Buying an Email List and Other Ways to be a Failure.
In the last couple of weeks there’s been a decent amount of chatter around list purchase for email marketing. That bugs me. Why? Well, it’s a terrible practice that most unknowing marketers do due to the ‘ease’ of purchase, low cost and minimal usage of resources on the part of the purchaser. I see why these things are appealing to someone who doesn’t know much about email, but even so, it’s logically a bad choice. It doesn’t take much to understand that you get what you pay for and in reality – no one sells their email address to a company for the purpose of being marketed to.
I can’t remember a time when a list vendor asked me, “Can we use your email address? We just want to sell it to whomever will buy it so that you can get relevant, timely, great priced deals directly to your inbox. Sound good?” That doesn’t happen; it doesn’t happen because no one would be willing to do it. As a marketer on any level list buying should raise some immediate questions, regardless of email knowledge. How often is this list used? What are the demographics within the list? How where the records obtained? Who legitimately allows you to sell their email address to whomever you choose? Why do you seem so slimy and why does that bottle say snake oil?
We as marketers also have to look at the pudding; I promise the proof is in there. Take for example the disclaimers clearly stated in the terms of most reputable ESP’s (Email Service Providers). Mark Brownlow has a fantastic post that also highlights this – “No purchased lists …”, MailChimp, “purchased lists may not be used”, Campaign Monitor and ExactTarget says, “Our clients certify that they will not use rented or purchased lists…” (His post is better than mine, you should probably read it if you got this far in)
At the end of the day there are oodles, yes oodles of reasons legally and professionally why we shouldn’t buy lists. I could list all of them out here, but there are better posts out there for that. This post is a common sense post for marketers looking to use email as a marketing channel. Don’t take the easy way out and buy a list, you’re doing your company a disservice and our industry a non-favor. Even Lady Gaga knows that buying an email list is like submitting your dues to the Spammer Club.
If you’d like advice on how to be a real email marketer, I suggest and shamelessly plug all my friends – HERE. (Really is a fantastic resource)
Stay thirsty my friends, Viva la Email.
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