Why You Need a Subscribe Form & How To Easily Make Yours Magically Appear in 10 Minutes
by Thea Fiore-Bloom, Ph.D.
Why is it so insanely hard to sell art off your own website?
Like the origin of Easter Island, the absolute truth is elusive.
But one huge contributing factor I’ve noticed is the gaping absence of a subscribe form.
A subscribe form (sometimes called an opt-in box) is just a square form on your website where people can sign up for your mailing list.
Do you have a subscribe form?
If not, don’t feel bad.
A freakishly large percentage of creatives don’t have a subscribe form on their website.
And despite it being great for your art biz almost no one thinks to put a subscribe form on their FaceBook page either.
But you will have a new, shiny one, in both places soon if you’d like.
And pronto.
Let’s find out how easy it is and how it will help you sell more art.
Installing a Subscribe Form Helps You Sell More Art, Period.
Creating a subscribe form will be easy.
And here’s why it’s vital:
Many people will come to your website — once.
Some will love what they see on their visit.
If you don’t have a subscribe form your potential buyer may be excited enough to bookmark your site, but chances are high they’ll be too distracted to ever actually return.
(Have you scrolled through to the bottom of your personal list of cool sites you bookmarked in the last year or so? Me neither.)
I bet you’ve heard the old marketing saw; the one that says studies show customers need to eyeball your work 7+ times before our tiny arms grow long enough to reach down to grab our Visa card.
No subscribe form, no 7+ times.
Don’t hurl your shoe at my head when I then tell you if you do install a subscribe form and you send out regular, spirited, communication with folks who like your art — you still probably won’t sell off your website.
(Cue up the Easter Island music.)
But you sure will up the chances of people buying from you when they see your work even a second or third time on your Facebook page, or an online gallery you have sent them links to, in your charming seasonal or monthly emails.
A Mailing List Shouldn’t Just Be About Sales Anyway
Don’t start a mailing list just for sales.
Launch yours to build community.
Do it to gather together people who are fascinated by the same kinds of things you are.
Begin it to be of service to folks you imagine you’d like to drink Campari with in your virtual art/writing garden.
See it as an act of techy self-love that will help you find your people.
(If you’re feeling lonely because you have a blog but your comment box is empty, you might love my podcast called How Do I Get More Comments on My Art Blog? 7 Secrets You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else.
Yes, At First Your List Will Be Small
Want to know a secret?
Many creatives don’t begin to keep a list because they’re afraid no one will sign up.
Yes, at first you will only have a handful of people, two of whom will be your best friend and your sister, or me if you let me know you have started your list.
(Here’s my article on 4 great benefits of a small list.)
But the thing is, your list will slowly grow.
So let’s get you started.
How To Set Up Your Subscribe Form the Easy Way
Here’s a quick guide based on your particular website platform be it WordPress, Wix or Weebly.
1. How To Install a Sign Up Form on WordPress
This video will help most WordPress users get the drift of how to set up the widget to create a subscribe form. Setting up this widget will only take 15 minutes.
Congratulate yourself after you do it.
Now do one more thing. Set up an account with a free email service provider like MailChimp.
You want to do this so you can nab that necessary bit of custom code you’ll need to paste into that WordPress subscribe form widget you just set up.
Learn how to wed your MailChimp account to your WordPress widget here.
Congratulate yourself profusely after this step. Get yourself some tulips or something.
Because you just did something huge for your art business.
Oh God, Do I Have to Add MailChimp?
Unlike Gmail, MailChimp will gift your readers with an easy way to update their preferences or to unsubscribe altogether. You want to give people that option right?
It’s the polite thing to do and it keeps you safe from GDPR compliance troubles.
Plus once you master MailChimp, you’ll well up with pride.
You could go with other email marketing software providers like Constant Contact or ConvertKit (but they start at around $29 to $49 dollars a month) while MailChimp is free to begin.
And as of this writing, Mailchimp stays free until you have over 1,999 people on your list.
Want extra credit?
Put an afternoon’s effort into learning how to make the most out of MailChimp and you’ll be giving your art business strong roots to grow from.
2. How To Create Your Weebly Email Sign Up Form
Weebly’s mailing list set up could be the easiest of the bunch.
We are talking 5 minutes.
(I am a WordPress woman, but the intuitive setup for the Weebly box gave me momentary Weebly-envy.)
To learn how to add a MailChimp sign up form to your Weebly site, go here.
3. How To Pop In Your Wix Subscribe Form
Check out this page and video to learn how to place a “Get Subscribers” form on your Wix site and add a snazzy “pop up” sign up form to boot. I bet you can do both in about 30 minutes.
If you want to integrate MailChimp into your Wix sign up setup check out this video for extra help.
But if you do nothing else here today, put a darn sign up box on your Facebook page. Oh and while you’re helping yourself attract your ideal audience, discover how to add a gorgeous email signature to the bottom of your email for free in this Charmed Studio post.
Okay now on to taking the step that could make your mailing list soar where others sink: adding a signup box on your social media.
How To Put A Subscribe Form On Your Twitter or Facebook Page
Facebook helps many artists but it’s important to start a list that yours for keeps.
Same goes for Twitter.
You don’t need me to tell you that Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey may have forgotten to put your well-being on the top of their to-do lists today.
The only simple way I found is to hook yourself up via MailChimp.
For Facebook watch this straightforward instructional video here.
To share your Mailchimp subscribe form on Twitter read this.
If you haven’t set up a MailChimp account go here first for your account set-up tutorial then head to the Facebook Signup Form instructions.
Done.
You are now a captain of industry!
Get yourself two bunches of tulips, one for your kitchen and one for your desk.
My P.S. (For the Tech-Challenged Among Us)
If you are not interested or able to install a subscribe form yourself — I still respect you.
You can easily and cheaply hire a smart, techy type on sites like Fiverr or Upwork to put one in for you pronto.
Got your subscribe form up but it’s not pulling in many folks?
Check out this post on Turn Your Art Website Into an Attraction Magnet (Without Social Media).
You’ll discover how being yourself and changing the possibly current boring wording in your current subscribe form can change everything.
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What do you think?
Did you ever put a subscribe form up on your website?
How did it go?
Lemme know in the COMMENTS below.
Do you need a little help getting more subscribers?
Check out my post 3 Questions That Can Transform Your Newsletter (and Your Art Biz).
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Check out these other business-related Charmed Studio posts:
Zoom Calls For Introverts: The Artist’s Guide to Looking, Sounding, and Feeling Good on Zoom
How To Sell Your Art in Museum Stores
How to Submit Your Art to a Museum Store: Insider Tips from a Top Museum Store Manager
Ultimate Guide to Press Releases for Artists
3 Podcasts That Will Elevate Your Art Business
How To Use Homemade Videos to Market Your Art in 2020
Hi Thea, here’s an interesting question. would love to hear your thoughts. So my website platform does allow a pop-up email signup window. It pops up as soon as a guest comes to the website. I think many visitors, just like I would are annoyed by this, close it and move on. So I turned off this pop-up (as all pop-ups are annoying :). And then I have “Subscribe” menu item, but have seen very few people adding themselves to the mailing list. What are your thoughts on this? should i re-enable the pop-up, should I make my “subscribe” page more interesting?
Pop ups are annoying. And if you are into SEO, know Google is now penalizing sites that use them. Details here. https://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/mobile-seo/google-start-penalizing-sites-using-pop-ups-smartinsights-alert/.
Unfortuneately popups do work to some degree.
The following is just my opinion:
I would say to anyone who wants more subscribers — First priority should be to focus more on improving the value of the content you provide.
Content over Marketing is one of my mottos.
The more value you provide to your readers, the more inspiration you give them— the less you have to focus on marketing. Know your audience. Artists smell a sales funnel a mile away. So it seems better to me to focus on the soul of the work.
I love holistic SEO. So Soul with a side of holistic SEO couldn’t hurt. 🙂 Good luck Max.
This is a great post thank you! I didn’t realise I could embed Mailchimp directly into Weebly. Brilliant! 🙂
Karen I am so excited it helped you. I am WordPress and am always curious about how the other platforms are for artists. Can I pick your brain a minute? Can I ask what you love about Weebly so far? And what the drawbacks are for you so far?
I have found Weebly to be very intuitive to use. Having never built a website before I found it quite straightforward. But from what I can gather I think WordPress probably has more flexibility for a lot more ‘bells and whistles’ than Weebly. But for what I wanted and the time I had available, I found Weebly great! And the information they provide is generally easy to follow.
Thanks for that info. Yes, WordPress is so customizable, but the learning curve to get the place where you know what the heck you are doing is BIG. I still have to call in hired guns to help me change the big things around. And it seems with Weebly and Squarespace you can those changes yourself. That is another valuable form of freedom.
Wonderful as usual and this time I even used the info – yay me! LOL Seriously, I finally married my Mailchimp account to my FB account and put up a sign up form. Maybe now I can get back to growing my list. Thank you.
This is truly exciting, you are most welcome and more importantly, CONGRATULATIONS! Proud of you Carlynne. I am so pleased and will sleep easier knowing that the bazillion people who visit your Facebook page each year will have an opportunity to keep in touch with permanently.
You are so extremely generous with your information. This should be of great help to any artist. I passed it along to an artist friend of mine who’s living in the dinosaur age. You are generous and a wonderful resource!
Ahhh sucks Denise, thanks. I was researching it for myself for Etsy- where btw it is nearly impossible to put a sign up form on, Etsy doesn’t want their visitors going off site I think away from the mother ship , Bad Etsy, Bad. 🙂 But I found out it’s so easy elsewhere. Thanks for passing this on to your friend!
So much helpful advice as always :). I also have so many bookmarks I don’t scroll through but emails are checked every day. I can’t wait to launch my own website and apply the information I have now. Thank you for the inspirational words and helpful links :).
Thanks so much Scharle. You have so many people that love you and your work all over social media. Having a central hearth or home in the form of a website I bet will feel great for you, and unlike me, you will eventually have a vast mailing list because of your warmth, generosity and commitment to social media.
But until you have your own website, pop that box onto your Facebook. I think you are on Twitter too right? Here is how to put a signup form there as well, EASY! https://mailchimp.com/help/share-your-signup-form/#Share_on_Twitter
xo Thea
Thank you! That gave me the extra boot up the bum I needed to at least get through the basics
Lol. Perfectly put. This kind of tech stuff like sign up boxes or comment form tweaks, are not my favorite thing to do either. But it’s important because those kinds of add ons let us know someone is out there- and we are not just this one,lone, loon whistling into the dark, someone is listening to our creative song 🙂
How is going with your scholarly work?
I’ve always meant to do it, but it always seemed so daunting. But of all the blog posts I’ve read on the subject, yours is the one that really made sense. And you’re right, there’s not a lot of repeat visitors, so it helps to reach them in other ways. And the list will start as small. But it’ll get there. So thank you 🙂
Work is going well and the end is in sight (whether I like it or not!). But after many false starts, I think I finally found my true calling 🙂
I think you’ve found your true calling too! You are doing great. And it will be such a relief to be done. It is a weird free fall the first few months after but then the relief washes over you, but remember, not right away.
Thanks for the fabulous-o comment that my post is the first that was clear for you. I like to break down the needlessly complex because I need to understand this myself. It’s amazing how much psychology underlies my own hesitance to do some of these tech things. But after you do it, you can’t understand why you put it off initially. Be good to yourself.
Thank you, Thea. Once again you have inspired me to move. The button was easy to place on my FB page, and I have activated a new Mail Chimp account! Now, got to work on a newsletter and that blog post. 🙂
I’m so proud of you!!!!!! That is killer. You are making a path people will be happy to hop on to get to take them to see and purchase your gorgeous paintings online. Thanks so much for taking the time to tell me you did it and that it didn’t take a whole lot of time.
Yeay! This is a great help! I didn’t know you could do this for facebook, I’ll get on that one too.
Thanks for pushing me to do this – I know it’s important.
Unlike me, you are a mercurial, techno wonder, I bet it will only take you a minute. Let me know if you to want to read a post on how to design a good opt-in to offer in that subscriber box to attract your kind of people, and I will write one up in the Spring.
And thanks so much Kikoe for commenting at the crack of day, it was great to read a message from you in the beginning of my morning.
I am not super geeky in everything, sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing at all but at the same time it does go quicker if you are used the that TYPE of thing. ;D You are great at this stuff!
I don’t even know what an “opt in” is…? Is it something you give away for subscribing?
This is all great and dandy but I have to write about something really badly. I’ve been super lazy and uninspired these last few days unfortunately – even with painting. But I expected it kind of. SOON. I promise!
Yes an opt-in (aka as a lead magnet) is something you can give away to your subscribers to encourage them to subscribe to your blog. I’m not using one at the moment, I have a nice give away but you only see it when you get my welcome message. Not logical. But you can be different!
Here is a podcast on it: https://problogger.com/podcast/create-an-opt-in-to-increase-your-email-subscriber-numbers/
Some artists use a screensaver featuring their work as an opt in. You could make a video of how to do a paint over for example….or how to make your first piece of digital art, something like that might be popular.