2:47 pm admin

First and foremost, it’s important to understand that, generally speaking, buying a list, can cause you a lot of problems and may actually not be allowed under the terms of service provided by your email provider (if you’re using a 3rd party email service) or by your hosting company (if you’re using a self hosted email solution).

Having said that, sometimes building an email list can be frustrating and time consuming to build it one lead at a time. So, naturally, you begin to look for other alternatives, which often include buying an email list.

Even if you’re not actively “searching” for email lists, at some point during your online lead generation, you WILL come across a list for “sale”. These may be in the form of co-reg (co-registration) or they may simply be a bundled list for sale for any number of reasons.

NOTE: “Buying” a list is not always 100% bad!

But it can be, and often is… more often than not!

We’ll talk about several methods by which you can “buy” a list and some of the pros and cons of each. Keep in mind, we are not recommending buying an email list, but rather explaining some of the options so you know what you’re looking at in the event you should consider it in the future:

When it comes to buying a list, there are a few different ways you can go about this.

1. Purchase from a retail store.

You may have seen these in retail electronics stores or even featured on infomercials! Stay away from these! PERIOD. The large majority of these addresses are abandoned, invalid, or simply “scraped” addresses where someone has just collected a bunch of email addresses from websites online.

While you may be able to get a list of 10,000,000 email addresses, there will be a HUGE percentage that are just bad… a good number of “spam traps”… and most importantly, the people will not be targeted to your product or service.

In all cases, this is a BAD idea!

2. Purchase an email list from a legitimate business owner (who may be selling his/her company and/or customer database).

For example, let’s say a business owner decides to sell his/her company for any number of reasons. Perhaps they are moving in a different direction. Perhaps you simply want to buy out their whole company.

In cases, like these, it may make sense to buy the email list – or the entire company including other assets like websites, intellectual property, etc.

You’ll obviously want to put in some checks and balances and will often want to “transition” between the current online business owner and yourself. In other words, the current list owner makes an introduction to you a few times and then, perhaps, you send some “joint” emails together. Then, transition to yourself and/or your company.

IMPORTANT: Make sure the list owner’s privacy policy does not limit the sale of the list. Many policies state that the contact information will never be shared, sold, rented, etc. In the event you are buying the entire company, you may be okay, but the Privacy Policy is a critical piece of this puzzle when you’re buying an email list in this manner.

NOTE: We are not attorneys or accountants, and any time you are considering purchasing another business – or portion of assets – it is a good idea to consult with proper legal and financial counsel to ensure that it is the right decision for your business.

3. A mailing house (think direct mail list rental).

A mailing house list is generally acquired through demographic data and often drills to down to specific data that could help you as an online business owner.

Keep in mind, the better the list, the more expensive it will be. Generally speaking, these lists are usually not worth the price you’ll pay.

It’s far easier – and more cost effective – to build a list in-house from scratch in almost all cases.

Keep in mind that with any of these options, chances are that you will need to have your own email solution. In other words, 3rd party email providers will generally NOT allow you to upload purchased lists. While there are some exceptions to this, chances are that you’ll need to have your own email solution on your own servers for any kind of list rental or purchase – or any email marketing that comes from lists not built on their systems for that matter!

To learn more about what it takes to host your own email, visit http://www.emaildelivered.com/how-it-works.

Author: Heather Seitz

Attention Readers, Publishers, Editors, Bloggers, and Marketers: You may republish or syndicate this article without any charge. The only thing I ask is that you keep the newsletters, article, or blog post exactly as it was written and formatted, with no changes. You must also include full publication attribution and back links as indicated.

This information has been provided by http://www.EmailDelivered.com and written by Heather Seitz. To find more on e-mail lists, visit http://www.emaildelivered.com/email-marketing/how-to-buy-an-email-list/. Don’t forget to sign up for the EmailDelivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources related to email marketing and email deliverability.

 

January 17, 2012