Running a Targeted Email Marketing Campaign

Why Buying Email Lists Isn’t a Good Idea. Internet marketers are always looking for ways to optimize and supercharge their online campaigns. From sharing leads to boosting advertising budgets, there are hundreds of ways to boost any online campaign’s effectiveness and hopefully, increase overall returns. However, one practice is growing less effective as time goes by: buying email lists. Email marketers, many of whom flocked to purchase email lists, are slowly growing wary of the practice, and many are dropping it entirely from their online marketing methods.

The problem is not in the emails themselves – almost all are real and well used – but in the value of them. There is a contextual email capture, which brings in email leads that are qualified and truly interested, and then there is the store bought email lead, which is often ineffective. Here are four reasons why it is generally not recommended for internet marketers to purchase email lists.

#1: Contextual, Qualified Email Marketing Leads are More Valuable

There is one major benefit of capturing leads that buying simply can’t match: context. When internet marketers purchase email lists, what they get are often leads that are not interested in what’s being offered. The recipients see the internet marketer’s offers, consider, and generally pass them over without ordering.

On the other hand, if subscribers of an email marketing campaign are captured through a relevant, targeted opt-in page, they expect and wait for specific content. They actually expect to be marketed to. While bought leads can bring great quantity, they rarely bring any real context and permission that targeted email marketing can.

#2: Purchased Email Leads Often Convert Poorly

It is one thing to spring an offer on someone that is interested, and another entirely different situation to cold email someone with a business offer. Sales, especially online sales, are built on trust. When trust with someone is limited to a single email exchange, the chances of money changing hands are significantly lower than they would be with a real email relationship built up. Marketers should focus their targeted email marketing campaigns on building real relationships to generate better conversion rates.

#3: Many Sold Email Addresses are on Spam-Test Lists

It is a sad fact of online commerce that a lot of email ‘lead’ lists are really stolen or unethically captured emails. From shady online lead dealers to spam masters, the methods for collecting and selling mass emails are not really publicized, and for good reason. For internet marketers who have purchased an email list that is not converting, it could be because the names on the list are disguised spam catchers. For this reason, it is best for marketers to capture emails themselves – nothing hurts more than being mislabeled as a spammer.

#4: Buying Email Lists is Expensive, and Often Inefficient

The cost of buying a list of emails can, depending on the niche and market, be quite high. While the time cost is often slightly larger, marketers can save money by capturing emails themselves through a squeeze page created specifically for a targeted email marketing campaign. This method has the added advantage of generating higher quality email leads, along with a long-term email capture asset in a squeeze page.

These are only a few reasons why buying email lists isn’t recommended for people who are serious email marketing. By capturing email leads themselves, internet marketers could develop a highly targeted email marketing campaign that is effective in generating sales and long-term marketing assets.