Getting Ready for Art Fairs - Part III

Sundown at Cramer's Canyon | © Beth Cole | 8 x 10 | Oil on Canvas

This is the third post in a series about getting ready for art fairs. Here are links to the first and second posts.

Following Up With Collectors

By Beth Cole

So you’ve done all the hard work of painting, hauling and setting up your work and guess what? Someone buys a painting! Boom! Congratulations! Now what?

Well of course you transact the sale, but don’t make the same mistake I did at my first couple of shows and forget to get their contact info. Dumb!

When you use a credit card reader like Square, there’s not a way really to capture the contact information, so you will want to have a separate signup sheet for folks to engage further with you. I would love to hear your ideas about this, but I usually invite them to join my newsletter list so I can do an email followup. But I always want to go a step further and at least send a thank you note. So I have a place for customers to give me their mailing address and phone number so I can follow up the old fashioned way – through the mail. I think people appreciate this and are happy to receive something other than junk in the mailbox. So after the show, I always send a hand written note and then keep touch once a month if they’ve joined my newsletter list.

I started writing my newsletter a few years ago, and I try to consistently send an issue the middle of every month. My newsletter list isn’t big by any means, but it has steadily grown little by little over the years, and I’m grateful I have this means to stay connected to people and vice versa. I use MailChimp for my newsletter, it’s free and I love it. There are always other options of course, check around and see what works best for you.

Other ways to stay connected a to invite collectors to follow you on the socials as well as inviting them to openings in their area. I sometimes send postcards with a personal note for this purpose.

One other thought about mindset. I took a workshop last summer from an artist who has a wonderful mindset about her customers – they are not just customers to her, they are collectors. I love that thinking. I have been trying to cultivate this mindset as well. I think it has a beautiful feel to it.

What else. Hmmm. I can’t think of anything but I’m sure I’m missing something. Feel free to share your thoughts, I would love to hear what works for you.

Thanks for reading.

--Beth
Soli Deo Gloria

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