Building a List of Print Collectors

By Laura Stamps
Art Marketing Consultant

Publishing photographic or giclee prints of your work and selling them locally to wholesale and retail buyers is the first step in creating a successful print business.  Next, expand your business by building a national list of collectors.  Achieving this goal takes persistence, but it is not as difficult as you might think.

First, identify your market.  When you know the characteristics of your customer, you can locate more of these people.  Recently, an artist told me that she believes she will find more customers when she figures out who she is, and what her art is about. Not so.  This is a common marketing mistake.  Actually, you and your customer are very different.  Think about it.  You may be a “starving artist”.  Don’t waste time trying to sell your prints to another group of people with no money.  Your customer has a different occupation and income level, reads different magazines, drives a different car, and enjoys different hobbies than you do.  To find more collectors, concentrate on the people who are buying your prints, and look for common characteristics and interests among these people.

Here’s an example.  Several years ago, I created a line of prints, note cards and postcards for women. I sold these products through a direct mail catalog.  The first year, I rented women’s lists, and ran ads in different magazines.  Months later, I compiled the information I had gathered about my buyers, and found they all possessed a few of the same characteristics.  I discovered the women most likely to buy my note cards and prints had two things in common:  they liked cats, and they were plus-sized women.  Armed with this new data, I rented lists of women who bought clothes from plus-size catalogs, and I ran ads in cat magazines.  Bingo!  My sales doubled and tripled.

After you identify your customer, rent lists of the magazines, newsletters and catalogs read by your customer.  Next, design a color postcard featuring an image of your most popular print on the front.  On the back of the postcard, offer a free catalog.  Mail the postcards to the people on these lists.  Soon you will receive as many as ten requests every day.  Send these people a catalog.

If you don’t have a catalog, create an inexpensive one.  My catalog simply consisted of color ad sheets promoting my prints and note cards, an order form I designed on my computer and photocopied, a sample note card, a business card, and a rubber-stamped return envelope.  I folded my ad sheets and tucked everything in a 6x9 white catalog envelope, which I rubber-stamped with my return address.  Simple, but effective.  That catalog brought in thousands of dollars in orders every year.

Add all catalog requests to your in-house collector list.  Soon your collector list will contain several thousand prospects and customers from across the country.  Continue selling to these people by mailing a postcard, featuring a new print, to your collector list three times a year, just like I mentioned in my last article.  This is what national print artists do, and this is how they become so successful.  So can you!

If you’d like more information on ways to market your prints and note cards, I offer a free catalog of art marketing books, reports and lists.  To receive one, call or write Laura Stamps, Art Marketing Consultant, P.O. Box 212534, Columbia, SC 29221-2534 or call 803/749-8579.