill hooks and things. Maybe you've got a good deal or something with that, with somebody for them. You can put that in the email.

And then email. Four would be social [00:11:00] proof and a gentle invite. Share customer stories, reviews, or testimonials. Invite them to browse your shop with a link to your best sellers popular products or something on sale. Email five. You can transition into the sales.

Introduce a paid product. For example, you love the free, I don't know, Printable tags. Here's the full Autumn collection with 10 matching designs. Offer a limited time incentive, like 10% off.

Email six could be an upsell or a cross sell. Since you grabbed my brush pack, you might love this quick tutorial class. For example, for handmade sellers, if you adored this candle sampler, here's the gift box upgrade, or matching pillows email, seven connection plus a call to action.

Ask them to reply with their biggest creative challenge or their favorite piece, maybe they struggle with color coordination in their home or something. Ask them, you know, ask them questions [00:12:00] and then also build a two-way conversation with that. And then again, put the call to action to. Buy the products that you are cross-selling.

Then step three, you want to segment and personalize. One mistake I see is sending the same sequence to everyone and not personalizing it for certain products or freebies so instead, you could repurpose the first. Three to four nurture emails. 

the welcome is pretty much the same kind of template that you use. The second email is about you and everything, so that pretty much stays the same. So you can send them the same to everybody, obviously dependent. Sometimes it might change, and then the next three to four emails of that sequence could be more specific.

So let's say. You have different product ranges. Let's say you have seascapes and you have mountain ranges. Well, you might want to tag someone [00:13:00] who's likes the sea, someone who likes the mountains and change them up. Or maybe you do portraits and landscapes. So it's gonna be somebody different that might want different products.

So you'd send them a different sequence, let's say. You have,

Portraits,

and a service where you can do personalized commissions, you'd want to send those people who are interested in portraits, different emails. Whereas if somebody, let's say, buys a seascape. Or is it interest in the sea? Let's say you did like a freebie and leads to the seascapes products. Let's say they bought an art print of the sea with a boat on it or something. In the nurturing emails for the welcome sequence, you can then. Send them cross sells products. Maybe you [00:14:00] have, sea themed designs on cushions or on a blanket, or maybe you have seascapes smelling candles that you sell as well.

Then you can put them in the emails 'cause you are trying to upsell relevant products to maybe a theme or topic or something that compliments it. If the Home Decor, you can add other things to it. You wanna tag product specific ones depending on what they bought or opted into.

So bought a brush pack. In the sequence, it includes procreate tips, or let's say the relevant software tips, invites your mini course or bought a candle Sampler sequence includes care tips and invite to a full gift set. Maybe they bought an art print, so the sequence includes styling tips plus an invite to seasonal collections.

This way, every subscriber feels like you get them. Step [00:15:00] four automations that save sales. One of the most powerful automations you can set up is an abandoned cart email. Stats show that nearly 70% of carts are abandoned. I think we've all done that. I'm definitely one for doing it. I will put something in my Amazon cart and I will, yeah, I'll get distracted and I'll put it down and then I'm getting an email saying I've abandoned it.

With an automated reminder, you can recover a chunk of those sales to email. One could be, Hey, lovely, you left this behind. With a product photo, then an email, two, maybe the day after, still thinking it over. Here's 10% off your order today, or Here's some free shipping 

post purchase emails you can do. Thank you so much. Here's behind the scenes of how I made your piece. Here are three tips to display your new print or invite them to a complimentary product.

These little sequences build [00:16:00] trust and repeat buyers, and then also soft sell versus hard sell. A good mix in your emails is soft sell most of the time, and hard sell when you need to. Share your stories, tips and gentle invites, where you are just linking in the text to certain products that it relates to.

Tie the content of your email to a product or an affiliate link, even if it's just supplies you use that you have an affiliate link for. For example a soft sell, could be last weekend I watched my little one help me pack up card sets for the market and it reminded me how much joy these little creations bring.

If you'd like one for your own celebrations, you can grab the set here. That's a soft sell because you're not going in and saying, oh, this is limited time only, blah, blah, blah. So a hard sell, would be during launches seasonal offers or a flash sale. For example, if a hard sell, [00:17:00] this is like the last weekend to grab my funny family Christmas bundle.

The shop closes Monday at midnight. Hurry up and grab it now both have a place, but the key is balance. You need both. One builds a relationship trust and connection, and slower, consistent sales over time. The other drives higher sales at specific times throughout the year,

Email marketing made a bit more simple. I know there's still quite a lot there, but start your list. Send with a rhythm of a teach and tell invite. Set up welcome sequence that connects. Add an abandoned cart emails to save sales and balance soft selling with the occasional hard sell.

If you want help, whether you are a complete email marketing newbie or have your own email list and want a refresher, I've got two free resources for you. One is my email Marketing for Creatives Workshop. [00:18:00] It's free and on YouTube, and it walks you through setting up your list and writing great emails

Breaks a lot of the email marketing jargon down for you. The link will be in the description on the show notes, two is my free five day list building starter challenge. So it's perfect if you are starting from scratch, it even includes a free welcome sequence template. You can plug in straight away.

If you'd like ready made support, you can also check out my email template bundle for creatives. With sequences, story emails, abandoned cart templates designed for artists and makers like you. 

You can grab either of these in the link in the show notes.

So lovely. Don't overcomplicate this. Start your list. Start small and create that welcome sequence. Offer something of value, and watch how it changes your business. Until next time, keep creating, keep juggling, and most importantly, keep finding [00:19:00] joy in the process.