Buying E Mail Lists | All you need to know (Complete Guide)

Looking to buy an E Mail List for your marketing campaigns ? Whether you are starting a new business or you are growing an existing one, buying targeted E Mail lists can be a good strategy – Only if you do it the right way.

There are many factors you need to consider before buying an E Mail list – Where to buy the list ? What should you check before buying ? Is buying E Mail Lists Legal ? How to ensure 95%+ deliverability ? How much should you pay ?

In the below article we will address all the questions you may have related to buying E Mail Lists. We will also show you how you can increase your return on investment by buying targeted E Mail lists with more than 95% deliverability rate and a high response rate.

There are three main ways of acquiring an E Mail list – Buying an E Mail List, Renting an E Mail List and Growing your own Opt In E Mail List. Lets take a look at these methods one by one.

Buying E Mail Lists

Here, you work with an E Mail list broker and purchase an E Mail list as per your business requirements. This method works very well for B2B Businesses where you are pitching a product or a service to another business.

For example, you may need an E Mail list of all IT managers in USA for an E Mail Marketing campaign to introduce your new IT product or service. Or you may want an E Mail list of Logistic professionals in a particular city to promote your transportation business. These are examples of targeted E Mail Marketing.

This works only if the E Mail list providers are able to provide you accurate data with proper targeting. For example, if you want to target CEOs/Owners of small businesses in a particular city and the vendor provides you a list of E Mails with generic E Mails such as info@example.com or admin@example.com, your E Mails may not reach the person you want to target.

Another problem that a lot of marketers face while buying E Mail lists is the fact that most vendors sell them old leads which are not updated regularly. Old data is irrelevant data. Here you need to understand the concept of data decay.

Data decay refers to the gradual loss of data quality within a system, including key company information, personal details and most importantly, accurate contact information. Data decay for B2B leads is approximately 30% per year. That means if you buy E Mail leads which are a year old, only 70% of the data will be relevant. This will negatively affect your deliverability as well as your ROI. (More on that later).

Most list brokers have a huge database of E Mails which are not updated regularly. They usually sell the same leads to multiple clients. The list you buy may have been overused to such an extend that your domain may get reported for spamming and get blocked.

Most vendors will also require you to buy leads in bulk. This means that if the leads are not relevant, you will be stuck with a huge list of leads which you may not be able to use because of low deliverability and poor response.

Does this mean that you should not buy E Mail leads at all ? Certainly not. As mentioned in the above examples, targeted B2B E Mail marketing campaigns can be very effective provided the leads are fresh and targeted.

You cannot buy Fresh and targeted E Mail lists from most online vendors. As mentioned above, the leads are seldom updated. The targeting too may not work very well because they will only be able to filter data based on the data fields they already have. For Example, if you request a list of Purchase managers in companies with employees size between 50 and 100, they may only be able to filter the data based on Designation and City. They may or may not have employee size as a data field.

The only solution to acquire fresh and targeted leads then is to find a vendor who will manually create the data as per your specific requirements. Rather than buying readymade lists from list brokers, you can hire a company who works like virtual assistants to manually create fresh leads as per your requirements.

There are many advantages of this method compared to buying bulk leads from list brokers.

• Fresh Data – Since the leads are manually created as per your specifications, you can be sure of the quality of the data. A list created 1 day ago will be much more accurate and relevant than a 2 year old list that you buy from online e mail list providers.
• Targeted Data – You can specify what kind of data you need. You can also mention the data fields you require. For example, you may ask for the telephone number as well as the Linkedin url of the decision maker to double check the accuracy of the E Mail IDs. Your list will be customized as per your specific needs.
• No need to buy in bulk – You will be receiving the fresh leads in batches. You can always verify the quality of the leads on a regular basis. You do not need to make bulk payments too.
• Affordable pricing – When you take return on investment into consideration, a customized and targeted E Mail list will definitely outperform bulk E Mail lists from list brokers on parameters such as deliverability, response rates etc.

Cost of buying an E Mail List

Cost of buying a targeted E Mail list can be approximately $20-$40 for 100 leads. It will depend on the type of List you want to buy and how many leads you require. However, $20-$40 for 100 leads is a good estimate.

If you buy bulk E Mails from list brokers, it could cost approximately the same amount if the number of leads are less than 1000. You will get a cheaper pricing only if you buy in bulk. Considering the risks associated with buying bulk leads, you need to decide if it is worth buying E Mail lists in bulk.

Here are certain things to look for before buying an E Mail list.

• Business E Mails or Generic E Mails – Does the vendor provide you E Mail addresses of key decision makers or generic E Mails like “info@example.com”. This is important to ensure that your E Mails reach the right people you want to target.
• Deliverability – Ask for minimum 90% deliverability rate. Freshly created lists will normally have a good deliverability rate of 95%+.
• Replace/Refund guarantee – One way of identifying a good list broker is to check if they have a refund/replace policy. Always ask for a replace/refund guarantee before buying E Mail lists.
• Include Phone Number for verification – Buying a list which contains only names and E Mails may be risky. You should always ask for other information like phone number, Linkedin urls, Address, website etc to cross verify the data.
• Ask for a sample – You can ask for a sample before buying the leads to check and verify the data. This will give you a good idea of what kind of leads to expect.
• Never buy in bulk – Some vendors will require you to buy leads in bulk. You may also be tempted with good discounts on bulk purchases. Buying leads in bulk is never a good idea. Always buy leads in batches so that you can keep running E Mail marketing campaigns in batches and keep an eye on the lead quality.

So as you can see, buying E Mail lists work only if you do it the right way. Otherwise, you may end up with bad quality leads which will give a poor Return on investment for your E Mail marketing campaigns.

A good E Mail list will look like the one shown in the below image (Data blurred) with all the additional information like website, Phone number, Address etc. Even though you may not need all the extra information, such a list is likely to be of a higher quality than a list which has only names and E Mail IDs.

If you want to buy fresh, targeted E Mail leads with over 95% accuracy, you can find more information about our personalized E Mail list building service from the link below.

Buy E Mail Lists

If you need more information, you can also get in touch with us directly using the contact form below.

Renting an E Mail List

Renting an E Mail List is quite different to buying an E Mail list. When you rent an E Mail list, you dont really get access to the E Mail list. Instead, the list owner runs a single E Mail Marketing campaign on your behalf.

When you buy an E Mail list, you can use it as many times as you like because you own it. However, when you rent an E Mail list, the list owner or the list broker will run just a single campaign for you. You will never be able to see the names or E Mail addresses on the list.

The process of renting an E Mail list starts by you and the list broker agreeing on the number of E Mails to be sent, the date and time of the campaign etc. You need to give the E Mail content and creatives to the list broker. They then make required edits and run the campaign. You get a detailed report at the end of the campaign.

If you are looking to run a one time campaign, renting an E Mail list may be a good option for you. However, you need to keep in mind that you will never really own the list. You also will not be able to check the quality of the E Mail list you are renting because you will not have access to the names and E Mail IDs.

Cost of renting an E Mail list

How much will it cost to rent an E Mail list ? The cost of renting an E Mail list can vary depending on the number of contacts, type of contacts etc. The average cost of renting a B2B E Mail list is $30-$40 for 100 contacts. This is approximately similar to the cost of buying customised targeted E Mail leads.

It is almost always more economical to buy a custom made E Mail list than renting an E Mail list because for the same amount of money, you can own your list and use it as many times as you like.

Grow an Opt-in E Mail List

An Opt in E Mail list is an E Mail list where the recipients have voluntarily given you permission to E Mail them. This could be the readers on your website who subscribe to your blog because they like your content or users on your social media groups who are interested in your content.

Running E Mail marketing campaigns through an opt in E Mail can be very effective because the users already know about your brand and are more likely to engage with your E Mail communications.

However, the problem with this approach is that it is a very slow process. People will opt in to your list only if they like your content. Even if you create amazing content, unless you can drive a lot of visitors to your website, you wont be able to collect a good number of E Mails. That means spending money on SEO, Social media marketing, Paid ads etc to increase website traffic.

As far as B2B marketing is concerned, this approach works only if you already have a good online presence and have lots of website visitors or social media followers. A startup wanting to promote their products or services to a select group of companies or individuals will not be able to use this method since collecting opt in E Mails is a time consuming process.

As you can see, from the three different methods, the best approach would be to buy targeted E Mail lists. But you need to ensure that you choose a vendor who will be able to create fresh, custom made, targeted E Mail leads as per your requirements.

In the below video, marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk explains when it makes sense to buy E Mail lists.

Risks of Buying an E Mail List

What are the risks of buying an E Mail List ? Is it legal to buy an E Mail list ? There are certain things you need to keep in mind if you are thinking of buying E Mail lists.

Buying an E Mail list is legal in most countries. However, you need to be aware of certain country specific laws and regulations.

CAN SPAM ACT

The CAN-SPAM Act (USA) establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

The CAN-SPAM Act does not say that buying an E Mail list is illegal. Nor does it require an Opt-in from the recipients. However, it does require the ability for a user to opt out of your E Mails. An unsubscribe option in your E Mails is a must to comply with CAN-SPAM laws.

The CAN-SPAM Questionnaire on the federal trade commission website addresses a question about using purchased E Mail lists.

The CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t require initiators of commercial email to get recipients’ consent before sending them commercial email. In other words, there is no opt-in requirement. So in general, as long as you follow the “initiator” requirements of the Act, you can send email until the recipient asks to opt out. But buying lists like that can be risky. There is the possibility that addresses on the list belong to people who have already opted out of receiving email from your company. And there’s a risk that the list was put together using illegal means like address harvesting or dictionary attacks. Therefore, some companies choose to send marketing email only to people who have affirmatively asked to receive them or with whom the company already has a business relationship.

So as you can see, purchasing an E Mail list itself is not illegal as long as you follow the requirements of the CAN-SPAM law. If you are planning to run an E Mail campaign in the USA, we do suggest that you read the CAN-SPAM compliance guide to make sure that you do not violate any of the laws under the CAN-SPAM Act.

GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in European Union law on data protection and privacy in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas. The GDPR’s primary aim is to give individuals control over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU.

Even if you are a US business or based outside of Europe but you have customers who reside in the EU, you must be GDPR-compliant. For E Mail Marketers, a customer must actively consent to opt in to your E Mail Marketing.

Depending on which country you operate in, these are the two main laws that you need to be aware of before running an E Mail campaign. Both these laws are more important for B2C Marketers than B2B Marketers.

There are a few more things you need to be aware of with regards to E Mail deliverability, E Mailing platform compliance etc.

E Mail service provider compliance

Most E Mail service providers such as Mailchimp, Aweber etc do not allow users to run campaigns with purchased lists. Reputable E Mail Marketing platforms will insist that you use opt in E Mails for marketing.

E Mail service providers need to ensure a good sender reputation to ensure good deliverability rates. To maintain their sender reputation, they monitor all users and campaigns closely.

If you use bulk E Mail leads purchased from list brokers, there is a good chance that many of the leads will be old and irrelevant. This would lead to your E Mails being marked as spam. If a good number of your E Mails are marked as spam, the E Mail service provider could ban you from using their systems.

Again that’s another reason to use fresh and targeted E Mail leads for your marketing campaigns rather than buying bulk leads from marketing data providers.

Other people maybe using the same lists

This is a problem you will face if you buy bulk E Mail lists from online E Mail database providers. They will usually sell the same leads to many users. When you purchase an E Mail list, there is no way of knowing how often those E Mail addresses have been E Mailed.

The recipients on your list may already be annoyed by the number of E Mails they receive from multiple users. These recipients are not likely to respond to your E Mails. They may even report you for spamming which will seriously affect your deliverability and IP reputation.

However, if you are buying targeted lists, this should not be a problem. In this case, the list will be used only by you as the list is custom made for you.

Once again this shows the value of buying only freshly created targeted E Mail lists. If you need assistance with growing E Mail lists, you can get in touch with us using the contact form below.

Frequently asked questions