7 reasons why buying an email list is a bad idea

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business, generate sales, and increase revenue. It is one of the best strategies to reach your audience and retain potential customers until they are ready to make a purchase.

Many marketers find themselves at a point where they need people they can email, quickly and cheaply. When they look to buy an email list, all they are looking for is new contacts to email in an attempt to increase sales. But buying an email list can cause more harm than good.

You’ll get thousands of email contacts for a modest price, but your email marketing campaigns and business plan will suffer.

In this article, I’ll talk about why buying email lists is a really bad idea. I’ll also give you a list of effective ways to build your email marketing list so you don’t have to buy one.

Contents:

• • • How can you get email lists?
      1. Buy an email list
      2. Rent an email list
      3. Create a subscription email list
      7 reasons why you shouldn’t buy an email list
      1. Violation of consent rules under the GDPR
      2. Reputable email marketing services do not allow purchased email lists
      3. Relevant email address lists are not for sale
      4. People on a purchased or rented list don’t know about your business
      5. Your email and IP reputation will be harmed
      6. It can be annoying
      7. Your email service provider may penalize you
      How to build your opt-in email list
      1. Create exclusive resources and content
      2. Promote exclusive resources and content on your marketing channels
      3. Run creative email marketing campaigns
      4. Place subscription forms on your website

How can you get email lists?

 

Before we discuss why purchasing an email list is practically a disaster for all your marketing efforts, let’s talk about the three ways you can get an email list.

1. Buy an email list

The process of purchasing an email list is pretty simple. You find an email list provider, decide on your demographic preferences, age, gender, etc., and purchase a list of names and email addresses based on that data.

An example of this is if you own an online toy store and you buy a list of 100,000 names and email addresses of people living in Spain with small children. It all depends on your target audience.

2. Rent an email list

Instead of purchasing an email list, you can work with an email list provider, but never own the list. In this process,you select a segment of your target audience to send your email newsletters to, but you never actually see the email addresses of the people you send the email to. If you choose this method, you must work with the email list provider to send your email.

In terms of effectiveness, both buying and renting an email address is not an effective way to grow your business through email marketing.

3. Create a subscription email list

 

In this process, someone voluntarily gives you their email address and, if you request it, other information (age, location, etc.) and consents to you sending them emails. They can also choose certain types of email content they want to receive, such as promotional emails, emails with discounts, or receiving an email only when a new blog post is published.

Opt-in email addresses are the result of your audience trusting you to share their contact information and consent to be contacted via email.

In a single opt-in subscription process, subscribers enter their email address via a form and are immediately added to a mailing list. In a double opt-in, subscribers are required to confirm the email they receive after filling out a form.

To comply with the GDPR, it is not a requirement to have a double opt-in; a single opt-in is sufficient, but the double opt-in prevents incorrect or fraudulent subscriptions.

There is one very important thing to remember when it comes to opt-in email lists.

You may have seen an email list provider say, “This email list I’m providing you is fully opt-in.” What this means is that the people on the list agreed to receive emails from someone at some point, but it doesn’t mean that the recipients of the email agreed to receive communications from your business. It’s very important to note this difference.

7 reasons why you shouldn’t buy an email list

1. Violation of consent rules under the GDPR

 

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European data privacy law that came into effect in May 2018, most email senders are legally required to allow recipients to opt out of brazil email list they do not wish to receive. Your email contacts should be able to do so directly in the sign-up form. The GDPR doubles down on opt-in in email communication, as it requires further confirmation by the recipient and purchased email lists are not compliant.

You don’t have to be based in Europe to fall under the jurisdiction of the GDPR. If your recipients live in Europe, they are protected by the GDPR. Since the GDPR governs all email communications in Europe, simply adding an “unsubscribe” button to your email template isn’t enough. You must have explicit consent from your contacts to send them emails. This means your contacts must click the opt-in box to opt in to email subscriptions.

When you buy or rent an email list, users on the list do not have this option, so you are not GDPR compliant.

2. Reputable email marketing services do not allow purchased email lists

 

If you are using an email marketing service provider  or intend to use one, you will find that reputable companies will insist on using opt-in email lists.

You may think of using another email marketing service provider that is not reputable. But this has a drawback:

Email service providers with shared IP addresses that do not require the use of opt-in email lists have poor deliverability.

Why is this so? Because the actions of a sender can affect the IP reputation of everyone sharing that IP on the server and as soon as the mass mailing is detected, your domain’s mail will be disconnected, preventing your emails from reaching your recipients’ inboxes.

3. Relevant email address lists are not for

It is very difficult to find a quality email list that is for sale. If an email list is for sale, it means that the email addresses on it have already been deemed unresponsive or unqualified for marketing outreach.

Most of the time, purchased email addresses have probably been spammed to the ends of the earth. Because if they weren’t, these email addresses would still be in the hands of the company they belonged to.

4. People on a purchased or rented list don’t know about your business

Rented or purchased email lists are sometimes scraped from other websites, which is a dirty way to acquire email marketing contacts.

But even if we assume those email addresses weren’t legitimately obtained from people who signed up to receive those emails, we need to remember that they accepted emails from the original owner of the email list, but not from your business.

Recipients of a purchased email list have no prior relationship with your business. This causes them to mark your address as “spam” when your newsletter reaches their inbox.

5. Your email and IP reputation will be harmed

 

You probably know that there are organizations dedicated to combating spam. What they do is set up a honeypot, which is a “trap system” or “decoy” placed in a network or computer system to prevent a possible attack on the computer system.

Similarly, spam traps can be created to identify unwanted emails. Spam traps are created when an email address how to hide your phone number on telegram bounces because it is old or no longer valid, but it continues to receive consistent traffic. As a result, the email addresses become a spam trap and stop returning the bounce notice. Instead, they accept the message and report the sender as a spammer.

When you buy or rent a list, there is no way to check how often emails have been sent to the email addresses on it or whether they have been purged to prevent you from being identified as a spammer.

So the question is, are you really willing to risk not only your email deliverability, but also the reputation of your IP address and your company? I don’t think so.

6. It can be annoying

Nobody likes receiving an email in their inbox from a company they’ve never heard of.

Your job as a marketer is to provide them with reasons (useful content or valuable offers) that entice them to subscribe to your newsletter. If you force your email content on someone too early, you risk losing their trust early.

7. Your email service provider may penalize you

 

Purchasing an email list doesn’t just damage your brand reputation and deliverability as I’ve told you before. It also puts bw lists your email account at risk. Email service providers like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc. don’t want to be associated with accounts that recipients repeatedly mark as spam. Some email service providers may go as far as to immediately close your account if they suspect you of sending spam emails.

How to build your opt-in email list

Now that we’ve talked about the numerous reasons why you should never buy an email list, let’s move on to the steps to build an opt-in email list.

Building your own list of email contacts who have opted in to receive your newsletter not only complies with GDPR, but also protects your brand reputation and presents you with opportunities to grow this list and build authentic relationships with new customers.

Let’s go over some of the basic ways to build an opt-in email list:

1. Create exclusive resources and content

Exclusive content such as courses, ebooks, checklists, templates, etc. are effective premium content resources. People find this type of content valuable enough to give up their email addresses. A large number of exclusive resources will make it easier to attract potential customers.

2. Promote exclusive resources and content on your marketing channels

 

Now that you’ve created unique content that can capture email addresses, create marketing campaigns around it. You can use social media, PPC, and blogs to promote it.

The best option is to use your blog to advertise your exclusive resources. Write a blog about the topic related to the content you have created, add CTAs that take the audience to the landing page of the exclusive content.

3. Run creative email marketing campaigns

People forward useful emails to their acquaintances, friends, and family, and that helps grow your database. Make it easy for your recipients to forward or spread your email content. Include CTAs in your emails that make sharing an obvious and easy option for recipients.

4. Place subscription forms on your website

 

Another way to grow your email list is to add subscription forms at various points on your website. You can add forms at the end of each blog post you publish, on the home page, and on the contact page.

I have read and accept the privacy policy.

It may seem tempting and easy to buy or rent an email list. It’s a quick and easy way to avoid the long and tedious process of accumulating subscribers on your own. But as I mentioned above, the negative consequences of buying an email list outweigh everything. You can damage your brand’s reputation, create problems with your email service provider, and most importantly, get into legal trouble.