Can I rent or buy an email list?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is make sure you know what you’re paying for—if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not worth it. Most email lists that you buy are going to be out of date and dirty—full of old, bad email addresses that will cause lots of bounces. This can hurt your good sending reputation because the ISPs (Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, etc.) will red flag senders that send an email that goes to a lot of bad, bouncing email addresses. And many lists are scraped from websites and contain email addresses that aren’t really valid: webmaster@, info@, etc.
So how do you rent or buy an email list that’s legitimate? Carefully. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- You don’t want to buy a list. If someone is offering to sell you a list, that should send up a red flag. If the list is valuable, why would they sell it? A list will only remain valuable if the use of the list (how many and what type of emails are being sent to it) is carefully managed. Use of a list cannot be controlled if copies of it are being sold.
- You want to rent a list. List owners who’ve been given permission to send emails from third parties can legitimately rent their lists. They’ll also be careful to manage the use of the list so that it remains valuable—in other words, they’ll be more careful about how frequently the list is emailed to and if the emails will be relevant to their subscribers. For example, a travel company might send a third party email from a hotel chain, but would most likely decline to send a third party email for a home-improvement store. This is good for you because there’s a better chance the recipients will be receptive to your offer.
- Try and be included in an existing email newsletter. This gives you the opportunity to reach out to a new audience within the context of an email newsletter and company that the recipients know and open. You don’t risk creating a negative impression of your brand as there is no confusion on the part of the reader as to whom the email was sent from and why they are receiving it.
- You want the list owner to introduce your product or service to their list. If the list owner will send a separate, dedicated email for you, ideally you want it to be in the context of a partnership or an endorsement of your product. Sure, the owner might be allowed to send a third party message, but will it make sense from the eyes of the reader? Your product will not be presented in the best light if your message lacks meaningful context—if there is no attempt to connect your company to the company whose email list the reader subscribed to.
- The “From” address should be the list owners name—this is who the readers have a relationship with. This will also help give your email the context of being endorsed by the list owner. A list owner who wants to put your name in the “From” address field should also send up a red flag. If your name were in the “From” address, you would look like a spammer as the recipient didn’t sign up to receive email from you and may not know who your company is. That’s a negative brand impression that you could do without.
- Remind people why they’re getting the email. Sometimes, you will be handed over a list of email addresses: there are some organizations (often at colleges and universities) where the members agree to receive email from other members of the organization. Sometimes the organization will handle sending emails to the list, and other times they’ll give the list to the members. In this case, remind the recipients that they’re receiving the email as a member of the organization. But be wary of sending in this scenario, too. Joining the organization to get access to the email list might not end up being fruitful if the email list is just handed over to whomever wants it; if there’s no oversight as to who can join and the use of the email addresses, your time and money might be better spent elsewhere.
- Remember this word: Co-Registration. You can also work with third parties who have websites with relatively high traffic. They will ask for the opt-in and collect email addresses specifically for your newsletter or email list. This is an excellent way to grow your list as the people on the list know what they’re signing up for and will be anticipating your email communication.
For more information about working with third parties in your list building efforts, contact Mustang List.