Art Gallery Marketing Checklist for the Holidays

The holidays can get completely overwhelming.  Use this art gallery marketing checklist to develop your holiday marketing campaign.

Copy it.  Add to it.  Customize it to your needs.

Email Communications

Define your plan for email communication, timing, and messaging that is attention-grabbing, entertaining, and informative.  During the holiday shopping season, you will want to promote the gallery’s current and future exhibitions, but also your overall inventory.  Email communications during the holidays should stand-out from your regular newsletter.  During your planning, some decisions need to be made.

• Plan holiday email schedule – timing and messages
  • How many emails will be promotional vs. sharing the holiday spirit? Three or four emails a month is appropriate during the holiday season.
  • How can your gallery encourage engagement with your mailing list? What call to action will you use?
• Design the holiday email template
  • Will your template change to reflect the season?
• Personalization
  • If you use personalization code in your holiday emails, test it before you hit send.
  • Select clients to email directly for ultimate personal email marketing
• Plan your messaging
  • Optimize subject lines by emphasizing action verbs
  • How can your messaging express empathy for the challenging year your clients may have suffered? A soft-selling approach is more critical this year.
  • Explain how people can shop safely and socially distant
  • Support a cause
  • Help them feel good about buying from your gallery with messaging.
    • Shop local, shop minority-owned, shop independent
  • Set up emails to blast automatically when appropriate

Website

Since your gallery website is often the primary place buyers go to learn more, it makes sense to add holiday-specific elements for the season. Make changes to your gallery site that encourage buying art as a gift (even for oneself😊).  Emphasize what the gallery is offering and how you make giving the gift of art memorable and easy.

• Update the gallery event page for the remainder of the year so people can plan to attend your events. Include virtual events too.
• Create a specific holiday page for recommended gifts, services, and events offered throughout the season.
  • Drive to this page from your gallery ads, social posts, and emails to drive site traffic during the season. This strategy can be extremely useful in helping to increase web sales.
• Add holiday-specific keywords and meta tags, such as ‘unique gifts, handmade gifts, and one-of-a-kind holiday gifts, gifts for art lovers, gifts for couples, gift for wife,’ etc. These will help search engines pick up your site for online shoppers. Don’t forget to add your city to some as well for local SEO.
• Update your holiday hours if needed.
• Make return policy and payment plan information easy to find for site visitors
• Include holiday design elements that mirror your festive gallery decorations and email campaigns to give your site a festive look.
• Most importantly, update your inventory and include prices

Social Media

As social media is likely a big part of your gallery’s overall marketing strategy, I have a separate article that focuses on social media for the holidays.

Check it out here.  Art Gallery Social Media Marketing for the Holidays

Other

• Check that your Google My Business list is up-to-date and includes any special hours, deals, or events.
• Create holiday marketing with a messaging concept that grabs attention and stands out as fresh from your brand. Your concept could be around a core value, a charity, or a seasonal sentiment.
• Consider creating gallery gift cards, so a couple can make an appointment to shop after the holidays.
• Ensure all online art marketplace inventory and messaging are up-to-date and are featured in your other marketing messages to drive traffic.

Direct Mail

Promoting your gallery through a printed direct mail piece vs. email can really help your offer stand out in a crowded holiday marketing season. It doesn’t need to be fancy either.

• Select holiday cards
• Design promotional postcard or mailing
• Decide the call to action
  • If driving to a specific page on the website, ensure that the page is updated
  • The page could be unique to the mailing so that you can track hits and engagement with the mailing
• Print promotional postcard
• Segment your mailing list for hot leads
• Personalize with a note for hot leads or clients
• Mail late-November – early December
• Mail holiday cards mid-December

To the Point

Getting organized with a checklist can help make sure you don’t miss any opportunities when things start to get crazy as they always seem to do during the holidays.