Why Buying or Selling Email Lists is Against Email Marketing Best Practices
The market for buying and selling email lists has taken a dramatic downturn. According to the latest in Worldata’s List Price Index, the market has seen the biggest decline in over 20 years for the exchange of business-to-business and business-to-consumer email lists.
So after all, why is buying or selling email lists against email marketing best practices? For one, it is risky. Having a list of recipients who have not given you permission to send them emails or opt-in to your lists, have no true affinity or association with your brand. Continually, many email marketers would suggest there has never been a significant return on any bought or sold lists.
When creating your email lists it is best to build them organically through other brand marketing channels. By using permission-based email marketing, you gain the trust of your audience and protect their right against SPAM. iContact does not accept customers who currently use bought or sold lists.
Thanks for reading and I will be back soon to discuss more tips on email marketing.
Cheers,
Taylor
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I am not sure why the Worlddata’s List Price index is any validation of the value of email data whethere purchasing or renting for a campaign. Obviously, opt-in can-spam compliant data-=-targeted data b2b and consumer and lifestyle data is absolutley highly deliverable and performs amazing. A mediocre email platform such as i Contact or constant contact is for mall email deployments on do-it-yourself solutions. 99 percent of those companuies and individuals have no idea how to email market, period. So much work goes into emailing and time and money and it is an art and a science. The list is only half of it. And,m suffuce to say, it DOES have HUGE VALUE to any business! Targeted consumer data is amazing–pet owners, golfers, vacation and tarvel. If you know how to craete and append and clean your data the value is a fasger great ROI thah most mediums at 1/3 the cost.I can only assume you do not email market and are taking the stats of one report and predicting the downfall of an entire medium. ridiculous. Common sense marketing 101, get your products and services in front of thoise who want them. I have been in this industry 6b years and we have overf 150 attributes foir our files. We tend not to sell data—such as co-reg because it doesnt work, at all with mailing. please do a little more homework before you rant on and on about an industry you obvioulsy know nothing about!