Etsy makes it easy to talk directly with customers. But there are some things you’ll want to consider before firing off a response to that question about personalization discounts or re-use of your product. We share five effective Etsy messaging tips to keep in mind before you respond to your customers, on this episode of The Jam. 

What’s in your inbox 

Today we’re going to talk about Etsy messages! If you’ve got an Etsy shop you’ve probably received some messages and we want to talk about some tips and best practices for dealing with customers via the message. 

Of course, we all send messages these days as a second reflex, especially now that remote work has become the norm. There are still some best practices and some things that we want to keep in mind when we’re dealing with customers on Etsy. Etsy messages are different than texting your mom and they’re going to be different than corporate stuff. You don’t really want your messages to feel corporate because that’s not what your customers are buying from. They’re buying from an individual boutique shop! 

Five things to think about for effective Etsy messaging

We’re going to tackle five things to think through that we feel are best practices before responding to those Etsy messages! Let’s dive right in:

1. Use the proper tone

We kind of already touched on this but be mindful of your tone when you’re writing messages to customers. Keep in mind what your tone sounds like because you don’t want to come across as super corporate. 

At the same time, you don’t want your messages to sound like some kind of cookie-cutter response that you pasted into the Etsy messages platform. You want it to be personal; you want your customers to feel like they’re talking to an actual person. That’s why they’re on Etsy! This is part of the reason they’re buying on Etsy instead of buying in some giant brick-and-mortar chain store. They’re here because they want that personal feeling. So make sure you’re giving them that in the tone of your messages to them.

2.Clarity is important

While it’s important to keep your tone friendly and personal, you also want to be clear. Be sure to make your messages easy to read and to the point. It’s not so much about length necessarily. Your message can be as long or short as you need them to be, as long as they’re easily understood.

You’ll want to stay away from one big jumble of text. Instead, space things out and make your message nice to read. Be mindful that your customers don’t have to read your message two or three times to understand what you’re trying to say.

3. Set expectations

Make sure that you’re setting expectations appropriately. A good rule to follow with this is to underpromise and over-deliver to your customers. If you tell a customer that something is going to take three to ten days, they’re hearing three days. Make sure that you keep this in mind when you’re throwing out numbers for them for how long it might take to personalize something or to ship something get it to them.

4. Remember the details

Make sure all the details make it into the order for your customer. Let’s say you’ve been talking back and forth with a customer in messages because they’re making changes for something custom. You don’t want to be in a situation where you go back through your message thread and find that you talked to this customer about a specific detail in their order, only to lose track of what you said and the detail not actually make it into the order.

If you talk about something specific, make sure you fulfill it because your customer will definitely be expecting whatever you promised. Something you can do to help you not lose track of details like this is to immediately jot down a note when a change or specific request comes up. It can be hard to keep track of small things you’ve chatted about if they’re buried within a ton of messages!  

5. Learn from conversations

Make sure that you’re learning from the messages that you have going on. Talking with customers is a perfect opportunity to be learning things. It might be a question that a customer has that you hadn’t answered in your listing description. Now, you can easily include this question in your description so future customers can easily find the answer there.  
 
Not everyone feels comfortable shooting off a message to an Etsy seller. Some people (if they’re not finding the answers in the description) might just leave. They might then do another search and go to a competitor’s product. If someone is asking you a question and you’re getting it repeatedly, that’s a good clue that you might want to add that information to the product description. 

Bonus tip for effective Etsy messaging! 😃

Something else you can learn from conversations with shoppers is keywords that you could be using on your listings. If they’re telling you what they’re using your products for and you hadn’t included that usage case in your keywords, there are probably other people out there searching for that same thing. Jump into Marmalead and see if there’s an audience there. See if that use for your product carries any weight to it and see if it has a good market to be using it.

Bonus bonus tip! 😏

Another great thing you can use conversations for is product development. If a customer is talking to you about changing a listing in a specific way, it could be a clue to you that there’s another separate product out there that you could be creating for people. 

This can help you add new listings to your shop and new listings mean more services for shoppers to find you and possibly make purchases from. Along the same line, if people keep asking you, “Hey can you make this specific thing?” this could be another great clue of something else you could make that you’re not already making. Or hey, if you do make what they’re looking for and they’re not finding it in your shop, the fact that they’re asking you that question means they’re not finding it in your shop for some reason. You’ll want to find out why and make changes in order for customers to accurately find what you offer! 

Final thoughts for effective Etsy messaging

There are lots of super helpful things you can learn from conversations with customers through effective Etsy messaging! Do not fear the conversations. Have the conversations and follow these tips! You will be doing great and learning tons if you do! 

Happy selling, everyone! 

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