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Where Do My Quilting Customers Come From?

Updated: Apr 1

Hey Tori! Answering Your Digital Marketing Questions for Creative Entrepreneurs Podcast


You have been marketing your business for years. You’re posting, emailing your list once a month, maybe even have a website with actual traffic. But your sales are low. And when someone asks you where your customers are actually coming from, you realize you have no idea. Is it Instagram? Pinterest? That one blog post from two years ago that somehow still shows up on Google?


Hey Tori Podcast Thumbnail

If you do not know where your paying customers are finding you, you have no idea where to put your energy next. That’s exactly what we’re fixing today.


Listen to the Podcast Episode Here:




What you’ll learn in this post/episode:

  • How to figure out where your paying quilting customers are actually coming from

  • The three marketing channels every creative business should track: warm, cold, and owned

  • Why email marketing converts five times better than social media — and what the data says about our industry

  • A simple customer source tracker you can fill out in 30 minutes

  • Four AI prompts to help you make sense of your data and decide where to focus


You’re Marketing on Vibes — And It’s Costing You

In the What the Heck Is Digital Marketing episode, we talked about how marketing is finding your people and getting your offer in front of them. That episode is beginner-friendly. This one is for the business owner who has been selling - maybe for a while - but has low sales and no clear picture of what’s actually working.


Here’s what I see happening with a lot of creative entrepreneurs at this stage. They’re marketing on instinct. They’re posting what feels right, showing up where they think their people are, and measuring success by likes and follower counts. But they run away from the metrics that actually move their business forward.


The uncomfortable truth: most of us have no idea which of our marketing activities is producing buyers. We might have a feeling, but we have not looked at the data.


I'm not talking about complicated analytics or giant spreadsheets. I’m talking about asking a few key questions and paying attention to the patterns. Because when you know where your paying customers are coming from - not leads, paying customers - you can stop wasting energy on channels that are not working and put more into the ones that are.


Remember: marketing is getting what you offer in front of the right people. We need to pay attention to where those paying people are coming from. That's how you grow faster with less effort.

Three Channels to Track Where Your Quilting Customers are coming from: Warm, Cold, and Owned

Inside the DMMC, when we work on a lead strategy - which is all about how to get the right people into your world - we start by mapping out three main sources of customers.


Warm Channels 

Word-of-mouth referrals, guilds or groups you’ve presented to, collaborations, quilters who recommend your work. These people arrive already trusting you because someone they trust told them about you. They convert fast and stick around. For most of my clients, when we actually track it, warm channels are responsible for a higher percentage of their best buyers than they ever realized.


Cold Channels 

People who have never heard of you. Social media, Pinterest, Google search, TikTok, podcast appearances, online ads. These channels can bring in volume, but they take longer to convert because the trust is not there yet. Cold traffic needs to be warmed up - usually through your email list and nurture content - before they buy.


Owned Channels 

Your email list. This is the gold. These are people who have raised their hand and said, “Yes, I want to hear from you.” They are the most likely to buy, the most likely to buy again, and the only audience you actually own. Instagram can change the algorithm. Google can change its rules. Your email list is always yours.


For most creative entrepreneurs, the honest answer is: “I’m putting most of my energy into cold channels, usually Instagram, and barely using the owned channel at all.” That is backwards. Social media is how people find you. Email is where they decide to buy.


Why Email Still Wins — Especially in the Craft Industry

If you’re a teacher or service provider, you’re asking people to spend time, money, material, and energy with you. That’s a level of trust that needs to be built. Email lets you show up directly in someone’s inbox, share your expertise, and establish authority over time. And email has a funny way of driving indirect sales too — patterns through distributors, shop or guild teaching gigs, referrals for service providers. Those are not always direct purchases, which is why I suggest simply asking your paying customers where they heard about you.


Here is what the data tells us:

  • Email marketing converts around 5.3%, while social media traffic typically stays under 1%. That is a five-times gap.

  • Email generates roughly $36–$79 for every dollar spent, significantly outperforming paid advertising.

  • Segmented email campaigns generate 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than non-segmented campaigns.

  • Educational webinars convert 15–25% of live attendees — compared to 10–20% for sales-focused webinars. Teaching first wins.

  • The arts and craft industry has the highest average e-commerce conversion rate across all industries. Our buyers are engaged.


Research for the craft industry specifically is hard to come by. One valuable source is the Quilters Survey, most recently presented at H&H and published by the Craft Industry Alliance in May 2025, based on over 30,000 responses conducted with EY Parthenon and Empiridis. Key findings: the average quilter is female, in her 60s, retired with a household income over $75K, and describes herself as comfortable with technology. Quilters are looking for free video content on YouTube. 64% prefer to buy supplies at their local shop, while only 13% prefer buying online.


What this means for us: our core quilting audience is not discovering or buying primarily through digital channels the way most marketing case studies assume. The craft industry is different. But when crafters do engage with email, they convert at a higher rate than general audiences - because when we love something, we really love it and go all in.


How to Figure Out Where Your Customers Are Coming From

Here is exactly what I would do if we were on a coaching call together. We would follow these three steps.


Step 1: Do a quick customer audit. Go back through your last 10–20 sales or signups. For every single one, ask yourself: how did this person find me? Check order notes, DMs, emails, ManyChat - any record you have. Write it down. You can use a notebook, a Google Sheet, a phone note, or whatever works for you. Just get it out of your head and onto something you can look at.


Step 2: Ask when you don’t know. Send a personal email: “Hey, thank you for purchasing this pattern - how are you liking it? I’d love to know how you found me.” Voice notes and short videos get more responses than mass emails. The more personal the ask, the more likely they are to respond.


Step 3: Look for the pattern with the highest conversion. Not which channel brings the most visitors, but which channel brings the most buyers. Those are different questions with different answers. One guild connection might be worth ten Instagram followers. When you see that pattern, that is where you double down.


You do not need perfect data to make a good decision. You just need enough information to see the pattern. Even a rough sense of where your buyers are coming from is infinitely better than guessing.


A Simple Customer Source Tracker

Here is a simple tracker layout you can build in a Google Sheet, notebook, or phone note:


Who They Are

Where They Found Me

How I Know

What They Bought

Customer name

Guild referral, Instagram, Google, etc.

Asked directly, checked DMs, order notes

Pattern, workshop, longarm service, etc.


Fill this in for your last 15 customers. I like Google Sheets, but the format does not matter. The point is to get it out of your head so you can see the patterns.


Four AI Prompts to Make Sense of Your Data

Once you have your tracker filled in - even partially - a tool like Claude or ChatGPT becomes incredibly useful. Paste your notes right in and ask it to help you see what’s there. For privacy you can make a copy of your table and omit the names and any contact info you might have, but the general info of where they found you, what they bought, and your notes will be helpful.


PROMPT 1: Find Patterns in Your Customer Sources "I run a [describe your business] and I’ve tracked where my last [number] customers came from. Here’s what I found: [paste your notes]. Can you help me identify which channels are producing the most buyers — not just the most visitors — and what patterns you see in my data?"


PROMPT 2: Understand Your Best Customer "Based on this customer source data [paste your notes], help me write a short description of my ideal buyer — where they spend their time online, what they likely care about, and what kind of content or offers would resonate most with them. I sell [describe what you sell] to [describe your ideal customer]."


PROMPT 3: Prioritize Where to Show Up "I am a [quilting teacher, pattern designer, etc.] and I have limited time for marketing — about [number] hours per week. Based on these customer source patterns [paste your notes], which one or two channels should I focus on first to get the best return on my time? Please explain your reasoning."


PROMPT 4: Turn Insight Into Content "My data shows that most of my best customers come from [your top channel]. Can you give me five content or marketing ideas that would help me get more customers from that same channel? I create [describe your work] and my audience is [describe your audience]."


These prompts work in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini - any general AI assistant. You do not need a special tool. You just need your notes and a few good questions.


What Happened When Kaylee Stopped Guessing

One of my DMMC members - I’ll call her Kaylee - came to me feeling completely scattered and overwhelmed. She was posting on Instagram, sending occasional newsletters, teaching at local guilds and a community college, and had a few online classes left over from COVID times. She needed more revenue, but she had no idea which of these activities was actually driving sales.


We did this exercise together. She went back through her last 15 customers and tracked how each one found her. What she discovered surprised her.


Her in-person connections - the warmest channel - were converting at close to 100%. Almost every single person who found her through a class she taught ended up buying or booking again. Meanwhile, Instagram was her biggest time investment and had the lowest conversion rate of anything she tracked.


The shift: Kaylee stopped stressing about Instagram and started saying yes to more teaching opportunities. She focused on building her email list at every in-person event - growing a warm audience and preparing for a strategic move to online teaching with less travel. Her revenue went up and her list of buyers is growing. Not because she worked more, but because she worked smarter. She paid attention to the patterns.


That is what happens when you stop guessing and start looking at the data - even rough, imperfect data. The pattern is there. You just have to look for it.


Hey Tori Takeaway

Your assignment to do in 30 minutes or less.


1. Go back through your last 15 customers or signups. Write down at least one thing for each: how did this person find me?


2. If you have more time, add a one-question survey to your checkout process or send a follow-up email to gather that information from here on out.


3. Look for the pattern. Which channel is bringing in your buyers - not just your visitors?


You can probably do this before you sit down at your sewing machine tomorrow morning. And what you find might just change where you focus your marketing for the rest of the year.


If today’s episode hit close to home - if you realized you’ve been marketing on instinct without tracking what’s working - this kind of strategic clarity is exactly what we build inside the Digital Marketing Magic Coaching Program. We start every member’s journey by mapping their customer sources, identifying where their strongest lead channel is, and building a lead strategy that actually fits their life and their business. No cookie-cutter marketing plans - marketing plans that make sense for quilters and crafters, because the craft industry is just a little bit different.


Members get a personalized roadmap, live coaching every month, access to our suite of custom AI tools and resources, and optional one-on-one coaching with me. The best first step is a free 30-minute strategy session - no pressure, just clarity on where you are and what your next step should be. Book yours here.



Sources:


About the Author: Tori McElwain is a digital marketing coach for quilting and creative businesses. With 24+ years of quilting experience and a Master’s degree in Education, she helps quilters attract more students, sell more patterns, and grow their businesses online - without losing the joy of creating. She’s the author of “Workshops Unleashed” and cohost of the Quilting on the Side podcast.


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