Email marketing to purchased lists - does it work?

3 replies
For one of my clients, he says he found someone who is offering him a large list of emails of his target audience. I'm worried about how to go about sending mails to purchased lists without it looking too spammy.

Does anyone have any positive or real life experiences with such email marketing? Does it work and if so how do you go about it ( any tool? ) and which email ID is best to use as an alternative other than his main domain?
#email #lists #marketing #purchased #work
  • Profile picture of the author gingerninjas
    Unless these people have subscribed I would stay clear of it.

    Listen to your gut feeling.

    I only use lists from clients that are organically grown. Just say no or tell him you can't help him in this instance, if he does some reading into purchased lists he will understand.

    There are plenty of reasons why not to send out emails to a purchased list, it's just not worth it.
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  • Profile picture of the author DIABL0
    I have been monetizing purchased data for over 16 years.

    I generate leads and I buy fresh / targeted data, where I know exactly what the users are interested in and that a lead gen offer exists that matches their interest. So I'm not trying to sell anything, I just need the users to fill out a form.

    Which is completely different from buying a niche list and then trying to sell some product that would fall with in the niche. Which I'm guessing is probably what your customer is wanting to do.

    Buying data is really more of a business model than a traffic strategy. When you buy data for a living, your going to have special tools / resources and know how to mail / inbox and what limitations exist.

    Where when you buy data to try and generate traffic, your going to lack all the above experience, etc...

    Of your customer insists on trying it...

    I would recommend that you just purchase a sample of the data and test it. Based on how the test goes, then you can decide how to move forward with the remainder of the data.

    You will need to have the data cleaned by a reputable list hygiene service to remove bounces and known complainers, spam traps, etc...

    You will want to buy a domain and set up separate hosting, to be safe.

    Get an autoresponder or smtp account you are willing to lose and run a test.

    My biggest concern is how old is the data? Since it is suppose to be targeted, the older it is, the greater the chance, that users may no longer be interested in whatever they were initially targeted for. If this is the case, then the greater the chance of getting excessive complaints.

    For aged data, I don't even use autoresponders / smtps. I use my own servers / IPs. However, setting up such just for a test is not very financially sound. Plus you will likely not even be able to inbox all domains using your own IPs. Which creates a whole other problem.

    If you want to explain things in more detail, I could give you better advice.
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  • Profile picture of the author mattsuth
    I am still new to this area myself but my heart says you've got to start somewhere.
    Purchasing a list seems like the most logical way to build up authentic followers. Even if you only manage to convert 10% at least you can mail them next time knowing they're genuine?

    Email marketing is undoubtedly successful and offers the best ROI but it takes time to build up a good list and even then there are no guarantees.

    You need to generate a lead magnet, create a blog or promote yourself all over social media which are all things that take time, in the interim I don't see anything wrong at all with trying a fast track way to market your product - what have you got to lose?
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