The Proper Way to Rent or Buy an Email List

If you see any signs like this run away and run fast! We generally don’t allow the use of 3rd party email marketing lists here at VerticalResponse. Why? Mostly because they’ve not been kept cleaned and up to date and as a result there are usually many bounces. ISPs that we send email to (AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail) don't really like when anyone sends too many bad email addresses through their systems because it takes the ISP time and resources to process the bad email addresses and bounce them back. Furthermore if most of our lists bounce back then that could hurt our good reputation of sending email to people who've requested it.

In addition, most of the lists are not reputable meaning they’ve been automatically scraped or spidered from websites. You’ll get a lot of info@, ceo@, sales@ as a result.

Is there a proper way to rent an email list?

The answer is yes!! There are many legitimate lists on the market that will enable you to grow your list, however, if anyone wants to “give” you a list for you to mail, it’s highly suspect. Most list owners want to protect their asset so just handing over the jewels is not the proper thing to do and you should be suspect.

Here’s the skinny:

1. Visit a website you think your target audience would visit. If there is an “advertising” section try to find if you can be included in the email newsletter or a “solo” email which is really their endorsement of your product or service.
2. Green light? You give them your offer,  your content and your link that you want them to send people to.
3. Always ask the list owner who the “from” will be. The only case scenario you want is for the "from" to come from them endorsing your product. If they want to put your company name in the From Label beware. The recipients might think it’s you spamming them instead of the list owner sending them email they requested.
4. Now you’ll have a bigger list you can send to!

We have seen a caveat: from time to time association members agree to opt in to get email from other members who have joined. In some cases the association will handle the list, in others they simply give the list to the members. A good thing to do is to remind them when you send your email that they're getting it as "a member of x association."

If you have any other ideas we'd love to hear them so give us a comment.

Comments

[Kari Clift]

Curious to know if anyone has an idea of where to rent a list of home appraiser emails. We are trying to recruit mass amounts of appraisers to contract with our company as we are nationwide. Any help is appreciated!

[Janine Popick]

For Eula - Great question. The answer is, go to a reputable email list broker who has great recommendations. Your list broker can "seed" the list with email addresses you give them and if it underperforms they can always ask for a remail or another list rental.

[Shamun Mahmud]

I went to several mortgage-related websites, none of which were willing to "rent" their email lists. Can you recommend a reputable "list broker"?

[Kurt]

To follow-on Scott's post, my company has lists that we receive from franchise headquarters as part of "approved supplier" partnerships that we participate in. For example, Century 21 Real Estate provides us with lists of their brokers and encourages us to contact them. The lists seem perfectly legit to us, buy many services seem to disallow us using that list. Is that kind of list acceptable in VR's service?

[Eula]

When yu do a joint venture like this, how can you be sure your emails will actually be sent? How can you be sure your message will be sent to the 10K addresses you ordered and not a smaller amount?

[Janine Popick]

For Eric - If you're going to rent a list and the list owner sends it out, for testing purposes I'd recommend you ask them if they are set up to run a partial list for you. Some list owners are and some are not. If so, pick a number where you know your response rate will be statistically valid.

For instance if you think you'll get a 1% click rate, then testing to 5000 addresses will only get you 50 clicks. That might not be enough for you depending on what you'd like them to do after the click like buy a product or fill out a form.

[Eric Roth]

Is there a way to test a list before we send it out? For instance, let's say I rent a list of language school email addresses in France. Can we do a practice run and see which emails work and just delete the 1/3 that fail?

[Janine Popick]

For Scott - That depends, was the list opted in for receiving emails from other members? All you'd have to do is show one of our Customer Support team members where it says that you can email them and I'm sure it would be fine.

Our Manager of Training Richard Huffaker would point out, reminding them somewhere in the email why they're getting email from you would be a great idea.

[Janine Popick]

For Joe - For smaller consumer lists you might want to try infousa.com although I've heard both good and bad things about the quality. You can also try USA Data for smaller lists. For business lists look at DemandBase and Hoovers.

For larger lists where you need a recommendation you might try List Alliance or 21st Century Marketing.

Hope this helps.

[Joe Richey]

Do you have a reccomended list of vendors that rent lists?

[Scott]

I have purchased a one artist membership as a photographer through agency access. Would a list such as this be acceptable to vertical response?