Welcome to the Art Storefronts success coaching video series. In this video, we’re going to focus on audience building, and specifically, building a romantic website.

Now, the concept of romantic marketing is something we coined over here at Art Storefronts. It’s based on the fact that the majority of people that will buy your art or are buying your art are doing so because they have some sort of emotional connection to your subject matter.

Now, if you need some more background or want to see some more data on being a romantic art seller, be sure to check out our blog post, Caveman or Romantic: What Kind of Art Seller Are You? Then, follow that with The Anatomy of an Effective Artist Romance Email. Now, romance emails are an extremely powerful marketing tool, as we’re going to show you here today.

Now, there’s a lot that goes into romance emails that you should really familiarize yourself with, but the basic concept is to take an image, and email it out to your audience, and tell a story about it. Tell the reason behind why you made it or what it means to you, because when you have an audience of people who are connected with your subject matter, this is exactly what they want. This is what brightens their day. This is what connects them to you.

This is what ultimately gets them to make purchases down the road. Unlike random emails that people may get from art.com or Saatchi Art or any of the leading art sellers that are out there, when a consumer has a connection with you and you’re able to have that relationship with them, they are highly more likely to buy from you as opposed to one of these other cold websites.

This is a huge advantage that you have over these companies, because you have the ability to focus on your subject matter, to focus on your audience, and to really build a deep connection with them. In this video, we’re working with nature photographer Dan Greenberg. Here’s an example of a romance email that he put together.

You’ll notice he has Photo of the Week: Old Red Barn & Flowers, and here’s the image. Then, he has a whole explanation about it that’s actually really touching. To save time, I won’t read all of it here, but this just gives you an idea of what he wrote.

Now, just to show you how powerful these emails can be with your audience, let’s take a look here at some responses that Dan received from this email. This person here, Lill Hilton, emailed him back and said, “I love old barns seen while traveling the countryside.

“I appreciate the time you take to tell the story “surrounding your photography. “Hope you will have a great week enjoying your surroundings. “Thank you for sharing.” Then, here’s another one right here. “Dan, your photos are always so moving for me. “Thanks for giving me a different perspective. “I usually just buy your cards at the shows, “basically because I love the photos, “but more so that I can share them with others. “Thanks again.”

As you can see, a couple of things happen here. First, there’s reinforcement that people love this type of content, particularly your target audience. They’re going to really love this, especially when you’re doing it once a week. It’s gonna brighten their week.

Secondly, you can see how people actually want to share these things with others. Anybody else that they know that has an emotional connection with the same subject matter, which is always the case. As we say, if you’re a Beatles fan, you typically know people who are Beatles fans, as well. In this case, people love to share with others what you’re sending them if they know someone. The same goes for a Facebook post.

This is why we tell people to do the same thing. When you send this email out, you should also post it on Facebook, because that just actually gives people a much easier way to share with people in their audience.

When they do this, you’re actually going to increase the size of your audience by doing this romantic approach. Because as your audience shares with new audience members, your audience grows.

Then, the next time you send out a romantic email, your audience will share again, and it will compound from there. So, Dan’s doing a great job at romantic emailing right now, and now we want to go back to his website and look at how he’s romancing on his website. We’re gonna look at a different image here that he has called Orange Tulips. Let’s read what somebody would see if they came to this page randomly through search optimization or any other method. Maybe they were even referred to this website. Orange tulips grow happily against a stone wall in Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Photo was taken in Durham, North Carolina.

So, the first thought I have is is this really all you’re giving me? To be honest, I’m a little let down. No different than your romance email, your website needs to tell a story, as well. It needs to tell stories with all of its images. It needs to be an artistic journey, an experience. If I’m to walk through an art museum, for example, I get to see every piece, and I get to read all about the piece and the meaning behind it, et cetera. I leave really fulfilled, because the museum has curated an experience. This is what so many artists miss. Also, frankly, what so many art galleries miss. We consumers want to experience art.

We’re not just looking for something visually. We’re not just looking for our eyes to be satisfied. We want our hearts to be satisfied. It’s our hearts that usually decide whether or not we’re going to actually pull out our wallet and buy a piece. Your website is your museum. It’s your chance to provide a heartfelt experience.

So, this is exactly what you need to do. Take these great explanations that you’re doing as a romantic emailer and incorporate all of that into your website so that your website becomes a romantic experience in and of itself. So that if somebody stumbles across your website and they’re not on your email list, they’re able to go through and read beautiful things about your images and what’s behind them.

Basically, come into your museum and have that museum-like experience right on your website. People will stay on your website longer and good things will happen from this. Now, if you also do fairs and shows, you should try to do the same thing. Include romantic descriptions of each piece at your booth and watch what happens. People will stay in your booth longer.

They will stand there reading, and they’ll go from piece to piece like a curated experience. They’ll experience more of your art, and each minute they stay in your booth, the deeper the connection you are cementing with that person. So my advice from here is to go through the rest of your website and update your descriptions. We have short descriptions, and then we also provide really long description fields that are hidden so they’re a little bit more tasteful for the visitor.

They just click a little link right there. I suggest using those to get much deeper into it, but you should at least have a couple more sentences here before the long description so that you’re able to tease the information that really gets someone to want to read more and really dive into the background of that image.

They’re only really gonna do that for the ones they really care about, but you want that information to be there and to be accessible to them. Once you do this and you take the time to update all of those descriptions, your website will become that experience that matches what you’re also doing on email. Make sure your home page provides that type of experience, as well, any text you have on there. Just really embody that museum concept and providing an artistic journey to your visitors.

At the end of the day, you’ll end up having a romantic website experience. That is the purpose of this whole video. We hope you enjoyed it, and we will see you next time.