Buying Data

Over on Spam Resource Al posted about data sellers and the ESP that supports them. As part of the post, he lists the pricing for email address lists.

Check out The Data Supplier. One billion email addresses – only $795. Comes with:
15 Million Companies Emails
3 Million Fresh Bulk Emails
8 Million Worldwide Emails
9.4 Million Misc Emails
250K Germany Emails
1 Million Yahoo Emails

Think about that for a minute. One billion email addresses for less than 800 dollars. Think about the average marketing program, responsible senders invest money in address collection. How much verification can be done? How careful can the sellers be with permission? How much is that list actually worth?
For the marketer who purchases that list, dealing with the bad delivery, blocks and complaints is going to cost much more than the $800 spent on the list. Recently, I attended a talk discussing the cost of a blocklisting to their company. The numbers, well into seven figures, astonished even me.
Sending mail to a list of one billion addresses, purchased from anyone, will cause massive delivery problems, spam blocking, and decreased delivery.