Trust the list broker

Over the years I’ve worked with companies who admit to me that they’ve purchased data at one point or another. Let’s face it, as bad a practice as it is, people and companies still think they can succeed in email marketing with purchased lists.
As part of the cleanup process, I start to ask questions about the list. Who did you buy it from? How were the addressees collected? Are these addresses shared with others? What did the seller tell you about the list.
Thief.
Clients are rarely able to tell me about where the addresses are collected or if they’re shared.
It’s amazing to me how many companies choose to outsource the creation of such a valuable asset. They don’t know anything about it, but it’s a huge asset and so important they won’t let go when it doesn’t work.
Some of it is the sunk cost fallacy. But I think in some cases my clients don’t really believe the person who sold them the list wasn’t truthful. They really believe there is value in the list, if they can only unlock it.
Companies selling lists don’t really have any incentive to spend time or money making sure they have permission or that the lists are good. That’s just expense to them and returns no value. The value is in the number of addresses they can sell, not in the number of responsive addresses.
How many companies buy a list and immediately take it to a list cleansing service? Why should they? Shouldn’t the company SELLING the list make sure they’re selling deliverable addresses? Shouldn’t the seller spend the money for verification?
The very fact that so many companies believe they need to clean a purchased list speaks to the horrible quality of purchased lists. And, yet, companies are addicted to the idea of purchasing lists. They trust that the addresses are collected in a permission based manner. They believe when sellers tell them the addresses are good and valid – even when they see that 10 or 20 or 30% of the list is cleaned off by the list services.
List sellers won’t do the cleaning because they know they’re not providing the product. It’s a con and it’s a swindle and yet marketers still think they’re getting something of value from list sellers. And they still discover purchased lists are horrible in terms of deliverability and performance.

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Organizational security and doxxing

The security risks of organizational doxxing. 
These are risks every email marketer needs to understand. As collectors of data they are a major target for hackers and other bad people. Even worse, many marketers don’t collect valid data and risk implicating the wrong people if their data is ever stolen. I have repeatedly talked about incidents where people get mail not intended for them. I’ve talked about this before, in a number of posts talking about misdirected email. Consumerist, as well, has documented many incidents of companies mailing the wrong person with PII. Many of these stories end with the company not allowing the recipient to remove the address on the account because the user can’t prove they own the account.
I generally focus on the benefits to the company to verify addresses. There are definite deliverability advantages to making sure email address belongs to the account owner. But there’s also the PR benefits of not revealing PII attached to the wrong email address. With Ashley Madison nearly every article mentioned that the email address was never confirmed. But how many other companies don’t verify email addresses and risk losing personally damaging data belonging to non customers.
Data verification is so important. So very, very important. We’ve gone beyond the point where any big sender should just believe that the addresses users give them are accurate. They need to do it for their own business reasons and they need to do it to prevent incorrect PII from being leaked and shared.

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It's not about the spamtraps

I’ve talked about spamtraps in the past but they keep coming up in so many different discussions I have with people about delivery that I feel the need to write another blog post about them.
Spamtraps are …
… addresses that did not or could not sign up to receive mail from a sender.
… often mistakenly entered into signup forms (typos or people who don’t know their email addresses).
… often found on older lists.
… sometimes scraped off websites and sold by list brokers.
… sometimes caused by terrible bounce management.
… only a symptom …

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Ugg, a spammer.

I’ve written before about how there is some (I’m sure lovely) woman in the UK who has been connected to my email address. I get a lot of mail for her. Mostly spam. She doesn’t seem to be using the address, but I regularly get mail addressed to MRS. LAURA CORBISHLEY (all caps, always). Typically these messages are advertising various UK stores and products. Sometimes they’re mortgage offers. A few have been sweepstakes only open to UK residents.
ShadyGuyWebsite
I generally forward these spams off to various blocklists with the note it’s my “UK spamtrap” and they take whatever actions seem appropriate to them.
2016-03-21_14-33-39Today, though, I got my first US spam to Mrs. Laura Corbishly. From a Yesmail customer called sanuk.com. I’m getting a website error (they get smacked for spamming already?) but a little research tells me this is shoe company that owns a bunch of brands, including Ugg.
Yes, Ugg a Spammer. They even even have a disclaimer at the bottom of the email telling me they’re a spammer!
2016-03-21_14-35-54
Not so much, no. It appears, though, that the data brokers selling Mrs. Corbishley’s name connected to my email address have figured out that no one ever actually acts on any of their UK offers. So now they’re selling into the US market in hopes that they might entice a purchase?
On a purely nosy level, I’d love to know who was selling the address. First off, I’d love to know where they got this info in the first place. Secondly, what horrible database are they using that keeps name data in all caps? (When I get email to this trap I think they’re shouting at me, as if I’m the one who is wrong about my name. Maybe they think if they yell at me loud enough will I decide I really am the happy wife of Mr. Corbishley of Swindon, UK. )
I do tell clients that it’s useful to remind customers that they signed up for mail, especially if they haven’t mailed for a while. So I know not every email with a “you opted in” reminder is spam, but I only notice those things when I haven’t opted in. It’s something I mostly gloss over if I really did opt-in. I wonder if this is how other folks react to “you opted in” notices, too.
I do recommend the reminder be much more specific than “you opted in at our website.” Give the user a date, a time, something that isn’t just something any company can, and many do, make up.
 
 

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