Managing Artwork Inquiries

When a collector wants to ask about a piece, they send an inquiry from your public artwork pages and it lands at Admin → Inquiries. You reply from there, track where each one stands, and mark it sold when it turns into a purchase. This article covers that workflow.

Where inquiries come from

Every public artwork page carries Inquire About This Work. On a piece that has already sold, the same button reads Ask About Similar Work, so a collector arriving too late still starts a conversation instead of hitting a wall.

The collector fills in their Name, Email, an optional Phone, and a Message, with an opening line about the piece written for them. The form tells them galleries usually reply within one to two business days, and the acknowledgement they receive says the same thing. That is a promise your inbox has to keep.

Tip: A piece has to be publicly visible for anyone to inquire about it. If a work is not published, there is no page to inquire from.

The inquiries inbox

Go to Admin → Inquiries. Across the top you get three figures:

• Total inquiries
• Reported Sold
• Reported Conversion

The last two are marked as operator-reported rather than payment-verified, because they count inquiries you marked sold by hand. They are a measure of your follow-up, not of banked revenue. Do not put them in a board pack as sales figures.

Each row shows the Artwork with a thumbnail, who it is From, a preview of the Message, the Status, and recent activity including how many replies the thread has. Filter with the Status selector: All Statuses, Open, Replied, Sold or Archived.

Tick the checkboxes to act on several at once, with Export to download them and Archive to close them out.

Statuses

• Open is new and waiting on you.
• Replied happens on its own the first time you respond.
• Sold means the inquiry led to a purchase.
• Archived is closed with nothing more to do.

Filter to Open first thing each day. That is the list of people still waiting.

Reading and replying

Open a row for the full thread. You get an artwork card with the piece, artist, medium, dimensions and price, the collector's details with a clickable email address, and every message in order.

Reply from the box at the bottom of the thread and choose Send Reply. Your reply is emailed to the collector and kept on the thread, and the inquiry moves to Replied for you.

Keep replies inside the thread rather than starting a separate email chain. Otherwise the history splits in two and whoever picks the conversation up next only sees half of it.

Marking an outcome

The thread header carries two actions until the inquiry is archived:

• Mark as Sold records that this conversation led to a purchase. You confirm first, and the confirmation is explicit that this is your own report, not a verified payment.
• Archive closes an inquiry when there is nothing more to do.

Replying handles the move to Replied, so most of the time you are only closing a deal or clearing a dead lead.

Turning an inquiry into a sale

When a collector decides to buy, there are two paths.

They pay online. Send them a purchase link for the piece, or point them at its page to add it to their cart. When the payment completes, the piece is marked sold automatically. Come back and use Mark as Sold on the inquiry to close the loop. See Selling Artwork Online.

They pay offline, in person, by cheque or by arrangement. Record the sale so inventory and revenue stay right, then Mark as Sold on the inquiry. See Recording Artwork Sales.

Working the queue

1. Filter to Open.
2. Take the oldest first.
3. Answer the actual question before pitching anything.
4. Offer a concrete next step. "I can send you a secure link to buy this piece" converts better than "let me know".
5. Archive what has gone cold, so the Open queue stays honest.

Collectors usually inquire about several pieces across several galleries. The first thoughtful reply generally wins.

Troubleshooting

No inquiries are arriving. Confirm the pieces are published and publicly visible, then test the inquiry button on one of your own artwork pages.

A reply did not reach the collector. Check the email address on the inquiry detail for a typo, ask them to check their spam folder, and reply again from the thread.

My Reported Sold figure looks too low. It only counts inquiries you marked sold. If a collector bought after inquiring and nobody marked the inquiry, it is not counted.

Next steps

• Selling Artwork Online
• Recording Artwork Sales

For more help, contact support at support@craftedcall.com.