Finding appropriate people to interview on Profit Copilot is hard.
Not because there’s a lack of people around, the opposite is true; there’s an abundance of people who want to be interviewed.
The problem with that is, when it comes to an industry like ours, we are surrounded by people who don’t really know what they’re doing.
So it’s hard to know who’s legitimate.
I value your trust in this website, and my own integrity, far too much to allow the ‘fake it until you make it’ or sleazy ‘get rich quick’ types on here.
But thankfully I met Rob Whisonant, the founder of the List Builders Institute.
So I looked through his stuff, was suitably impressed, spoke to him via email and it quickly became clear that he is one of the few digital marketers who I feel comfortable recommending to Profit Copilot subscribers because he’s:
A) Building a legitimate business, ethically.
B) Genuinely willing to help those who need it.
So I invited Rob to take part in a interview. He agreed, and here it is.
Mick: Hi Rob. Thank you for taking time to answer my questions and for sharing your expertise with my subscribers.
What’s your background?
Rob: I have been self-employed for most my life. I seem to be allergic to jobs and working for other people. I was the one that always caused problems for employers because I would always do things the way I wanted to do them, not the way they wanted me to.
I do have an extensive background in engineering and software programming. Both have taught me how to stay extremely focused and how to approach problems and desires in a structured methodical way. I believe this has helped me greatly with my success as an entrepreneur.
My passion is developing and marketing software, courses and other digital media. I have been creating products and marketing them on the Internet since the mid 90s. Before that I was developing products and marketing them on BBSs. (bulletin board systems) that you dialed into using a really slow modem. It was painful, but I loved every minute of it. I’m also showing my age now, so let’s move on.
Mick: Don’t worry I remember connecting on a dial-up modem too. Sometimes I still miss those hissing and buzzing sounds.
Anyway, how did you come to start the List Builders Institute?
I got interested in email marketing many years ago, and started purchasing every course I could find. After many failures, I noticed something that really opened my eyes. I was trying to learn how to email market from the wrong people. The people that I was learning from where basically teaching theory or just repeating information they got off the Internet. They personally have made very little or absolutely no money actually by using email marketing.
Many of these email marketing courses were also teaching bad information. I’m talking information that would get you labeled a spammer and lose autoresponder accounts. Some of the better courses still left out key pieces of the email marketing puzzle. It turned out it was really hard to learn how to make money through email marketing.
I also quickly learned that you should only learn from someone that actually makes good money using the techniques you want to learn. Don’t waste your time learning from the fake it till you make it crowd. You will end up faking it all the way to the poor house.
Once I became successful at email marketing I noticed others were starting to notice and asking me a lot of questions. People started wanting to know how to really make money with email marketing. They wanted to learn the street-smart techniques that actually work. Not theory and stuff that may work or may not.
OK, let’s fast forward a bit. I wanted to help as many people as I could, but I did not have enough hours in the day to help each person one on one the way I wanted to. So…
I started thinking about ways I could help a large number of people at the same time and show them how to do email marketing the right way. What I came up with was, why not open up a school?
This was the start of List Builders Institute. Now let me tell you, List Builders Institute has gone through many transformations and will go through many more. As I get feedback from my students I adapt the school to fit the students’ needs better. When I come up with a better way to teach specific information and when new email marketing techniques emerge, the school adapts and changes.
Now I am going to be brutally honest, the List Builders Institute is not for everyone. If someone is wanting to get rich quick, not work their butt off or are not teachable because they think they already know everything, the school is not for them. In fact, if I catch a student that fits that description, I kick them out of the school. The serious students don’t need this type of person around causing them problems and taking up other student’s time and my time.
List Builders Institute is for the person that really wants to learn email marketing and make it a long term sustainable business.
Mick: It’s a fantastic resource Rob, I encourage my visitors to take a look.
Now, we hear about list building most often with digital businesses.. And not so much with bricks and mortar businesses. The ones I’ve spoken to initially don’t see the value, until it’s explained in black and white.
What’s your perception, and are you seeing an increase of physical business starting to build an email list, and once they do how is the conversation / relationship with their lists different than digital businesses?
Rob: I have been seeing basically the same thing. Most offline businesses don’t really see how the Internet can bring them business aside from just having a website that is hardly visited. I even had one business owner I talked to say that the Internet was nothing more than a fad and it would be gone in a couple of years. Well, he is now out of business.
If you can get past the gatekeeper and actually talk to the business owner in a non-pushy way, you can usually get them to start seeing the benefit from an active Internet presence. The key you have to get across to them is the benefits of building relationships with their current customers. Notice I said current customers? This is where email marketing comes in. It’s a great way for an offline business to keep in touch with their customers. When done right, it keeps the business up front in the customer’s mind and brings them back in to the business more frequently.
Some of the best ways an offline business can use email marketing is by sending their customers announcements about sales, customer appreciation days, low inventory alerts etc.
Mick: I’ve had very similar experiences in the past; the web being called ‘a fad’, while their competition sneaks up on them. At the moment, what do you think is the most effective way to build an email list is right now?
Currently one of the best ways to build an email list for an online business is still the high value giveaway via a squeeze page. It still seems to do better than other methods. I personally still use these and probably will for a long time to come. The key is that the giveaway must solve a specific problem and the traffic you are sending to the squeeze page must be looking for a solution to the problem it solves.
Now for offline businesses, it’s a different story. Most offline businesses seem to just have a notepad that says join our mailing list, lying somewhere in the business. They are not giving the customer any reason to join the list. So, they see email marketing as something that does not work for them. In truth, they just don’t know what they are doing.
What I do see working for offline businesses is frequent customer reward systems. For example, they come in and make a purchase and they get a point. Once they have 5 or 10 points they can use them for some type of discount or a free product. These points are of course tracked by their email address. These work extremely well and also allow the business owner to send emails announcing special sales, bonus point days etc to their customer base. If a business knows they are going to have a slow day, they send out an email offering double points on that day, or a special sale only available for customers on their email list. This is the type of benefit you need to get across to the offline business owner. Email marketing when done right, increases their sales and puts more profit in their pockets.
Mick: That’s a smart idea. For the most part offline businesses are working exclusively with a buyers-only email list, which as you know, is incredibly valuable to digital businesses. Hopefully offline businesses in the near future will begin to recognise it as an asset.
So, finally, what are your plans for the future and how do you intend to grow the List Builders Institute?
Rob: My plans for the List Builder Institute are extremely open ended. I want to keep it moving as email marketing changes. I do have many plans that I am not going to talk about. I want to keep them as surprises. What I will say, is that I will be adding advanced courses that cover ways to bring your email marketing to much larger scales. I will also be adding courses that show students how to move their lists in-house and away from the popular autoresponder companies, as well as courses on how to manage email marketing for other companies both online and offline.
List Builders Institute will grow and morph as the students’ needs change. It’s all about doing email marketing the right way and getting benefits from it for the long term.
Mick: Rob, thank you for taking time out to answer questions for the Profit Copilot subscribers.
Visit List Builders Institute for more ways to improve your email marketing.