Are you collecting the contact information of the people who buy your one of a kind works of art? If no, why not?

Collecting a customers contact information is simple and makes it so much easier to make sales increasing profits greatly.

Here's how:

1. Use duplicate receipts and ask them if they would like to be added to your mailing list as you complete their purchase.

   Write all the information you need on the receipt like their email and mailing address. Record on the receipt if they did or didn't want to be added to your list.

   Keep one copy of the receipt for yourself give them the other copy-make sure it contains the information they need to contact you. Use a label or stamp to include your phone number,  and links to your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter on their copy of the receipt.

2. Have a guest book in your booth that gives them an idea of what they are signing up for and an incentive to sign up. For instance a small sign on the guest book says, "Sign up for our mailing list to receive important information regarding use and care of our products, specials, discounts, and sales, and a 10% discount for first time purchases."

   Have your first email include the coupon for the 10% discount.

3. Sign up all customers who have bought from you, be sure and include a way for them to opt out.

Have a purpose for the emails you send. Include a call to action.

Send mailing lists information that is useful, relevant, and important to them to keep them engaged.

Follow the Can-Am Spam Act by including your company name, address, phone, website, and email address in each one. This gives recipients lots of ways to opt out.

Also read Why Add Art and Craft Buyers to Mailing Lists and How to Add Art and Craft Buyers to Mailing Lists and How to Email Your Craft Show Booth Customers

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Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to  http://www.extravaganzacrafts.net to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

Are you collecting the contact information of the people who enter your Art Festival booth and buy your one of a kind works of art? If no, why not?

Collecting a customers contact information is simple and makes it so much easier to make sales increasing profits greatly. Why?

Well let's start with the fact that the person who just bought from you has told you that they like and want your product, trust your service, and are willing to spend their hard earned money with you.

Also read How to Add Art and Craft Buyers to Mailing Lists and Simple Inexpensive Ways to Collect Your Customers Contact Information.

I started The Extravaganza Craft News without this knowledge and I spent most of my time chasing new customers. I struggled because I really didn't know who was interested in buying my products. I felt like a dog chasing my tail-going around and around in circles but never getting any results.

As I learned about marketing I found that you will spend more time and money always chasing new customers than you would if you just sold and resold to those who had already bought from you.

Now I'm focusing my time and attention on ways to get people to tell me they need my products and services and then sign them up for email marketing.

I send slightly different emails (designed to keep my current customers coming back) to people who have bought from me and the results have been much better profits and less work.

Determining which handcrafted items will sell at craft shows is a very hard process. Each and every buyer at a craft show will have their own individual experiences, styles, tastes, and needs.  Many other factors may also play a role in sales such as local economy, demographics of residents, what other events are happening in the area, etc…

So how can you know if your art or craft will be a profitable business for you?

First you have to determine if there is a market for the craft you’re making. Be sure there is a large enough market for your specific product not for a broader category that includes your product. For example…

While there is a large market for handcrafted jewelry each buyer of one of a kind (OOAK) jewelry has their own individual needs.

Not every jewelry buyer will buy EVERY kind of jewelry.

Jewelry buyers have styles as varied as Western, Oriental, Vintage, Classic, Contemporary, Magnetic, and many more.

You will only waste your time and money if you try to sell Vintage jewelry to every jewelry buyer. Unless you’re extremely talented and have unlimited time and resources you probably won’t be able to create  OOAK jewelry to fit every style.

If you’re making vintage jewelry you need to determine how many jewelry buyers are buying vintage creations and then you need to determine where they go to get it. Remember that if they go to flea markets looking for vintage jewelry they will expect the price to reflect the “flea market idealism” which might make the product unprofitable. Yet if vintage jewelry buyers go to up scale, high end boutiques in a classy area, you might be able to make the same product very profitably.

So how do you guarantee that the craft you sell will be profitable.

• Do your research.
• Choose a niche market.  Choose a specific group of people to serve and meet a specific need they have.
  • For instance: Meet the needs of women who buy vintage jewelry, create and sell vintage jewelry. Don’t just create jewelry in general and try to sell it to vintage jewelry buyers or create vintage jewelry and try to sell it to everyone.
• Verify that the niche market you choose has a large number of buyers and a small number of competitors providing that service.
• Sell your product to the right people, in the right place, at the right time, and at the right price. Read How to Price My Art or Craft Show Product
• Offer a complimentary upsell to every purchasing customer at a small discount.
• Collect your customers contact information (with their permission of course) and continue to contact them regularly with relevant product information, discounts, services, your show schedule, etc. Also read How to Add Art and Craft Buyers to Your Mailing List

Don’t abuse this or you will do more damage to your business than good.

What is a Jewelry Shopping Service?

copyright by Rena Klingenberg

I first stumbled onto the “jewelry shopping service” approach to marketing my handcrafted jewelry a few years ago.

I couldn’t believe I’d never heard anyone talk about this before – because it’s a wide-open field with TONS of opportunities to sell your jewelry. It’s the main way I sell my jewelry now. Personal shopping services are a growing trend in all kinds of market niches.

Typically a personal shopper helps clients determine what they should buy, locates the best deal on an intended purchase, or finds the perfect gifts for customers to give. Personal shoppers tend to specialize in a particular area of expertise, where they know a certain market and its suppliers inside and out.

Above all, personal shopping is a service business, and as people get busier and shopping options get more overwhelming, there’s an increasing demand for specialized personal shopping service businesses of various types.

What if you operated your handcrafted jewelry business like a personal shopping service?

There are absolutely immense opportunities for jewelry artists to sell their work this way, as you’ll see in “Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service”.

A jewelry shopping service could easily be your entire jewelry business, or just one income stream of it.

It’s a very flexible way to sell your jewelry, and I’ve found that it’s very easy to fit it in around all the other things going on in your life.

Why It’s Such a Profitable Way to Sell Your Jewelry

By operating as a jewelry shopping service, you’ll be selling directly to your clients at full retail prices, so you won’t be paying any booth fees, shop commissions, party hostess incentives, wholesale discounts, etc.

In fact, one of the best things about it is that you have very few sales-related expenses, because there’s no “middleman”. Nearly 100% of the proceeds go directly to your business.

And what’s more, many of your clients will be fairly big spenders. They’ll shop from you over and over again because they love your customized products, personal service, and the way you take their problems out of their hands – and they’re willing to pay quite well for it.

The book also has a chapter describing a clever strategy that will increase your profits even more; I give an example of this strategy from my own business, and explain why it’s so profitable.

Everything You Need to Know
to Start Your Own Jewelry Shopping Service

In this ebook I share my entire successful business model with you. It’s easy to do, and it really works. I’ve tested and refined my jewelry shopping service strategies, and I describe them in detail in this step-by-step guide.

I also share dozens of real-life examples of successful products, services, marketing methods, and stories from my own jewelry shopping service, to help you get started.

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel and go through the same learning curve I did to figure out what really works (and what doesn’t!). It’s all in the book.

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Unlock the secrets of a new way to sell your jewelry to customers who are VERY willing to buy from you, again and again, in Rena Klingenberg’s ebook “Secrets of a Handcrafted Jewelry Shopping Service” -
http://www.jewelry-books.com/shopping-service.html

Your customers won’t buy art from you if:

• They don’t know where to find you or your product.
• They aren’t prepared to buy now. For instance they weren’t expecting to see a product they wanted so they don’t have money right now.
• They don’t know what you are selling.
• You aren’t selling what they want.
• If your handcrafted product is hard to get, the wrong price or bad quality.
• You haven’t asked them if they would like to buy.

We were selling World’s Finest Chocolates as a fundraiser to earn our trip to Jamaica with ROC Wheels in March 2011.

The first day the kids sold chocolate bars, they sold very few. The next day more people knew they were selling them and several bought. The third day their sales increased again because people knew they could count on them having them and had their money together.

Problem: Not knowing it was available!

Solutions: Consistency, advertising, marketing your finished crafts to correct market, having a website or blog to show case your art work, email marketing.

One day my son took the chocolates to school. A child asked him if he had Mint Meltaways. He answered yes and was swarmed by kids who wanted the mints. They hadn’t bought before because they didn’t know he had them.

Problem: Not knowing what was available! Not offering enough variety.

Solutions: Better advertising and signage, having a website or blog, email marketing. Offering the right product to the right customer.

We arranged to sell the chocolates at a grocery store in town, set up a table and sat down to wait for our first customer. I noticed that although we were directly in front of the door many people walked right by or bought a product right next to us without even seeing we were there. When we asked if they could use chocolate for stocking stuffers many people checked out what we were selling.

Problem: Not knowing where to find you. Not knowing what you are selling.

Solutions: Consistency, better advertising and signage. Not being afraid to offer your product and ask for a purchase.

The favorite chocolate we are selling seems to be the caramel candy bar. Chocolate sales increase when we keep those in stock and decrease greatly when we run out. Some people will buy another variety, some won’t.

We noticed however that when we sold to a wider variety of people (at the store instead of the school) the different flavors all sold about the same.

Problem: Not selling what the customer wants.

Solutions: Find the right market for your product by selling to a different group of people. Change your product to meet the needs of the group you are currently selling to. Offer a wider variety of products or narrow your products to the ones your customers buy.

People at the store weren’t expecting to see us so they didn’t have a few dollars cash on hand. They usually went to buy groceries and came back with money to spend.

Problem: Customers aren’t prepared to buy now.
Solutions: Follow up through mail, email, a website or blog or even an occasional phone call. Remember just do it respectfully always giving the customer something they want for instance information they need, a discount, or even a special just for them.

One problem we didn’t face was resistance to price or quality. The problem is that a low price can give the idea that a product isn’t high quality, but if the price is too high customers won’t buy. The solution is to do your research and carefully set your price within a range the customer will pay. Decide if you want to have the lowest price, the highest price, or some where in the middle.

How can you make your booth stand out at jewelry shows?

1. Specialize in something!

Artisans can specialize in:

* gold or silver jewelry
* vintage pieces
* bridal jewelry
* jewelry from natural gemstone, precious or semi-precious stones
* Western, outdoor, rugged, or nature jewelry
* Silverware jewelry
* Pieces inspired by any race or nationality
* Beaded jewelry
* remake antique jewelry

Your pieces can be inspired by a place such as all your pieces having the colors of the Grand Canyon or your favorite mountain scene. They might be inspired by your favorite city, or even by an industrial building.

The key in specializing is to choose a large group of people with similar tastes in handcrafted jewelry and design jewelry specifically for them.

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Art and Craft Show Expert Shasta McLaughlin provides articles, hints and tips, checklists and more for artists and crafters that sell handcrafted products who want to save time looking for shows, packing for fairs, and get more sales at festivals. Now she is revealing how to collect your customers contact information, follow up with them and make more money while working less. Go to http://www.extravaganzacrafts.com to get her newsletter, The Extravaganza Craft News, that will help you avoid mistakes, save time and money when preparing your craft show booth.

I was reading a post by Carla of Cobweb Corner and it got me thinking how she got her prospects (people in her craft show booth) into the buying mood making them buying customers.

Read her post here:
Jewelry Shows – There’s Something about a Sale

The internet marketing gurus I’ve been studying suggest creating a loss leader (a product you lose money on in the beginning to get people buying). They often offer a free product to gain the trust of the prospect and charge shipping on the product because if the customer would pay for shipping they are a qualified buyer.

The thing I didn’t see in her post was after she had her craft show prospects in the buying mood, what she did then.

The thing I’m learning as I study marketing is always offer an upsell or a downsell when a customer is making a purchase.

When you have a customer making a purchase always offer them a complimentary product (meaning a product similar in style or nature to the one they are already purchasing) as an upsell. You can even offer a product that is twice the price of the original one they are buying. Keep offering additional upsells as long as they keep saying yes.

When they say no, offer them a down sell. A down sell can be another lower priced product, a discount on the whole set, or a payment plan.

Tell me what you offer as an upsell or downsell.

This is the twelfth year that Art Jewelry Forum (AJF) will be providing the Emerging Artist Award of $5,000 to a contemporary jewelry artist.

The purpose of the award is to acknowledge promise, innovation, and individuality in the work of an emerging jewelry artist, and to help advance the artist’s career. The competition is open to makers of wearable art jewelry who: • have completed their academic/professional training,
• have been out of school for one year or more,
• and whose submitted work must have been unsupervised;
  work from BFA or MFA shows may not be submitted.

Beginning with this year’s award, artists who have had a solo exhibit in a gallery or museum may also apply.

DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

For more information about the award, visit the AJF website, www.artjewelryforum.org/programs. Applications may be submitted beginning in May at www.callforentry.org.

The winner will be announced at SOFA New York (International Exposition of Sculpture Objects and Functional Art), April 2012, where the artist’s work will be exhibited at one of the AJF member galleries.

The artist’s work will also be featured in an AJF ad.