Another list purchase horror story

Last week Ken wrote about a marketer who is claiming he was ripped off by Target Point in a purchased list deal. To the purchaser’s credit he actually looked at the email addresses provided by Target Point, something many list purchasers don’t seem to do. This gave him some idea that the list was not opt-in.

[…] 788 of the addresses contained some combination or abbreviation of the words “customer service,” or “customer care.”
Also, 193 of the addresses were “accounting@,” 455 of the addresses were “admin@,” 84 of the addresses were “administration@” or “administrator@,” 223 of the addresses were “careers@,” 108 of the addresses were “comment@” or “comments@,” 297 of the addresses were “contact@,” 160 of the addresses were “service@,” 1,448 of the addresses were “sales@,” and a whopping 7,684 addresses were “info@.”

Many clients come to me wondering why they are having such difficulty mailing their ‘guaranteed double opt in list’ that they purchased through a vendor like Target Point. One quick look at the list shows addresses similar to the above. Role accounts are almost never found on opt-in lists (with some exceptions) and finding lots of “info@” or “administrator@” address is a good sign that there are problems with the seller.
The most important thing to remember is that just removing the obvious role accounts from the purchased list is not going to magically make the list OK. There are going to be problems with the other addresses on the list, too. Mailing them will cause you problems.
Yet another example of why mailing purchased lists is bad. Not only do they cause delivery problems, but sometimes you don’t even get what you pay for.