An email list Imagine knocking on the door of someone you don’t know every week. Repeatedly, over and over again. Without even introducing yourself and without knowing if they have the slightest interest in seeing you. At first, they might open the door and wonder what you’re doing there. The next week, they look through the peephole and ignore you. By the third week, they’ll probably start to think about calling the police.
Table of contents
01
What are the dangers of buying email contact lists?
Violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Damage to your reputation as a sender
02
How to legally increase your contact list
1. Identify your audience
2. Take advantage of all your channels
3. Create valuable content
4. Don’t forget about the offline world
03
What to do if you don’t know where your email lists come from
This would be the equivalent of buying email databases in real life .
So why is this such a common practice, if it’s so annoying? On the one hand it’s easy to understand why companies fall into . The temptation of buying third-party databases: it seems like such a quick and “appealing” solution since it supposedly saves you the effort of building or growing your database organically . That resisting it seems almost impossible.
However, the reality is that buying email databases is not only a significant expense, but it can put our entire email marketing strategy in jeopardy . We can tell you this from ourselves as we are experts in email.
In this post we’ll look at the reasons why you should never buy a database. And give you some tips and resources on how to grow it naturally.
What are the dangers of buying email contact lists?
An email list Buying an email list and sending emails to people who have not specifically .Shown interest in your content is a bit like sneaking into someone’s inbox uninvited . At first they might open your messages. Then they’ll start ignoring them until at some point they get fed up and call the police.
In Spain, this police can have two faces. The good cop is the spam button : it gets you into trouble, but it could be worse. The bad cop is the Spanish Data Protection Agency . Which not only gets you into trouble but can also give you. A huge fine that will leave your company reeling.
In reality the good cop/bad cop metaphor comes to represent the two biggest reasons why you should never buy a contact list :
Because it’s illegal.
Because it will affect your deliverability.
But there is another player in this game that you need to worry about and who is watching to. Make sure you don’t use purchased databases: your own email provider .
Sounds a bit radical to you? Let’s take a look at some of the reasons against it and you’ll see why buying a contact list is more serious than it seems.
Violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
An email list As we said before, the main problem with buying email lists is that, since the GDPR came into force in 2018, it is illegal. What does that mean? You expose yourself and your company to the attention of the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) .
In cases where the Data Protection Act in Spain has been infringed, the AEPD is the agency responsible for investigating and, where appropriate, sanctioning offenders. In recent years, the Spanish agency has imposed large fines on numerous Spanish companies , including banks and telecommunications companies.
Why does buying lists violate GDPR? Because the European regulation requires explicit consent from recipients to commercial communications from companies, and by purchasing a list, you do not have that consent.
Damage to your reputation as a sender
If you are very very lucky disinterested users will delete your message without even opening it or unsubscribe from your list. However those who are tired of receiving emails that they have no interest in at all will mark your messages as spam which is the digital metaphor for “slamming the door in your face for being annoying.”
If a lot of angry users do the same thing (and they will, keep in mind that you’re probably not the only one who bought the cambodia email list list and bombards them with emails every week) your spam rates will rise exponentially and your open rates will plummet negatively affecting your reputation as a sender and your deliverability .
In the end all the money you’ve spent on that email list will not only not bring you better results but it may compromise your ability to reach the inboxes of your other contacts.
The risk of spam traps
But that’s not all. Purchased lists, no matter how current they are, are susceptible to spam traps , i.e. invalid addresses that have been set up by ISPs (Internet Service Providers, such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo…) to detect spammers .
Basically, they work in such a way that every email that is sent to this email address (an address without an existing recipient that is intended to detect who sends emails without following email marketing best practices) is instantly considered by the ISP as a spammer .
And what does this mean? Well, from that moment on, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo or the Internet service provider that has marked us as a spammer will mark all our messages as spam , and you know as well as we do that getting out of that situation is very complicated.
Penalty by ESPs
You may not know it, but a purchased database can cause problems long before you start sending.
Most email providers (including Sinch Mailjet) prefer not to deal with users who buy or rent their databases and therefore block all accounts that are caught in the act .
The reasons are more than valid: unless you have a monthly sending volume that exceeds six figures, you probably share the sending IP address with other clients and therefore also their reputation. This means that if someone does not respect the best practices for sending emails, both the reputation and the deliverability of that shared IP can be compromised.
How to legally increase your contact list
If you’ve made it this far, you’ll already know that the important thing about a good email database is not so much the quantity but the quality . That’s why we’re going to give you some basic tips on how to get subscribers who are really interested in receiving your email communications.
If at the end of this post you want to know more effective techniques to increase your database with potential clients, we have written an article with more than 14 ideas that you will find very useful.
1. Identify your audience
One of the keys to attracting new customers is making sure you’re speaking to the right audience.
Defining your target audience and designing your marketing strategy according to their interests and needs is the first step to achieving a healthy contact list that will give you better results.
2. Take advantage of all your channels
Most websites tend to focus their recruitment efforts exclusively on the blog, but there are many more pages where you can add a registration form to increase your database . An example of this are those parts of your website that are always visible to the user, such as the footer or the side menu.
On the other hand, we can also what happens when you block someone on telegram? take advantage of tools such as social networks . Which allow you to convert your followers into subscribers through subscription forms or CTAs.
Captura de pantalla del formulario de inscripción de Mailjet.
This is the registration form that you can find at the bottom of our website.
3. Create valuable content
Another very effective way to grow your contact lists is by offering valuable content in exchange for their personal data . This may not have convinced you much. But if you think about it. You can surely think of at least one occasion in which you have shared your email address to receive or download a piece of content.
The secret of this technique is in the quality of what you offer . If it is not something useful that provides a benefit. It will never work but if you succeed your database will continue to grow.
Captura de pantalla de una de nuestras páginas para descargar ebooks.
4. Don’t forget about the offline world
Sometimes we get so focused on the digital world that .We forget about the lead generation opportunities that are right in front of us literally. There’s nothing wrong with sharing physical forms in your store or establishment to collect email addresses from existing customers . Or taking advantage of events you attend to collect email addresses.
Of course, you should always bw lists keep the forms as proof that you have obtained .The explicit consent of those subscribers or even better you can send them an email to confirm. The opt-in before adding them to your contact lists.
Want more tips on how to grow your contact database organically and maintain it over time? Check out our posts 14 Effective Ideas to. Grow Your Email Databases and Email 101: Growing an Email List Organically .
What to do if you don’t know where your email lists come from
Sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where you don’t know where your lists came from. For example if you’ve just arrived at a job and they already have the lists .But they’re not documented.
This is a huge risk to your deliverability and of course a significant legal risk as well. Ensuring that you are sending emails to a database that has given its consent is essential. So it will be your job to audit and correct any irregularities.
How can you achieve thisWe give you two steps:
The first thing you need to do is make sure you’re not sending emails to spam traps or bad addresses that could harm your deliverability. To do this you can use tools like bulk email validations which will automatically locate and remove those potentially dangerous addresses. This way you’ll separate the wheat from the chaff and only have valid addresses on your list.
Once you have a list of real addresses. It’s time to check that you have the express and documented consent of those contacts. If not it will be essential to carry out a consent campaign if you plan to continue sending emails to them. As we have mentioned, data protection agencies such as the AEPD can ask you at any time to prove that you have this consent . And the fines can be very high if you do not have this information. Make sure to delete any contact who does not give you this express consent.
By taking these steps you will likely see your email database shrink. But it’s important to make sure you’re sending emails to real contacts who actually want to hear from you. When you do you’ll see your email metrics improve substantially and your campaigns perform much better.
In summary
It’s clear, isn’t it? Sending emails to people who don’t want to receive them is not only a mistake from. A business point of view (why are you going to spend money on buying an email list if it’s not going to bring you benefits?). But it can also become a big problem from a legal point of view.