An art cafe is a really interesting business, and it offers a unique experience to your customers. It is also the perfect passion project for you to showcase your vision and personality. While it may seem like a venture you go for after leaving the corporate world, you need to treat it like any other business. This includes legalities, logistics, menu planning, and much more. You also need to work out an aesthetic for your art cafe.
While all of this is going on, you cannot ignore the importance of marketing. So, you should use all the mediums available to you to get the word out. Email marketing lets you directly get into people’s inboxes and talk to them on a personal level. Therefore, you should steer your efforts towards it. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Use attractive visuals
The first thing you need to focus on is the visuals of your email marketing campaigns. Use the small business email templates on PosterMyWall to design your emails. Make sure you choose the right template for your vibe, and customize the text, colors, and logos accordingly.
You can also save these designs in a folder to keep them in one place. This will let you access them easily and simply change the text, according to the type of email you want to send.
Do artist spotlight emails
Showcase your art cafe by doing artist spotlight emails regularly. These should cover artists whose works you have up, or whose style you are highly inspired by. Talk about the artist’s history, inspirations, famous works, and more. If you’re spotlighting an artist who you’re in contact with, you can even include a few quotes from them.
These emails will establish your expertise as an art business, not just a cafe with a few paintings hanging around. This way, you’ll get a discerning audience who will interact with your art cafe in a number of different ways.
Share monthly newsletters
Monthly newsletters are the industry standard in email marketing. So, you should also consider sending them out. Make these fun by allocating special sections to various aspects. This can be works you have on display, seasonal menu items, or recent events held at your cafe.
Keep a signature template for these monthly newsletters and also add a personal note in the beginning to engage with your audience.
Highlight special works
Establish your authority as an art expert by picking special works to highlight in your emails every month or so. You can share different images of the work, with closeups and various angles. Then, write about the history of that piece, its provenance, and why you chose to highlight it.
Make sure the pieces you choose fit in with ongoing seasonal changes. For example, you can highlight dark works with supernatural themes around Halloween, while you can talk about floral works around spring. You can even delve into the technical details of how these pieces were made, and what the significance of their mediums is.
Talk about your vision
You need to connect with your audience on a personal level. So, you should tell your story. Write about the vision behind your art cafe, and why you wanted to open one up. Also talk about the aesthetics you picked, with proper reasoning.
Engage with your audience on an individual level to get your story across. You can even share a history of your work in the industry, and how your art cafe has progressed over time. Share this in an email campaign to get as many people interested as possible.
Showcase your menu
Of course, the food is also an important aspect of your art cafe. So, regularly share popular menu items in your email newsletters. Also, if you offer themed food and drinks, make sure you send out an email with each theme explained, complete with the art it was inspired from.
Also do this for seasonal menu changes, and send out these menu update emails as soon as you plan your upcoming menus. Make sure you add in good pictures of your menu items and of your dining area.
Offer email-exclusive deals
There are a number of deals and discounts you can offer in your email campaigns. Make sure these are exclusive to your emails, so that people are encouraged to subscribe. They can include discounts on menu items, or other similar deals.
If you run small exhibitions, you can also offer exclusive early access to email subscribers. This will encourage people to open your emails and interact with your content.
In conclusion, the email marketing tactics for your art cafe will not be too different from any other business. You just need to focus more on the visuals, aesthetics, and your story.
