Archive | craftmonkey RSS feed for this section

Need help with your newsletters?

22 Sep

My friend and colleague Amy Ellis was recently interviewed for a new podcast called Creative Little Beasts. The podcast is the latest project from Danielle Maveal (a.k.a @daniellexo), the former seller education lead for Etsy. Amy’s podcast episode is called “Email Marketing for Misfits“, and it’s a great way to learn more about email marketing for what Danielle calls “creative small business owners”.

As a follow-up to the podcast,  Amy is going to be reviewing one lucky person’s newsletter, which is super cool because she’s an expert at email marketing! If you’d like a chance to have your newsletter reviewed for free, drop a link to it on Creative Little Beasts’ Facebook page.

Amy and I are currently at the School House Craft conference in Seattle, where we are meeting crafters, handing out MailChimp stuff, talking about Craftmonkey and learning from lots of awesome, crafty presenters. Tomorrow Amy is presenting and leading a workshop on “Getting Crafty with Email Marketing”, which should totally rock. She’s very kindly made the slides available here, so if you’d like to check it out you can do so! We’ll also be giving away an original painting from Seattle artist Matthew Porter (shown below – monkey with a robot!) during the presentation.

If you’re in Seattle, you can still buy tickets to the conference at the door so feel free to come on by. Hope to see you there!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Mysteries of the natural world

14 May

There are things you do because they feel right and they may make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other’s cooking and say it was good.

This quote began a recent email to me from Craftmonkey customer Marsha Gaspari. Marsha briefly explained that there was a box of things headed my son’s way and they were all very interesting but most of all, there was a live swallowtail chrysalis packed in cotton in and it needed to be treated very carefully if it was to hatch. She warned that the travel may prove to be too much, that the butterfly could hatch deformed or not have survived the journey at all.

My son Cole has long been a collector and lover of nature and all its creatures. The only contact I’ve had with Marsha has been through email, when she wrote in with a technical question about her Craftmonkey account and it lead me to her Etsy shop. Through our brief correspondence, I told her of Cole’s love of owls and chrysalis. And I thanked her for being a customer of my company’s just-launched product, when we are just starting out and it matters most.

A few weeks later, we received Marsha’s mysterious email, which set off a flurry of mailbox-checking and speculation. Cole and his little sister ran home from school to peek in the mailbox every day.

This past weekend, they were rewarded. As promised, we received a beautiful box containing all manner of treasures from the natural world. There were photos and charms, seedpods and feathers, and nestled among it all, a translucent chrysalis through which folded, spotted wings could just barely be seen. We thought we saw it move, so set it up carefully as instructed and hoped for the best.

May marks the year anniversary of many life-changing events for my family. My grandmother passed away just a week after my husband and I had our professional lives abruptly upended. We moved across the country, switching the kids’ schools and leaving our former home and friends. Although we’re now happily back in our hometown of Seattle, we’re glad to have that particular year of unkindnesses behind us.

Every day, I’m thankful for the beauty of the city where we now make our home; where owls hoot from trees in our backyard and whales play just a few hundred yards off the shore. I’m grateful for the friends and family who support and surround us and whose love sustained us in difficult times. And I’m so happy for people like Marsha, who remind us that there’s an abundance of both strength and grace in the world in spite of its fragility.

More often than not, change is good.

Seattle speed-networking event to connect crafters and buyers

3 May

Woman wearing monkey hatLast night I attended a preparatory meeting for what I think is a very innovative way for crafters to connect with local stores who might want to sell their products. Handmade Happy Hour, the brainchild of School House Crafter Andrea Porter and imakecutestuff‘s Marlo Miyashiro, offers crafters the chance to sit down with twenty local vendors to give their pitch and show their wares.

Modeled after the “speed-dating” concept, each presentation will last just two minutes. When their time is up, a bell rings and they move on to the next potential buyer. If all goes well, the crafters will have made some new wholesale customers, and the buyers will be exposed to some great local artists and makers they might not meet otherwise.

Last night’s session was for event organizers to provide tips on presentation and pitches, sort out logistics, and provide a chance for the vendors who will be attending May 29th’s Happy Hour event to ask questions. I was there repping my homemonkeys at MailChimp, a sponsor of the event. After the session, I had the chance to speak with some of the vendors and was impressed both with the products they made and how they approached running their businesses. Some folks were just starting out and had questions about crafting the perfect pitch, or using email marketing and Craftmonkey to help boost sales, while others have been in business for many years. Interested in applying to be a vendor? They are taking vendor applications until May 10th in categories like Children’s Gifts, Edible Goods, and Toys.

One thing was for certain: crafters love a monkey. It was fun to see folks trying on their monkey hats (that’s jewelry-maker Allexa Allamano from FoamyWader giving the famous Freddie wink) and digging the new MailChimp t-shirts (note to self: get a t-shirt cannon!) I met designer Isabelle Grizzard Robertson from Piano Nobile, who kindly offered to give me a tour of her and her husband’s Ballard studio (yes please!) and Kelly Jones, who works in industrial metals. Like I said, quite a variety of talented folks in attendance; here’s a complete list of artists who will be attending the Happy Hour.

Thanks to the Handmade Happy Hour organizers for putting this together and best of luck to all participating sellers. Love to see DIYers shaking up the way to do business!

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries