Suppose you run a digital marketing agency and you want to use email marketing to grow your client base. So, you go online and purchase a ready-made list of 50,000 email addresses of medium-sized company owners in your target sector. Let us tell you why this is a HORRIBLE idea.
Let’s get this out of the way – you should NEVER purchase a ready-made email list. And there are at least four good reasons why we say so. Let’s have a look.
Reason 1: Such action is illegal
The majority of countries have some privacy protection regulations. In the European Union, we have GDPR, but other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, have similar laws. All those regulations say one thing – you cannot send email messages to people randomly. You need to have their consent. If you don’t (and you don’t because even if the owner of the base you purchased has such consent, it’s good only for one company), you cannot legally message these people, especially if your communication is of a marketing or sales nature.
In the worst-case scenario, you can even get a huge fine for violating these privacy regulations. Back in 2020, one Italian company called Wind was fined 17 million euros for sending unsolicited advertisements to Italian individuals without obtaining their consent and for providing incorrect contact details, preventing consumers from unsubscribing.
So, as you can see, it’s not just theory. Governments are currently very serious about their anti-spam laws, and if you don’t comply with them, you’re at risk of violating those regulations and getting a really big fine.
That’s by far the most important reason why you shouldn’t buy a ready-made email list, but there’s more.
Reason 2: Unknown quality
When you buy a ready-made email list, you have no way of assessing its quality. And believe us, truly good email bases are usually not for sale. And it’s perfectly logical! Suppose there is someone who DOES have a great email list, and they decide to sell it. Now, this list is getting emails from five, ten, or maybe more companies. People are irritated, and they block those addresses. This “great” list is no longer great. An email base is not something you can use without end, especially if there are more companies doing the exact same thing.
But that’s a “positive” scenario. In nine out of ten cases, it is impossible to assess the quality prior to the purchase. You don’t really know who put this list together, when, using what methods, and what parameters. Moreover, you have no way of knowing how often those email addresses have been emailed in the past and whether the email addresses on that list have been verified for hard bounces (we will discuss this more in the fourth point) to prevent identifying you as a spammer.
A list that promises direct access to 50,000 medium-sized company owners may contain 80% of addresses that do not even meet this requirement! And there’s no way of knowing.
Reason 3: Complete strangers
Ok, let’s assume that the list you purchased does contain the addresses it’s supposed to contain. This doesn’t change the fact that those people don’t know you and are not expecting any communication from you. And you probably know how people feel about unsolicited communication, especially if it’s about sales right out of the gate.
Mailing people who don’t know you won’t get you high open and response rates. You can safely assume that 90% of the emails you send will land unread in the spam folder or in the trash.
Reason 4: IP/domain reputation
Some websites have so-called honeypot captchas. These are hidden forms or links on a web page that are invisible to human users but can be detected by automated bots. Companies use honeypot captchas in order to detect and block spam bots. Another option is that a honeypot can be a planted email address that, when emailed, automatically tags the sender as a spammer. Now imagine you have 100 such addresses in your purchased email base (again, you don’t know, do you?). Your email address, as well as your IP, would be immediately labeled as spammy, making your future email marketing efforts much more difficult.
Plus, if you use your own email address to send out those messages, you can get into trouble with your hosting provider if you’re sending thousands of emails daily. Of course, you could work your way around and use one of the email marketing tools, but all the decent ones will require you to confirm that you’ve gathered those email addresses yourself and that you have recipients’ consent to communicate with them, so…
So, what should you do? Build your own email base instead!
There is only one alternative that’s worth considering – you need to create your own email base. If you’d like to know how to do it, we have an article on our blog where we explain the best way to create a brand-new, high-quality email base from scratch.
And once you do and you want to utilize email marketing, iPresso is the perfect choice. You can start with a free trial to see how we can boost your email marketing efforts.
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