Email Marketing and Domain Blacklisting

Yes, you can get penalized just by having links to your site in the spam email even if it's not sent from your domain.

And good luck on trying to send the emails through gmail.

There are ways to use a purchased list to advertise your site, you need to wash it. One method is is to stand up a throw-away domain and use it to send to these purchased lists and having them opt-in to your very-related throw away domain for more info. You don't include your product name(s) or anything from your legit domain.

You'll need to make sure the spam reputation doesn't affect your deliverability as you send so that the entire purchased list actually gets your wash emails. If you send to 1/5 the list and get a spam reputation the rest of the list won't ever get your email. The good news is it will be on your throw away domain, not your legit one.

Once you've washed the list you'll be left with these lists of emails:

1. Addresses that opted in - these are your hotest leads to send your legit product emails to.
2. Addresses that bounced - don't email these again, they're no longer active.
3. Addresses that flagged you as spam - don't email these again, they didn't like your throw away domain, which since it's very related to your product they won't like your product either.
4. Addresses that opened your email. You can send to them again, but know it's now an investment of diminishing returns, you'll get fewer and fewer opt ins each time you email.

There are some caveats that still remain. The top one that affects you two different ways is list growth. Anyone can stand up a temp domain and send 100k emails through it in a day. The new domain should have a clean reputation, so they think their emails should all hit the inbox. Wrong. Major email services (gmail et al) see the flood of incoming email from a new domain as highly suspicious and treat it just like spam (at worst) and flag the domain or do other things like bounce it, spam it but don't flag your domain, or stick it promos (best case, but not likely).

Here's how this can affect you, your throw away domain - it has to slowly build up the number of emails it sends. It shouldn't just start blasting out email to a large list on day one.

And your main list on your legit site also can't go from sending to a list of 10k once a week to suddenly sending to a list of 100k a week. You'll blow your legit site's reputation.

So, the answer is "yes" you can send to purchased lists, but if you don't know what you're doing it can be more trouble than it's worth.

Maverick,

How are you sending these emails out? Personal email? Something like Constant Contact or Mailchimp? Or an actual mailing server with different sets of IPs?

Your site will get listed as spam and if you have any email addresses that you use regularly for communication from your site like yourname@yourwebsite.com, those will most likely get sent straight to the spam can.

When I use a mass mailer, I buy domains that are similar on Namecheap for 88 cents and burn through them as need be. Usually .com and .info are preferred and don't get blacklisted as fast.