Editor's note: We're republishing this Insiderspost from November due to the recent news that former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown rented his email list to a vendor that spammed his email subscribers. Given the not-so-great attention this move received, we figured this post should serve as a reminder of the risks involved with using third-party lists.
When you're faced with aggressive sales targets and dwindling lead generation performance, purchasing an email contact list can seem like a tempting quick fix to gain new contacts and disseminate your message.
In reality,
With that said, read these eight reasons below as to why you may want to rethink buying lists in the future -- and how growing your lists with inbound methods is the best (and safest) way to grow your lead gen and sales.
8 Dangers of Buying an Email List
1) Those people don't want to hear from you.
What's worse than an unsolicited cold call that interrupts your day? Two words: Unsolicited email (also known as spam). Blasting out hundreds or thousands of emails to people who didn't opt in can have a damaging effect on your brand and, just as bad, lower your Sender Score dramatically and even get you blacklisted. The majority of contacts on purchased email lists likely have no idea who you are, what your company does, or how you got their contact information -- not the best way to make a first impression.
List providers will stretch the truth by telling you that these contacts have "opted in" to receive emails, but this is also typically not the case. Some of the contacts might have opted in to the email list provider's terms of service, and by doing so, unknowingly signed up to receive promotional emails from any customer of the email service provider. Other email addresses that are for sale through list providers have been collected by automated web crawlers that scrape tens of thousands of websites searching for contact information. Shady, right?
Attempting to start a business relationship by spamming someone is an uphill battle, to say the least.
2) List data isn't as accurate as providers say it is.
Email list providers promise reliable contact information and high deliverability. Unfortunately, this rarely occurs. The reality is that purchased lists are chock-full of bad data and out-of-date information -- and, sometimes, even email addresses that aren't in use anymore. That means if you're emailing these addresses,
Also, as soon as contact information is uploaded to an email list service, the data begins to become outdated -- for instance, contacts get a new role within their organizations or leave their companies, or businesses close shop or get acquired.
Any inaccuracies in your data will cause the recipient to immediately question your credibility. For example, if a contact record in your email list has the name of a holding company instead of the public company name, it'll be blatantly obvious that you sent out a mass email. The same applies for any custom field that you use -- there will be problems.
Don't waste your time and money chasing poor-quality contacts or, even worse, contacts that don't exist. Instead, invest in marketing activities that establish your organization as an industry thought leader, build trust with your website visitors, and then convert website visitors into opt-in email subscribers.
3) You could end up falsely personalizing your emails.
With most email services, you have the ability to use custom fields like first name, last name, job title, or company name in your email campaigns. In cases in which you have an established relationship with the email recipients, it's appropriate to use some level of email personalization -- but this practice can be dangerous when you're working with a purchased list.
When you buy an email list, you haven't earned the right to know these people's contact information or established any sort of relationship or sense of trust. Also, you need to take into account that, again, bad data could lead to inaccurate personalization. For instance, if you email a person thinking they still work for a certain company when, in fact, they left that job.
Tailored one-to-one marketing can be an amazingly productive thing -- just be careful that you're not doing it prematurely. Receiving an unsolicited email is like starting a conversation with a stranger on the bus. How would you react if that stranger knew your name, what you do for a living, and your email address? Needless to say, you would be a bit wary of that person.
4) You are likely violating ESPs' terms of service.
Any reputable email service provider (ESP) will clearly outline these two items in their terms of service:
- You won't send spam!
- You won't use purchased, rented, or third-party lists of email addresses.
Why would an ESP care about the ethics of your email activity? When you send mass emails through an ESP, the email is routed through a common IP address associated with the ESP. If too many of the ESPs' customers are sending poor-quality emails, it can have a damaging effect on all of that service provider's customers' email deliverability.
So, if your ESP uses a shared IP address, which many do, it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch.
5) Sending out emails to rented or purchased lists reduces deliverability.
As we've been talking about, deliverability can be affected greatly when using third-party lists. Now consider that, for many businesses, email is the primary -- sometimes only -- channel of communication with their customers, members, and partners. So what happens if your email doesn't end up in your intended recipient's inbox? They don't receive their invoice, their password reset notification, or your latest, greatest product announcement.
Email primarily ends up in one of three places: successfully delivered to the inbox, routed to the junk or spam folder, or caught by an ESP gateway, preventing it from being delivered at all. If your email is being blocked by an ESP, you won't receive a bounce notification or error message.
Email deliverability can become a major problem, yet most organizations don't think about it until they have a crisis on their hands. Deliverability all comes down to sending reputation. ESPs monitor your email activity for a number of signals that contribute to your sending reputation. These signals include, but are not limited to:
- Sending relevant, properly formatted emails
- Patterns in the volume of email you are sending
- Number of times your emails are marked as junk or spam
- Email bounce rates
If you purchase an email list and begin sending an unusually high volume of email, there is a good chance your activity might raise some red flags. If your sudden increase in email volume isn't enough to alert your ESP to your suspicious email behavior, the high bounce rates and number of unsubscribes could be the nail in your coffin. If your email activity causes your ISP to flag your account, it can have seriously damaging effects on future email deliverability -- in fact, in some cases, it could completely block your ability to communicate via email.
6) It's so easy that anyone can do it.
Though you likely know this already, I'll say it anyway: You're not the first marketer to purchase an email list. It's more than likely that some of your competitors have blasted out promotional material to the exact same contacts over and over. Because of this, these contacts have completely tuned out unsolicited email. Valuable business relationships start by establishing trust, not by spamming people.
Think about it: If you had a great email list that your customers or prospects genuinely opted in for, would you share it with your competitors?
7) Using lists can be a morale killer for your sales and lead gen teams.
The person who decides it's a good idea to purchase an email list is likely not the person who will be executing email campaigns. Purchased email and contact lists can be a complete morale killer for members of your sales and lead generation team.
As members of your team begin to weed through the list of contacts, they will quickly become aware of the monotonous task you have dealt them. If you're lucky enough to get a response from a contact on your purchased list, you can expect to hear this:
- "Stop emailing me."
- "How did you get my contact information?"
- "You have emailed me 10 times this week."
- "Not interested."
8) Lists can negatively affect your CRM.
One of the downstream effects of purchasing an email list is the data integrity nightmare it can cause in your CRM system. When you realize the majority of contacts from your purchased list aren't legit, it can be very difficult to separate genuine contacts that have asked to be contacted from all of the useless data you imported from purchased lists. The bloat of bad data makes it nearly impossible to accurately compare the results of campaigns that are using contacts from various sources.
Purchasing an email list can also have an impact on the cost of your marketing and CRM software. Leading marketing and CRM software providers generally charge an additional fee for the ability to save large volumes of contact records. If your out-of-the-box subscription is equipped to handle 1,000 contacts and you purchase an email list with 10,000 contacts, more than likely, you will incur costs simply to manage this additional data.
So, what's the solution?
It's never too late to start building an opt-in email list. As Seth Godin points out, "Interactions rarely happen with people we don't trust." Do you immediately trust a door-to-door salesperson? A telemarketer? An email spammer?
Instead of pushing your message to thousands of unsuspecting inboxes, inbound marketing focuses on attracting people who are searching for information about your product or service. By consistently producing valuable content designed for your ideal customer, visitors will be compelled to opt in to hear from you on an ongoing basis. This permission for communication marks the start of a potential business relationship.
Subscribers may pick certain types of email content they wish to receive, like requesting email alerts when new blog posts are published or when a new product feature is available. Opt-in email addresses are the result of earning the interest and trust of your contact because they think you have something valuable and helpful to say.
While an opt-in email list doesn't have the quick-fit feel of a purchased list, you can be confident that you are building a truly valuable asset.
