Email trends and list rental advice

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on September 07, 2007

for hire signIf you're wondering what to aim for in the coming months, then Deirdre Cook does a great job of picking out some areas to consider in her article on email trends for the fall season.

I'd add transactional email to her list. Boring text-based messages are out. Engaging emails incorporating marketing elements are in. Check these articles for more on that (and EmailLabs just covered the topic in their latest newsletter.)

I'm just a little unsure on Deirdre's suggestion to go for CPA (cost per action) deals when renting email lists, rather than paying standard "per-address" (CPM) rates. Why unsure?

Deirdre's advice is good in principle, of course, since CPA means you only pay the list owner for successful transactions (or however you define a successful "action".) But...

When I researched list rental a while back, list owners willing to countenance CPA deals were either desperate, had poor quality lists or were blasting the list again and again to try and squeeze every last CPA cent out of them (not unlike spammers).

I assume things are different now (any list rental experts care to comment?), with CPA gaining credibility as an option for unsold inventory. But is someone with a quality email list likely to want to use up a scarce mailing slot with no guarantee of revenue?

Your chances of negotiating such a beneficial deal certainly increase if you have...
  • Strong brand recognition
  • A proven ability to convert
  • A targeted offer
  • An offer which doesn't require a purchase (e.g. sign-up or free download)
  • Good creative and landing pages
(In which case, the list owner might wonder why you'd want a CPA deal in the first place!)

And of course you could try for a hybrid deal, where the list owner gets a guaranteed minimum CPM plus a bonus depending on the response generated.

Anyway, I would love to hear any comments or advice from those in the email list rental field...

Note that there are also services that can help facilitate CPA list rental, like Datran Media's Exchange Online, with CPA deals promoted as a way for publishers to fill remnant email inventory. And not forgetting the affiliate networks, too, when it comes to CPA offers and email. But that brings its own problems.

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2 Comments:

Mark -- We totally agree with you here and just posted so on our blog. Check it out: http://www.returnpath.net/resources/archives/2007/09/the_letter_afte.php

Basically, either CPA or CPM can work with the right offer and the right list (wow, sounds like classic DM, huh?). Quality is what matters and while that is possible to find with CPA it's very difficult.
By Anonymous Tami Forman, on 11 September, 2007  
 

Thanks for jumping in Tami. Glad some real list rental experts agree with me!
By Blogger Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on 11 September, 2007  
 

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