Your purchased list … is spam.

This morning I got spam from someone selling email addresses. The mail starts:

Hi Laura,
I am aware of your expertise in the field of marketing and how well you execute your campaigns.
We specialize in customized email list services and provide global data. […]
“You are receiving this email as you have shown interest in data related solutions. Occasionally you will receive brief messages with offers and our services. Please reply UNSUBSCRIBE if you no longer want to receive messages from us”.

Yeah. No. Just. No.
trashforblog
The above message is a prime example of why spam is a problem.
They’re selling targeted email lists…

… but their targeting is SO BAD they targeted me.

They are attempting to compliment me…

... but in a way that demonstrates they are just randomly throwing words in an email.

They’re selling addresses…

… wonder if these are the folks that are selling my address and resulting in a lot more B2B spam in my inbox.

Their email violates CAN SPAM…

… because of course it doesn’t have a physical address. 

They tell me they know I’m interested in “data related solutions”…

… but I have no idea what “data related solutions” are.

Look, this is spam. No one really wants it.
This doesn’t stop companies from wanting to send spam, though. In fact, I’ve had a lot of calls recently from folks looking for deliverability help when they’re sending to B2B purchased / acquired / rented / traded lists. But there isn’t anything I can really do. The mail is unsolicited and while and most people don’t want it or don’t care about it. The filters are actually designed to block this kind of mail.
That’s something I’m not sure we discuss enough. We talk about wanted mail and inbox delivery and engagement and opens and clicks and all these measurements as part of delivery. But I’ll tell you a secret: filters are about stopping unsolicited mail. That’s right, filters use wanted as a way of measuring unsolicited. If a lot of people say the mail is unwanted then it’s probably unsolicited and it’s a target for blocking.
If you’re sending unsolicited mail, and you’re getting blocked, there isn’t a lot anyone can do for you. Anything deliverability folks tell you to do, like authentication, just makes it easier for the filters to block mail. Asking for a whitelist will just make the filter maintainers laugh. They are hearing from their users that the mail is unwanted. With opt-in data, we can present data showing that users asked for it. Without it, we are stuck with “uh, I’m sure they’ll like it if they saw it!” That’s not very persuasive.
There is a pervasive opinion among marketers that buying and selling B2B lists is OK. That unsolicited mail to businesses is acceptable. This opinion is not shared by the recipients.
Look, I’m a small business owner. Time is one of my most precious commodities. My days are full. Marketers waste my time and energy. There’s very little that I’m interested in that comes in unsolicited. I mean, OK, it gives me blog content, but it’s still a waste of time, particularly when they drop my address into marketing automation and don’t have unsub links.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like marketing email! I do. In fact, I just made another purchase today from AppSumo. I subscribe to other marketing lists, too. But those offers aren’t unsolicited and they are actually targeted and they are wanted mail. The point is, mail doesn’t have to be unsolicited to be effective and generate revenue.
 

Related Posts

Appendleads is not unusual

I called out David Williams from appendleads.com yesterday for his spam. Sure he’s a spammer, his database is full of garbage information and his email violates CAN SPAM but he’s not that unusual in the realm of list sellers. He is very typical of the people I see offering lists for sale.
List sellers are the internet version of used car salesmen. Everyone knows they are slimy sales guys who will do anything to close the sale. They don’t have a real web presence, just visit appendleads.com and see what I mean.
And yet, people still buy lists from them! I have no doubt that my spammer friend has a nice little business selling email addresses. He sends out spam, he gets a few responses, makes a tidy profit and then sends out another spam, hooks a few more people and makes more money.
OK, so not all list sellers are like appendleads. Some of them go so far to build a website. But at the core they’re the same. They are selling data that isn’t clean, it’s not opt-in, it’s not been verified.
This is why so many of us harp on not buying lists. The sales guys talk a great game, but they aren’t selling what purchasers think they’re getting. They also don’t care. They have no incentive to clean up their data. They have no incentive to accurately represent what they’re selling. All of the risk is on the person that sends the email. Once they have their money, the buyer is on their own.
Can you ever successfully purchase a list? I’m sure some senders have. But that experience is closer to winning more than a thousand dollars in the lottery than an actual good business decision.

Read More

What not to do when buying lists

Saturday morning I check my mail and notice multiple emails from the DMA. Yes, I got three copies of an email from the US Direct Marketing Association with the subject line Kick It Up A Notch With The DMA Career Center. It seems the DMA are buying addresses from various companies. Because I use tagged email addresses, this means their naive de-duping doesn’t realize that laura-x and laura-y are the same email address. Of course, they’ve also managed to send to an untagged email address, too. I have no idea where they got that particular address; I’m sure I’ve never handed that address over to the DMA for any reason.
Saturday afternoon, I check one of the professional filtering / anti-spam mailing list.  Some subscribers are asking for copies of spam from 97.107.23.191 to .194. They’d seen a lot of mail to non-existent email addresses from that range and were looking to see what was going on and who was sending such bad mail. Multiple people on the list popped up with examples of the DMA mail.
Sunday morning, I checked the discussions wherein I discovered the DMA was added to the SBL (SBL 202218, SBL 202217, SBL 202216). It seems not only did they hit over a hundred Spamhaus spamtraps, they spammed Steve Linford himself.

Read More

Email marketing is hard

I’ve watched a couple discussions around the email and anti-spam community recently with a bit of awe. It seems many email marketers are admitting they are powerless to actually implement all the good advice they give to others.
They are admitting they can’t persuade, cajole, influence or pressure their companies to actually follow best practices. Some of the comments public and private comments I’ve heard from various industry leaders:

Read More