Email Marketing For Your Museum
Let’s talk about how to keep in touch with your visitors after they have visited your museum. How do you create a relationship with them so that they will want to visit again and bring a friend?
One of the most effective and economical ways is through email marketing. By the time they leave your museum, you’ve had several opportunities (before and after their visit) to collect their email address and invite them to your email list. Once you have their email address, you can send them emails on a consistent basis so that you stay “top of mind” and also so they can get to “know, like and trust” your brand.
Not sure what to write?
Try to think about how you come to your email inbox each day. I suspect that you are in one of two camps: an email inbox that runneth over or one that is nicely curated and unwanted email doesn't even stand a chance of getting in there. Now, think about the emails that you always read. Litmus reported that the average amount of time that people spend reading an email has been declining over the past five years. In 2018, Litmus found that people spent about 13 seconds reading an individual email. Last year it was just 9 seconds. Museums typically send long email newsletters and I’m afraid no one is reading them. While they may have worked in the past, current data in email marketing shows that they aren’t working anymore. Instead, let’s give the people on your email list a quick, easy and fun read.
It is also important to give the people on your email list value that you don’t give to your other audiences. They have welcomed you into their inboxes and you can’t take that for granted. For example, you can give them a behind-the-scenes look at a new exhibit, or an exclusive discount code for gift shop items, or maybe first dibs at tickets to upcoming exhibits or events.
If you don't have an email list yet, or if yours is collecting dust, here's a shout out for my favorite email marketing tool, Flodesk. I’ve tried quite a few email marketing platforms and it’s my favorite because it is easy to use, super pretty and I like that their plans don’t increase the cost as your membership grows. I've introduced several clients to it and they have also loved it. It's base package gives you unlimited everything…emails, subscribers, forms, landing pages, workflows and segments. Flodesk has kindly given me my own discount code to give to my email list.
