The 21st century is arguably the best time ever to be an artist. Thanks to how advanced the internet has become, building an audience across the world has never been easier. And although people have said that email marketing is dying, that isn’t true.

Creating an online newsletter can help you build a closer connection with your audience. Beyond that, you can also gain more awareness and generate extra traffic to the places where you have an online presence.

This article will identify the reasons why you should start an online newsletter as an artist.

1. Talk Directly to People That Want to Hear From You

Reaching your target audience is one of the reasons social media is actually good for you—if you’re wise about your strategy. However, not everybody who sees your posts wants to hear from you. As such, you may need to reach more people before you build a viable audience.

Online newsletters are a little different. Sure, you still have to compete with a lot of noise in that user’s inbox. But the difference is that each recipient has signed up to hear from you.

Because you’re speaking directly to people that want to receive your content, you’ll have a much easier time building a closer relationship with them. Over time, you can ensure that more people show a stronger sense of brand loyalty.

2. Share Important Updates

As your artistic career develops, you’ll participate in more exciting projects. And when you do, sharing this information with your audience will become more and more important. When you create an online newsletter, you can communicate these changes in a simple manner.

You can share all kinds of important updates via your newsletter. For example, you can build excitement for a new course you’re working on. And if you collaborate with clients, you can let them know when you’ve got spots available for work.

When sharing important updates, you can choose how frequently you want to do so. You might find it better to do so once per month or quarter rather than weekly.

3. You’re Not at the Mercy of Social Media Changes

While social media can help you grow an audience that appreciates your art, you’re also at the mercy of each platform. As we’ve seen multiple times throughout the 2010s and 2020s, social media networks change rapidly.

If you rely solely on social media, you must trust that algorithmic changes won’t lower your visibility. Similarly, you will also have to deal with the fact that many users no longer see their feeds in chronological order. And even if you don’t want to produce short-form videos, you might need to play the game for visibility.

When creating an online newsletter, you will reach the user’s inbox chronologically. You’ve got a better chance of the user seeing your message—unless you end up in their spam folder. Here's how to prevent your emails from going to spam.

4. You Have More Control Over How Everything Looks

As an artist, you probably want your brand to reflect your personality. And as such, you’ll want to have more control over how your communication platforms look and feel.

While you can customize your social media networks, you will still have a bit of restriction based on that platform’s own branding. And unless you build a website from scratch, the same is somewhat true in that respect.

When you create an online newsletter as an artist, you have more control over how your correspondences look. You can customize colors and designs and such to ensure that it fits your branding as much as possible.

5. Drive Extra Traffic

It doesn’t matter if you’re a photographer trying to grow your online presence or if you’re in another creative field, you’ll want to try and gain as much exposure from the right people when sharing your art on the internet. Therefore, thinking about different traffic sources is a good idea.

Newsletters are an excellent way to drive traffic to your website, and if you are also on social media, you can direct people there. You can also share links to your podcast episodes and YouTube videos.

If you’re releasing an online course or have decided to create a cohort, you can also share those links. Moreover, you can give them exclusive access as an incentive to get others to sign up for your newsletter.

6. Keep the Conversation Going

Having meaningful conversations with your audience on social media is part of building a connection with them. When you get bigger, it can become easy to feel disconnected from those that follow you—and the onus is on you to change that.

While you can start conversations on social media, newsletters provide a direct avenue for people to get in touch with you. You can also respond directly to their email, which often feels more personal than responding to a tweet or comment.

7. The Potential to Earn Additional Income

Diversifying your income streams is a good idea to succeed as an artist or any type of online creator. Over time, the idea is to have smaller sums of money coming from various sources—rather than one or two larger paychecks.

You might not look at newsletters as a monetization opportunity. However, that is very much a possibility later down the line.

As your subscriber count grows, you can use newsletters as an opportunity to sell space to advertisers. Remember when Business Insider purchased Morning Brew for a significant amount in 2020? Getting a big investor later on is a real possibility.

Of course, you should focus mainly on providing value to your audience. If you earn extra cash from your newsletter, that’s a bonus.

8. Learn a New Style of Writing

Writing is one of the most useful skills you can have. Knowing how to write can help you sell yourself easier, and it’s also a powerful way to tell a story.

Writing a newsletter requires a different style than if you were to produce a blog post. As you write more newsletters, your copywriting skills will improve. And you will likely see a positive spillover in other areas of your life, such as becoming a better speaker. These skills are highly valuable to an artist trying to market themselves.

Reap the Benefits of Starting an Email Newsletter

Newsletters might seem like an archaic form of communication, but they remain one of the best ways to connect with your audience online. Email newsletters let you start a conversation with your audience and speak directly to people who have permitted you to talk to them.

When you start an online newsletter, you can also sell products directly to users that will have more of an interest in buying them. Similarly, you can keep in touch with potential clients—plus those you’ve previously worked with.