So, You Want to Purchase an Email List?

By Anna Naumann:

A million thoughts run through my mind when I hear a new client ask about buying cold contacts’ information. I cringe at even the thought of it!

I get it, you want contacts and you want them FAST! As an email marketing strategist, I’m here to shout from the Omar building’s rooftop that you should never (EVER) purchase a cold contact list for your emails! Now, I get that not everyone deals with marketing emails on the daily like I do, and I have no problem with a little educational talk. So, at this point, you have two options: 1. We can all agree that I know what I’m talking about and we can move on with a lead generation strategy or 2. You can continue reading about why purchased lists are the wrong choice.

Class is in Session

Welcome to Email Marketing 101! In today’s lesson, we’ll be looking at open and click-through rates, as well as the impact a purchased list will have on them.

These two rates are quite possibly the two most looked at numbers to determine how your email performed. Although these stats can vary by industry, we consider 15% to be the average open rate and 5% to be the average click-through for most of our B2B client’s marketing emails.

When you throw a purchased list in the mix, these numbers drop. Drastically. Wishful thinking for a click-through rate on an email sent to a purchased list that is not expecting to hear from your organization is in the 1 – 3% range. If you thought that number tanked, think about the 3 – 5% open rate that you can expect to see. Yikes, amirite?!

You Can Kiss Your Reputation Goodbye!

Although a drop in open and click-through rates doesn’t look great, it’s not that scary. With an explanation, you’d understand why those numbers took a toll. But wait, there’s more! Do you know how a purchased list will impact your email deliverability? That’s the kind of thing scary nightmares are made of!

When you send an email to a purchased list, you’re spamming those poor, innocent contacts’ inboxes. They’re not expecting to hear from you, so of course, they’re going to engage negatively with your emails. Unsubscribes, flags, spam filters – I know that you’ve seen them all. These complaints will train major inbox providers, like Gmail, to flag your future emails as spam. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. When your email sends end up in spam, nobody is reading it – not your valid contacts, and certainly not your purchased contacts!

“You Can’t Send With Us!”

Said practically every reputable email platform in the world.

All major email systems including Campaign Monitor, HubSpot and Pardot all require validation that the contacts you’re importing are expecting to hear from you. By giving your sign off on a purchased list, you’re breaking the contract that you agreed upon.

When the platform’s deliverability team sees a major increase in negative engagement after a recent import, they’ll have a good guess as to why. This practice puts your marketing emails at risk of suspension.

I 110% understand how much you want more contacts! For your organization, more contacts mean more potential leads, more potential conversions and more potential business. That’s all fine and dandy, but is it really worth risking your deliverability? I promise that the Branch will find you valuable contacts! Please, please, for the love of all beautiful things in this lifetime, let’s just agree on one thing: you will never get those contacts through a purchased email list. At the end of the day, I’m really just looking out for you…

Email marketing is tough. I totally get it. Red Branch can help. Drop us a line!

The Branchers

We build the best damn marketing campaigns on the planet. And we do it for industries and companies you might not identify as easy to market (right away). Working here takes a very special kind of person.