The purchase of email lists is among the supposedly easiest ways to start doing mailing in Digital Marketing, however, despite seeming like an "easier" method, this practice is not recommended because it can be quite detrimental to your business.
However, there are still people who do not know how harmful this practice can be; "If everyone does it, I'm going to do it too" or "it's such a big list that it's worth it, it's not possible that none of them have an interest in my business" are some of the common phrases that people use to justify the purchase of email lists.
In this post, we hope to show, definitively, why it is not worth investing in this activity.
People do not know and do not show interest in your company and your products
Those people have no idea how your company got their emails. That causes a very negative impression when you start with the mailing.
Previously, shipping ended up having less of a negative impact for three reasons:
The first is that we did not have to deal with as much information as there is now (emails, messages, posts on social networks, etc.) and, in this sense, any message that is not authorized is extremely uncomfortable, a frowned upon interruption and that does not match the good practices of Inbound Marketing .
The second reason is that we saw the explosion of Social Networks, which gave voice and power to the consumer. Today the company is frowned upon not only by the person who received the SPAM but also by all the friends that person has, in case this person uses his profile to make claims.
The third is that mailing services are getting smarter. There is a high probability that many users mark your message as SPAM and, by doing so, the reputation of the company is damaged. In this way, the next Email Marketing shipments have a great chance of falling directly into the SPAM tray, and thus, people who would have wanted to receive information from your company will not see your emails. It is impressive how even various large brands do not perceive this side effect.
The lists generally have a very poor quality
Emails that are on a purchased list are usually the worst of all. People who have your email address on those lists most likely receive emails from many other companies that also purchased lists. In these cases, the chances of your email getting lost among so many others or being marked as SPAM are very high, as we already mentioned.
On top of that, those lists usually have a lot of emails that don't exist or have been deactivated. By including these emails in the contact list and sending them, the mailing services available on the market already mark this as an "error" and interpret it as a clear sign that the list is not up to date or that it was built with poor quality. . Result: your company goes to groups with a low reputation and, for the following mailings, the mailing service will use an infrastructure that is already "burned".
Likewise, generally, the quality of the lists is bad in terms of the target audience. To "fatten" the list and try to make it worth more, all kinds of emails are included, and end up entering profiles that have no relationship with your company.
No reputable email marketing service is going to authorize sending
Based on what was discussed above, purchased lists represent very high rates of SPAM marking and delivery errors, which damages the reputation of the mailing server you are using.
Knowing that this type of service always prohibits the import of purchased lists, seeking to maintain a good reputation and high quality in its deliverability. Therefore, the good servers will not authorize the shipment or in the case of the bad servers, they will authorize their shipments but surely, they already have a bad reputation and for this reason, they will obtain a very low deliverability rate.
Observation: Some believe that email marketing tools can be fooled by saying that the list is their own and not purchased. The best mailing services have mechanisms to identify this: the email is sent to a few, in small batches, and with bad results, the campaign is interrupted.
4 ways to buy email lists that last until today
1. LinkedIn Contacts Email Lists
This form is the top 1, based on what we hear from our partner agencies. It is very common for these companies to hear the client say something like “ our CEO has a very qualified audience on LinkedIn, so put this list here on RD Station ”.
Even with the recent change implemented by the social network, we know that there are still some small saved lists. And we're sure they'll be around for a while!
However, when we talk about profile on LinkedIn, you have to think that connection request between people who have never met is very common. It is even advised to accept freely, to broaden your searches, and reach their messages. Therefore, it is not usually a well-segmented base.
In addition, the fact that the base interacts with you on the social network does not mean, in practice, that you are interested in receiving your email. Consider this.
Finally, even if you're a marketer and you're doing social selling or prospecting on LinkedIn, that doesn't mean it's a base that wants to get emails or that it's all the rage. There is a lot of "dirt" in the prospecting process, even if it involves targeted audiences.
So, what do we recommend to the Marketing professional when presented with this request to “upload this list of contacts on LinkedIn”?
Avoid scaling the base: It is common to have many emails without interest. Avoid it.
Use this list for ads: Why not make an ad on LinkedIn itself (or on other networks, like Facebook) to show an offer for a material? After this conversion, the contact enters the base. So, take advantage of the list, but don't ruin your potential customer base.
2. Email list with event contacts
Your company-sponsored, supported, participated in, or created an X, Y, or Z event. Very good, the event is very good for Marketing! It is the moment when communication is no longer virtual, you look into the eyes, speak and interact with the target audience of that action.
And then, it's pretty common to have an event email list. “ I managed to make a small list. Here are 5,000 hot leads from the event ." For starters, it's important to know one crucial thing: they're not hot .
It is very unusual that during the event you organized to separate who was really hot and who was not, among the people who left the email. And even if you've separated it, you have to talk to a lot of people, so it's an unreliable assessment.
And how many people at the event didn't leave a "wrong" email? Or, still, did they write the email incorrectly, in good faith? It happens many times.
Also, many of the "hot" contacts were hot during the event, but not after. The crucial mistake, in these cases, is to bet on those lists of participants of a certain event or even, on those that we collect at our stand.
Therefore, what we tell the marketer facing this request is the following:
- Clean list: Do not upload the list before an email cleanup process. You will be surprised at the number of contacts this initial list will leave.
- Plan the nutrition of these contacts: what you can segment, do it. Then, create the communication exactly as an extension of the process that started there at the event.
- Go to RD Station Marketing, turn on nutrition, but schedule review: ok, all set, then go to your automation software and turn on nutrition. And don't leave that matter behind. You'll need to go back to that nutrition, try a new hook, and even, in some cases, delete unscored contacts.
(We know this event listing situation isn't happening right now, due to the pandemic, but here's our take on it for when it's useful.)
3. Gmail/Outlook Contacts Email List
This is the most tainted strategy of all, oddly enough. The belief revolves around being contacts that are used in daily life. “So, in these contacts from our Gmail, we have all the clients, some partners, just attractive people”, is what is heard many times.
Although the number of hot contacts is likely to be higher compared to the two examples we've already seen, the amount of dirt here is also much higher.
Imagine the number of emails you have exchanged with other people, contacts that no longer exist, contacts that no longer remember you, etc. So here the list is very dirty, in any case.
Therefore, the process that we recommend for the Marketing professional is:
- Clean list: Same as the previous article. Don't even start dealing with this list if you don't sterilize it.
- Segment the list – After reviewing what's left of the cleanup, you'll want to set aside some time (in the spreadsheet) to separate the contacts as much as possible. Is this a client? Are you a former customer? Are you a supplier here? Are these from my team? You don't have to upload this list yet, don't go back. That is, you must first clean and then segment. That way you will save time. After all, this segmentation will be very human and will need to be done by the “list owner”.
- So you decide yes or no. It will be according to the contacts, sometimes they will not all matter. You can also use the ad tactic, for example, on former clients. Why not?
4. Email list of your partner's contacts
To close our selection, here comes the last "list" routine, which is not that unusual. It is the “contact list of my business partner”.
You can be sure that it is a negligible portion that is hot. It is so with your base, it will be so with your partner's base. Therefore, never directly raise that base. In this case, we indicate that you should take advantage of the contract and combine it with co-marketing.
Instead of moving up the list, it uses an association action to launch a material. In this way, your partner will shoot there, at his base, and only those leads that are really interested in the subject will enter yours.
Plus, you can still generate buzz, improve your lead generation, and you can even achieve link building so that the Landing Page stays with you and your partner “links” this page on their website.
Avoid buying lists and better create your own for your company
It may be more laborious but it is worth investing in creating your own contact base. In this article on how to do Email Marketing, I give some suggestions to start building a contact base. Here are some of the benefits:
Extremely Qualified List
All the people who are on the list that you build are there because they know your company and have given the authorization to receive your emails. Open-and-click results tend to be considerably better in this type of case.
competitive barrier
This qualified list of contacts is a marketing asset, that is, it works as a barrier to new competitors. They may try to copy the product or services you manage, however, it will take a long time to have a list of contacts like yours (and therefore, a relationship with so many potential clients).
Independence and economy
Your business gets more consistency and doesn't need to rely on buying lists to get email marketing results. Independence is already good by itself, however, it is much better when we remember that it is free.
In conclusion, we can ensure that buying lists bring more negative impacts than positive ones. We can even assure you that many of the companies that use this strategy are aware that they will not last long in the market.
This post was originally written by Andre Siqueira in Portuguese, you can find it here and it has adaptations for Latin America made by the author.
