Etsy Seller Interview with Emily of SendSalutations

How SendSalutations got started

Introduce your Etsy shop and tell us your story. How did you begin and decide on what to sell on Etsy, and how do you create your products?

Hi! I’m Emily, the owner of Send Salutations. Send Salutations is a greeting card company for people with a creative streak and a sense of humor. Our goal is to bring a little joy into the lives of others with illustrated cards that are cute, quirky, and heartfelt. Most of our designs are inspired by nature and wildlife.

The company started as a lockdown drawing project and has since grown into an Etsy-based business. I initially chose to sell greeting cards because I've always loved choosing them for family and friends, but I've often found myself looking for a specific drawing on a card and finding out it doesn't exist (yet!). Greetings cards also matched several other criteria I had: I could have complete control over the process and quality of the final product being sent to the customer, rather than something like dropshipping; they require a relatively small space for making and storing stock and a low upfront cost to get started.

Plus, making greeting cards excited me because it gave me a chance to change what I had always hated about buying greeting cards: throwing half the product away before you’re able to use it. That's why Send Salutations has taken the Naked Cards Pledge to reduce plastic waste in the greeting card industry in favor of "naked" cards. This means that none of our greeting cards have price stickers or cellophane wrappers.We also use FSC® certified cardstock, recyclable packaging, and 100% recycled card envelopes to make the process of buying, sending, and receiving cards more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

After I had my initial handful of drawings to launch with, I spent a couple of months sampling and testing raw materials. from different styles, colors, and sizes of envelopes to various gsm weights, finishes, and brands of cardstock. Once I was happy with my raw materials and profit margin per card, I did several printing tests, changing and tweaking options on my computer and printer to find the best print quality on my chosen cardstock.

I draw my designs traditionally with a pencil in a sketchbook because this feels the most natural to me. I then go over the drawing in Procreate to vectorize it, add color, and add final details. Finally, I open the drawing in Affinity Designer, add text, and play around with the layout and final composition of the card before doing a print test.

In the same way as I did when I first launched the shop, I continue to draw anything that I'm interested in and excited to draw, or that I’d like to receive from or send to a specific family member or friend. It might not be the best strategy, as I’m not restricting myself to only drawing what is popular, current, or will make money, but I’ve found it is the only way to ensure I don’t lose interest in drawing and always feel motivated over a long period of time.

Favorite items

What are your favorite items? What makes these so special? Why do you think these items might be selling well?

My favorite item from day one is the Garden Birds Birthday Card, which continues to hold the bestseller badge each month. This card was an example of me creating something I’d previously looked for and wished existed. There are plenty of bird cards out there, but I was searching for particular birds to be included and had a very clear idea of the overall composition of how the card should look. Maybe many other people were looking for the same thing, and that's why it's been so popular.

I also love the Squirrel Birthday Card, as people who leave out food for birds in their garden most likely end up attracting a squirrel thief too. I ended up making a red squirrel version of this card as well after moving to the Isle of Wight.

Getting sales on Etsy

How long did it take for you to earn your first sale and how do you currently attract customers to your Etsy shop?

My first sales came a couple of days after opening and were exclusively from family and friends after I announced on social media that I’d opened an Etsy shop. I got my first sale from a customer I didn’t know after a week. It was a huge milestone.

To date, I’ve never paid for advertising. Most of my customers come through the Etsy app and Etsy pages. My second-highest avenue is Etsy search, and my third is customers coming directly to my shop. During the last year, I set up a landing page with a link directly to my Etsy shop. I included this URL on the reverse of all greeting cards I print so I could track how many customers were visiting my shop after receiving a product themselves. I'm surprised that such a large percentage of customers find my store this way.

In the past year, I’ve also seen an increase in customers finding Send Salutations through social media, as I try to regularly post on Instagram and hope to expand this to TikTok in the coming year.

Managing SendSalutations

How do you manage your shop? Are you running solo or do you have any team members? What tools or services do you use to run your shop and how do you handle fulfillment?

I run my shop by myself. I’m sometimes joined in the office by Phoebe, my working cocker spaniel. She also appears in several of my greeting cards.
Software and services I use:
A business bank account—I've found it so useful to have a business bank account to keep my business transactions separate from personal spending. Particularly when it comes to filing a tax return.

Coconut is the accounting and tax app for self-employed people. I use Coconut’s app to track income, transactions, send invoices, and categorize expenses. It also calculates your tax liability in real time.

Microsoft Excel/Numbers: To work out profit margins and compare prices of materials The cost of raw materials can change throughout the year. It's quick and simple to update the spreadsheet and see which of your pre-approved manufacturers is the best value to buy from at the time.

Affinity Designer: Used to put together the final composition of the greeting card.

Procreate: used to vectorize the hand drawing, add color, and finalize details.

Equipment I use:

Label printer: It was a landmark occasion to go from handwriting each envelope and buying stamps to using a label printer. Even though I wanted a label printer from the start, I waited until the number of daily orders I was receiving became unmanageable. I didn't want to incur a large upfront cost if the business wasn't going to take off.

Paper Creasing Machine: Similarly, I first started out using a cheap but highly-rated paper scoring board from Amazon. I used it so much that the bone folder became worn to a stump, and creasing each card in this way became unmanageable. Once the business was making money, I then purchased a paper creasing machine and haven't looked back!

Printer: I’ve upgraded my printer a couple of times as the business grew. I started with a basic inkjet home printer that was compatible with the gsm weight of cardstock I had chosen and had good reviews.

The future of SendSalutations 

What goals do you have for your shop in the future?

This is a difficult question. I’ve always struggled with the tension between the shop starting as a creative and fun outlet during the pandemic and it slowly morphing into my main source of income.

On one hand, I hope that my Etsy sales will increase year over year, even if it's just by one sale. I would like to create some more bestselling designs and see even more returning customers.

On the other hand, all I want is for it to continue being fun and allow me to draw wherever my imagination takes me. which in turn will mean I feel more motivated and end up making more cards.

After the postal strikes in the UK last year, I also saw a need to move away, as so much of my income relies on the postal service. So I’m currently exploring different creative business ideas for offering a product digitally, whether that's made to order or as a form of passive income.

Advice for new sellers

What’s your advice for a new seller starting an Etsy shop?

Take great photos. Make sure the lighting, shadow, focus, and background of the image make the product look its best. This is what’s going to sell your product.

Make sure you’re making the most of SEO. Think about the things you would search for to find your product. Use all the listing tags and the clearest search terms and descriptors in your title. SEO doesn’t just stop when you create the listing; it requires ongoing maintenance to make sure your listings continue to perform well over the coming months and years.

Reduce waste where you can. Cardstock that arrives with small marks or bent corners is useless for making greeting cards. Instead of throwing them away, I use the good areas to print "thanks for your order" cards, which go in the envelope with the customer's order.

Limit expenditure in the early days. Start with cheap (but good-quality) equipment when you’ve just started your Etsy shop. You can upgrade when your shop is turning a profit and the existing equipment becomes worn or unsustainable to keep up with demand. same with ads. Don’t immediately feel like you have to pay for Etsy ads because your listings aren’t doing well or because growth is slow. There are a lot of changes and improvements you can make for free.

Try again. Not every Etsy shop will be a success. Send Salutations is not my first Etsy shop. Several years before starting Send Salutations, I opened another Etsy shop that used a drop-shipping company to sell a handful of my drawings on things like mugs, bags, and cushion covers. Although I did receive a few orders now and again, it was never as successful as Send Salutations. I also learned about what not to do, which I was able to put into practice in my current shop.

For example, I found it really important for me to control and assess the quality of the final product in person before sending it to customers. Several orders were damaged or misprinted and were sent directly from the drop-shipping company, and aside from the refunds and the admin of resolving it with the drop-shipping company, I despised the poor quality being associated with my brand. 

Some sellers really get inspired by hearing numbers. Feel free to share these if you like.

Question: What is your shop’s conversion rate?
Answer: 9.4%