Buying email address lists? Here’s what I show people…
Latest posts | By Mark Brownlow | 13 Comments | Licence this content
I get a lot of questions, and many are essentially about finding short cuts to email marketing success. Hey, we all like short cuts: can’t blame a marketer for asking.
If I knew any, I’d have already written about them.
One such “short cut” is buying a list of email addresses. You know, the “100,000 dentists for $200″ or “25 million opt-in addresses for $350″ type of list. I don’t recommend buying them and people want to know why. So I wrote this.
It’s an updated overview of reasons, evidence and links to convince those unfamiliar with ethical email marketing that buying address lists is only a short cut to problems, not success. You may find it useful for showing colleagues and others who found a “great offer on eBay”.
Quite happy to hear dissenting voices in the comments here.
For me, buying lists just flies in the face of what we’re trying to achieve with email marketing in a social online world: how can you build trust when a relationship begins by treating an email address as a commodity to be bought and sold like (very cheap) cattle?
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13 comments on “Buying email address lists? Here’s what I show people…”
Hi,
nice blog; in this year i have buy 750.000 email address, but with poor results
Sorry to hear that Cosmet. Unfortunately it just rarely works.
Mark,
Great post as always. As someone who has been involved in purchasing lists in the past, because I was told too, I can openly and honestly say that they truly do not work.
There are no shortcuts folks……if there was, don’t you think everyone would be doing it with success?
Andrew
Thanks Andrew. I think you hit the e-nail on the head. If a shortcut was really a best practice, it’d be a best practice.
Nice blog. We cant judge the quality of email address unless we loose our amount.
Buying or renting any list whether it be email or mailing or tel is a difficult thing to do and requires knowledge and list experience. To tar most lists with the same brush is just frankly bizarre and inaccurate. Yes, there are poor quality lists out there and Yes, you should run a mile from many but if you use the right service, you can make informed decisions and acquire responsive emails for successful campaigns.
Hi John, and thanks for commenting: all viewpoints are welcome
In the article cited I do draw a clear distinction between buying and rental, and the points address outright purchase of cheap bulk email lists only. If you still feel the points raised in that article are inaccurate, please feel free to comment here with specific counter-arguments.
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