Let's talk about how entrepreneurs can capture potential customers through email marketing and showing their portfolio of work.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is highly effective and is still deployed to convert leads to huge sales. It is important to understand how best to utilize this to catch the attention of email subscribers.

Benefits Of Email Marketing

There are several advantages offered by email marketing:

• Emails are personal and allow you to have a direct connection with people. It differs from social media or Google Ads as you are able to actually build a relationship with the people you send emails to.

• Emails are also targeted, and you can easily choose who to send emails to, a process that is more complex and less controllable with social media or Google Ads.

• Subscribers voluntarily opt in or sign up to your email list, and this infers that the emails are purposeful.

Of course, subscribers do not always have to open or click on emails, but the key thing is that a relationship has been established. Think of it as a first handshake, which you can then take advantage of to build a relationship.

How To Build An Email List

First, you have to select an email marketing service provider. There are a number of them, including AWeber, ConvertKit, MailPoet, Mailchimp and FluentCRM, which we use for our business.

Once you have created a sign-up form with which people can subscribe to your email list, a good strategy to onboard as many people as possible is to create a giveaway or "lead magnet." This lead magnet serves as an incentive in exchange for their email addresses.

When consulting for clients, we ensure their lead is related to their product or service to optimize its impact. For instance, if you are into hair products, the lead magnet must be related to the hair industry.

Our company's lead magnet is a well-thought-out marketing and sales plan. When entrepreneurs sign up for our emails, they not only get email updates but also learn they can come to us for a practical sales and marketing plan.

Good lead magnets can include e-books, guides, free products or access, among other things. Say you have an online or even a physical class; you can offer free access to the whole class or part of the class. The idea is that the lead magnet has to be valuable. So think of a lead magnet you can give for free in exchange for email addresses.

Once you have created the lead magnet, you have to create an opt-in box on your site. This box often says essentially “Hey, sign up for my emails, and here’s what you get.” The text in the opt-in form should be actionable and clearly communicate the benefits of signing up for your email list.

A good example for a fitness business would be, “Join this email list and get this free guide on how to lose 10 kg of weight in two weeks.” If your lead magnet does not explicitly show the benefit, chances are that your audience will not sign up for it. Ensure you do not spam them or sell their email addresses. It helps to include an assurance of the safety of their information and privacy in your opt-in form.

The best areas to place your opt-in form on your website are in a feature box, at the top of the sidebar, after a blog post, in the site footer, on the About page or as a pop-up box. Anywhere else, outside a place or two, and people may be turned off by it.

Creating A Portfolio

Use your portfolio to show off your amazing work. Your products or services may not have visuals that you can show off like, say, a photography business, so in that case use testimonials.

In practice, though, every business can at least have a portfolio of all the businesses they have worked with. Here are ways that could work:

• You need to show off your work to get more work. Personally, before I engage someone to work with us, I always look online to see what they have done and who they have worked with. If I know someone they have worked with, I reach out to them to ask what their experience was with the service.

• Only show work that strengthens your value proposition. This means you have to show work that sets you apart from the competition. Highlight your major successes to show how strong your brand is and prove that you can deliver.

Perhaps you have not even started your business and you are wondering what to include in such a portfolio. Here is what you can do:

• Get creative; spend ample time working on personal projects that you can put in your portfolio. Your portfolio does not have to include just work that you have done for other clients. It can be things that you have worked on as an individual.

• You can volunteer your time and work on projects for people at no fee. Nonprofit organizations are a great place to volunteer talent because while they may not have big budgets, they often have loads of projects to execute. Doing this not only boosts your portfolio, it also helps you establish connections and build your network. When there are opportunities, they can recommend you and your services to someone who can actually pay you.

Your portfolio is important to build your brand and get more clients. So start building it, and remember to put great quality work in your portfolio.

A portfolio is a key to success for anyone in the modern world. Before you set out to go to a restaurant that you have never visited, you are very likely to go online for reviews about the restaurant, right? Why do you do that? The same reason you do that is the same reason you need to start showcasing your portfolio.

It rings true that businesses with strong email marketing and solid portfolios fare better.