Where can I mail a purchased list?

We’ve had a lot of comments over the last few weeks regarding our post on ESPs that don’t allow purchased lists. Most of them were companies adding their addresses to the list. But one comment needs a little more discussion, I think.

Here’s the problem though, when your employer has purchased a list and INSISTS on using that list for lead generation.
I have explained ad nauseum why this is a bad idea. They look at me blankly and move on with scheduling our emails. They expect me to find a provider that will allow purchased lists. Where do I turn?
All I can find is articles on NOT using them. Well, I have no say in the matter and my job depends on doing this. What about us stuck in that place? Doug Marshall

It’s a tough situation to be in when your job depends on doing something that is generally viewed as a bad idea. Most of the ESPs that will let you send to purchased lists will have poorer deliverability than those ESPs that require opt-in. Most purchased lists have very poor deliverability.
I’ve regularly had companies come looking for help because their purchased lists were widely blocked. One of them was earlier this year. Their purchased list was only seeing about a 40% acceptance rate and about a 15% inbox rate. They wanted to know if I could help them resolve the blocks. There wasn’t anything we could do.
If you’re in the situation where the choice is send to the list or get fired then you have some hard decisions to make. Is this your line in the sand? My experience is some management folks refuse to believe that purchased lists are a bad idea. They’re going to mail those lists because they paid good money for them! and their vendor would not lie to them! Sometimes the only thing you can do as an employee is do what you’re told or walk away. Those aren’t easy decisions.
In terms of how you can negotiate this pathway without giving up your job, there are some things I can think for you to do. Depending on your relationship with your ESP, you can call your account rep and ask them about the ESPs policy for purchased lists. I know many ESPs deal with this question regularly. They may help you convince your management this is a bad idea.
If you’re uncomfortable involving your provider, you can document your findings about how bad an idea this is. You can reference my blog, and the other statements you’ve found that say purchased lists are bad. Even if you are ignored, you have documented this is a bad idea. If there is poor delivery and fallout, then you’ll have the documentation that says this is how purchased lists work.
Another possibility, depending on the size of the purchased list, is to actually contact each lead individually. Introduce your company, what you have and invite them to join your newsletter program. If they respond, great, you have a new contact. If they don’t, well, they’re a poor lead for you.
Good luck!

Related Posts

Are you still thinking of purchasing a mailing list?

Last week there was an article published by btobonline promoting the services of a company called Netprospex. Netprospex, as you can probably gather from their company name, is all about the buying and selling of mailing lists. They will sell anyone a list of prospects.
The overall theme of the article is that there is nothing wrong with spam and that if a sender follows a few simple rules spamming will drive business to new heights. Understandably, there are a few people who disagree with the article and the value of the Netprospex lists.
I’ve stayed out of the discussion, mostly because it’s pretty clear to me that article was published solely to promote the Netprospex business, and their point of view is that they make more money when they can convince people to purchase lists from them. Dog bites man isn’t a very compelling news story. Data selling company wants you to buy data from them isn’t either.
They are right, there is nothing illegal about spam. Any sender can purchase a list and then send mail to the addresses on that list and as long as that sender meets the rock bottom standards set out in CAN SPAM. As long as your mail has an opt-out link, a physical postal address and unforged headers that mail is legal. The only other obligation on the sender is to honor any unsubscribe requests within ten days. So, yes, it is legal to send spam.
But legal action isn’t the only consequence of spamming. Today I received the following in an email from a colleague.

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The naming of lists

Any ESP that supports multiple mailing lists per customer lets you name your mailing lists. That’s useful for keeping track of where a list was from , but sometimes those list names are visible to the recipient:

Here the list name is visible on the opt-out / email preferences form, but you’ll also see them in (hidden) email headers or (visible) email footers.
“Last 10000” is pretty innocuous, but I’ve seen “Non responders”, “Vegas blast”, “Opt-outs 2010”, “Jigsaw 3”, “Purchased 2011-07-01″, Trade 2”, “Co-reg 4” as well as lists named after companies completely unrelated to the list owner.
You could check to see whether the list names are visible on every ESP and mail platform you use – or you could just assume they will be visible to end users eventually and be always careful in naming them.

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Email verification services

Just yesterday a group of delivery folks were discussing email verification services over IRC. We were talking about the pros and cons, when we’d suggest using them, when we wouldn’t, which ones we’ve worked with and what our experiences have been. I’ve been contemplating writing up some of my thoughts about verification services but it’s a post I wanted to spend some time on to really address the good parts and the bad parts of verification services.
Today, Spamhaus beat me to the punch and posted a long article on how they view email verification services. (I know that some Spamhaus folks are part of that IRC channel, but I don’t think anyone was around for the discussion we had yesterday.)
It’s well worth a read for anyone who wants some insight into how email verification is viewed by Spamhaus. Their viewpoints are pretty consistent with what I’ve heard from various ISP representatives as well.
In terms of my own thoughts on verification services, I think it’s important to remember that the bulk of the verification services only verify that an address is deliverable. The services do not verify that the address belongs to the person who input it into a form. The services do not verify that an address matches a purchased profile. The services do not verify that the recipient wants email from the senders.
Some of the services claim they remove spamtraps, but their knowledge of spamtraps is limited. Yes, stick around this industry long enough and you’ll identify different spamtraps, and even spamtrap domains. I could probably rattle off a few dozen traps if pressed, but that’s not going to be enough to protect any sender from significant problems.
Some services can be used for real time verification, and that is a place where I think verification can be useful. But I also know there are a number of creative ways to do verification that also check things like permission and data validity.
From an ESP perspective, verification services remove bounces. This means that ESPs have less data to apply to compliance decisions. Bounce rate, particularly for new lists, tells the ESP a lot about the health of the mailing list. Without that, they are mostly relying on complaint data to determine if a customer is following the AUP.
Spamhaus talks about what practices verification services should adopt in order to be above board. They mention actions like clearly identifying their IPs and domains, not switching IPs to avoid blocks and not using dozens or hundreds of IPs. I fully support these recommendations.
Email verification services do provide some benefit to some senders. I can’t help feeling, though, that their main benefit is simply lowering bounce rates and not actually improving the quality of their customers’ signup processes.

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