Why Say a Huge "NO" to Purchased Email Lists

“Should I purchase email lists?”

This is quite a general question that eventually hits every email marketer’s mind.

But you should better know the ugly truth about purchased email lists before buying them.

Let’s say you just established a new business or investing in the current one. Finding a quick way to expand your business sounds tempting, but a shortcut in business isn’t always effective. It can cause more harm than good.

Creating an email list of true contacts, however, can be a herculean task and also time-consuming, but through this what you will get is a good list of prospective recipients. Such list helps marketers in building a strong bond with their customers as well as provides an efficient response rate.

On the other hand, buying an email list sounds a shortcut, but in reality, it is one of that shortcuts which results in a huge dent on a brand's reputation.  

For many marketers, purchasing an email list is just like finding a key to success of their business, but in actual it’s huge waste of money. As it is well known that in an online business, email marketing is the foremost way to connect with the audience. And marketers believe that a purchased email list works perfectly in launching an email marketing campaign. But it does not go that way.

Remember, the profit you churn out from such a shortcut will be for the moment, but the damages it will cause could last longer.

Here we bring you several strong reasons why you should never buy an email list.
 

Why Say a Huge “NO” to Purchased Email Lists

#1. Simply, You don’t know if there are true contacts on the list

First of all, you really cannot trust the people who are selling the email list. They may make all sorts of claims about the quality of the list, but there are more chances of it being a fraud or outdated list.

A purchased email list comes with various potential problems that can really put you into some serious trouble. A few major concerns with a purchased email list are following:
 

#a. Incomplete or wrong info - there are fair chances that you may find some missing details on the list or even the list may contain false info of the individuals.

#b. Outdated email addresses - You can't say it’s a fresh or updated list of email users. A major portion of the list data can be expired or no longer exist.

#c. The email addresses mentioned in a purchased list are not necessarily the contacts by their choice. In fact, they might be harvested by illegal means.

#2. You will be named as a Spammer

While using purchased email lists, a major fear for the email marketers is being marked as a spammer.

Let me ask you something. Will you permit unsolicited emails from the same marketing company again and again? I am guessing you probably won’t, especially if you have the option of unsubscribing or marking them as spam.

Such actions could really end up with the death of your online business before it even just started taking shape.

No matter how much potential your email has or even written in an attractive manner, but if it is unrelated to whom you are sending this, it is just an email from another unknown marketing company.   

#3. You might run into trouble with your email service provider

If too many of your emails are marked as spam, you are going to have a lot of troubles from your email service provider. Troubles that can cause a heavy fine on you or shut down your account or even you may have to face some legal charges. A purchased email list is strictly banned by many of the email service providers.

General Guidelines of Sarv.com

#a. You are not allowed to send SPAM emails. We will immediately suspend/terminate if we receive any SPAM complaint.

#b. Your account may be suspended/terminated in case of violation of acceptable policies.

#c. If you think anyone is sending SPAM, kindly update us immediately. If you think abuse OR spam come from Sarv user, kindly send the abuse report on abuse@sarv.com

#4. You don’t know who else are using the exact list

‘Can I trust the email list seller?’ This would be a major concern for every marketer while buying an email list. They really have no idea who else are using the same list beside them. Just like you, other buyers might also be sending emails constantly to the same recipients.

You don’t know if recipients on the list which you just bought in, are already fed up with the number of marketing emails. And then, just a few emails from your side might force them to mark you as a spammer.
   

#5. Poor response rate

Since the list isn’t created on the basis of recipient's interest, chances are very high that a vast number of contacts on the list will not even open your email. If some of them read your email, doesn’t mean they click through to the sales page of your website.  

Also, purchased email lists result in high bounce rate as the addresses are outdated or unauthenticated.

You may have email addresses in a huge amount, but you can not count on them as true leads. With the purchased email lists, the response rate would be far worse than that of the average open rate which is considered to be around 20 - 25 percent.   
   

#6. It will kill your brand’s reputation

'The first impression is the last impression', the same theory implies in online businesses as well. Sending emails unrelated to the individual's interest not just create a bad image of your brand but also tempt the recipients to take strict action against it.

It won’t be really good if somebody searches your company on the web and ends up with negative user reviews. In addition to this, bad comments on your social media page can really damage your brand's reputation.

Building a strong user base is an important factor in online marketing. Purchased email lists are mostly outdated and unsolicited, often result in a huge dent mark on the brand's reputation.    
        

#7. There is a better way of doing this

Purchased email lists are not good at all, then what it is? Asking your visitors for their email addresses would be a lot better and cost-free way to meet the same goal. However, it may sound a time consuming and mind-numbing process, but the contacts you get will be your actual audience and will help you in building up a strong user base for your business.