While it’s true that you can start monetizing your list even if you have fewer than 100 subscribers, obviously the more targeted your list building efforts are, the easier it will be to convert those people into loyal buyers.

The size of your list isn’t the most important component in successful email marketing.  The connection you have with those subscribers is everything.

That means that you’ll want to open a channel of communication immediately. As soon as someone subscribes to your list, you should introduce your brand and give them with a reason to stay subscribed to your emails.

You do this by creating a content marketing strategy that warms up your list and demonstrates to subscribers that you’re willing to provide them with the information they need.

Making money from your list is all about relationship marketing.

You can increase engagement several different ways, and we’ll get to that in a later chapter. For now, let’s focus on the best practices for creating a squeeze page that converts.

If you’ve ever read a guide or course on email marketing before, chances are you already know the importance of a well-constructed landing page.

These pages serve as the entry into what will be your sales funnel. They greet your visitors, introduce your brand and offer them an incentive to subscribe to your list.

Incentives are incredibly important because they act as a sort of bribe that entices visitors into giving up their name and email address.

With so many people being bombarded by email-based offers and advertisements each day, it’ll take more than asking them to join to persuade them to become part of your inner circle.

Thankfully, there are a few easy ways to build a high-converting landing page that is guaranteed to get results.

First up, design.

You want your squeeze page to be attractive, but more importantly to resonate with your target market.

This means you’ll want to spend some time coming up with a powerful, attention-grabbing headline that instantly tells your visitor what’s in it for them.

To do this, you’ll need to think from your average visitor’s perspective.  What kind of incentive offer would likely convince them to subscribe to your list?

Most people in your market have probably already seen the same offers being featured on squeeze pages.

Incentive offers such as reports, eBooks or email-based courses are often used to motivate visitors into joining a list, but if you want to get their attention you’ll have to do something different – something to stand out.

Here are a few ideas that are proven to work:

Offer a checklist of the steps needed to accomplish a goal.  

This checklist would be available in downloadable PDF format and would be delivered immediately after someone joins your list.

Tip:  You can also direct traffic to your blog and give visitors the option of saving your content to their desktop so they can read it later. This is a great strategy for increasing visibility, improving engagement, and maximizing the value of your incentive offers.

One easy way to do this is with the Post Gopher plugin.  This works perfectly with WordPress to convert posts and pages into downloadable PDF’s. There’s no easier way to turn your blog content into super targeted, high-converting lead magnets.

Check it out here: http://www.PostGopher.com

Provide subscribers with exclusive access to a private membership site.

By making access available only to subscribers, and automating the signup process, you’ll be able to quickly build a highly-targeted mailing list in no time at all.

If you don’t have the time to set up a membership site, check out this done-for-you membership system that includes 10 different websites:  https://promotelabs.com/ultimate/

Membership sites are great ways of building your audience and connecting with your tribe because people often place a higher value on content that’s protected.  

Give them a step-by-step action plan relating to your market.

You’ll want to make sure that your action plan clearly outlines the steps needed to complete a task or accomplish a goal.  

Another thing to keep in mind is that you want to cater to the majority of your market, rather than a smaller segment, so you can maximize subscription rates.

This means you’ll want to consider creating a few different action plans and then allow visitors to choose which one they wish to download after they subscribe to your list.

Offer them private access to training videos.

You could easily create a YouTube channel for your niche and keep all your videos unlisted.  Then, create a private page that features your videos and make it accessible only by those who subscribe to your list.

This is a great way of giving something new and exclusive to your market while also encouraging people to subscribe to your new channel that you can further monetize.

The idea is to offer something new and exclusive in exchange for their name and email address.  Stand out from the crowd by taking the usual offer and placing it behind a protected directory.  

The idea is that the more exclusive your offer is, the more value your visitors will place on it making it drop-dead easy to persuade them to subscribe.

What other ideas are you able to come up with? What would your target audience likely be most interested in?  How can you take existing content and turn it into a powerful lead magnet?

If you’re struggling for ideas, look at the ready-made lead magnets available at Automated List Profits.

These are done-for-you squeeze pages but they offer far more than professional templates, responsive landing pages and gorgeous graphics.

The lead magnets available at https://www.AutomatedListProfits.com all come with a high-quality content package that includes a report written by professional writers as well as a 7-day autoresponder series that you can instantly plug into your email marketing campaigns in order to open the channel of communication and build a relationship with your subscriber base.

They’ll save you a lot of time and money and make it easy for you to start growing a profitable list.

If you want to build your own landing page without having to learn code or mess around with design (not to mention, make sure that your page is responsive so it looks great on mobile devices), you’ll want to look at Landing Page Monkey.

Landing Page Monkey makes it easy to create beautiful, high-converting landing pages in just minutes without touching a single line of code. You’ll even get full analytics so you can track your landing page impressions and conversions to optimize your campaigns.

It makes building high-converting landing pages a breeze while eliminating the usual learning curve. That way you can focus on building your lists and maximizing your income and leave the landing page design to the pros.

You’ll find Landing Page Monkey here: http://www.LandingPageMonkey.com

In the next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at how you can begin to drive traffic to your lead pages, so you can beef up that mailing list with loyal buyers and take your income to the next level.