The Safe Guide on How to Buy Email Lists
Find out the pros and cons of buying email lists, as well as tips on building your own
The idea of buying email lists can be tempting. For a certain price, you get a set of leads who might become your customers. All you need to do is add them to your campaigns, reach out, and call it a day.
But is it actually that simple?
So let’s take a look at buying email lists, what pitfalls can occur, and what your alternatives are.
What are purchased email lists?
Purchased lists are email lists you buy to quickly find leads in your industry.
Email list vendors scrape public emails in different ways, such as scanning the web, buying them from third-party resources, collecting emails via surveys, or getting someone’s email in exchange for an incentive like a discount or giveaway.
But here’s the catch: while these people have revealed their email somewhere online and given consent to receive marketing emails from third-party vendors, they haven’t subscribed to receive emails from you.
In other words, they don’t expect to see you in their inbox.
Why buy email lists?
There are several advantages to buying email lists. And if you do your research and ensure the data is correct, you can mitigate some of the risks of buying lists.
Here are the main benefits that attract people to buy email lists.
Fast access to contact data
Buying an email list is the fastest solution to getting a bunch of lead data.
You don’t need to spend time finding email addresses and collecting subscribers since all the lead contact data you need is already at your fingertips. That’s why people turn to purchased lists to validate their business idea, set up discovery calls, and start pitching to prospects.
Scalability
Ready-made email lists are easy to scale. You simply buy as many leads as you want and upload the data to your CRM. You can also try to purchase lists based on specific criteria to fit your ideal customer or buyer persona.
Head start on entering new markets
If you’re entering a new market and don’t have a huge marketing budget, buying email lists can jump-start your go-to-market strategy. This comes in especially handy if you’re a micro-startup and don’t have the time or mental capacity to build lists from scratch.
Why buying lists can be a bad idea
While buying email lists is an easy way to launch your outreach, that doesn’t mean it’s the right one (that’s up to you).
But before you buy an email list, here are some of the reasons why you might want to exercise caution instead.
Questionable quality
Email list vendors scrape contact data from various sources, and they frequently don’t check lead data for accuracy and quality. As a result, the lead list you get might not reflect prospects who switched roles.
You might find yourself paying a pretty penny for lots of invalid email addresses or emails of people who have no connection to your industry.
Risk of non-compliance
In the United States, sending emails to a purchased list is legal as long as you follow the rules of the CAN-SPAM law. Buying email lists is also highly regulated under GDPR in Europe and CASL in Canada.
And if you violate the law, you might find yourself in real hot water (more on this later).
Risk of spam
Email providers use pristine spam traps and monitor suspicious activity to identify spammers.
Aside from spam traps, your sender reputation is also by metrics such as email bounces and unsubscribe rates. If either of these are higher than expected, your sender reputation will be damaged.
Damage to brand reputation
By sending emails to people who have never heard of you, you end up positioning your brand as a possible spammer. If you want to build relationships based on transparency and trust (and this is a pillar of any successful business), it’s better to resist the temptation to buy email lists.
Skewed metrics
Emails sent to purchased lists have low engagement metrics, such as open and click rates. And like we mentioned earlier, you’ll see a large number of bounces and high churn.
Not only does this mean it’s not possible to assess your outreach accurately, but your future outreach will be hindered by poor sender reputation and possible blacklisting.
Possible waste of time and money
Buying an email list is risky. If you buy a good list with quality data, you’re gold. But if the list contains unverified emails and low-quality leads, the time and money spent will be in vain.
Legal and ethical considerations of buying email lists
In order to maintain a good sender reputation and send your emails to the inbox (not a spam folder), you need to comply with data privacy regulations and email marketing laws. Let’s review the main things you should consider.
Email compliance
Email compliance means the adherence of your emails to data privacy regulations. The most common include:
- The CAN-SPAM Act and CCPA in the United States
- GDPR in Europe
- CASL in Canada
According to CAN-SPAM regulations in the USA, sending emails to people without explicit consent is legal as long as your email content is personalized and transparent and has no deceptive information. Also, there should be an easy-to-find link to unsubscribe in each email you send.
European and Canadian email regulations are stricter when it comes to sending cold emails. Before adding EU and Canadian residents to your email list, you should acquire their explicit consent. And you can’t pre-check boxes either. Users have to check it themselves.
In most cases, people in purchased email lists haven’t given their consent for you to contact them, so using their addresses may violate the law.
Sender reputation
Apart from violating data privacy rules, sending emails using a purchased email list may result in a spoiled sender reputation.
Various email providers determine sender reputation based on factors and metrics such as bounce rates, sending history, engagement, spam complaints, unsubscribe rates, etc.
Each time you send an email, it goes through a reputation check, and the lower your reputation score is, the higher the chances are that your email will end up in the spam folder, and your email service provider will penalize you.
How to build your own email list
If you want to build a genuine connection with your audience, we don’t recommend buying email lists.
Instead, there are many ways to build lead lists with high-quality prospects.
Subscribing to a B2B lead database
B2B lead databases give you access to a verified and updated list of decision-makers in your industry. Also, there’s usually an option for advanced search and filtering, which gives you more control and flexibility.
For example, AiSDR has built a free-to-use directory containing all Inc 5000 companies, making it straightforward for you to find qualified prospects that match your ideal customer profile and buyer persona. You can even filter and target them by criteria such as (but not limited to):
- Country
- Company size
- Investment round
- Industry
- ARR
- Intent signals
B2B lead databases are more reliable, as they are usually based on the most widely recognized information security standards. Also, such databases are regularly hygiene-checked and refreshed, so you get only relevant and verified contact data.
Content marketing
Content marketing is one of the best ways to attract the right target audience and turn them into subscribers. The key here is to regularly publish exclusive and expert content that will bring traffic to your website. To encourage website visitors to subscribe to your newsletter, you can:
- Create lead magnets for your website visitors to download by leaving their email addresses.
- Create exit intent pop-ups with an offer to download exclusive content or a resource.
- Offer gated content or discount for your services in exchange for their email address.
Social media
Your social media subscribers are already interested in your brand, so why not entice them to subscribe to your email list?
One of the best ways to do this is to create a social media post packed with value, then finish it with a pitch for them to subscribe to your newsletter containing exclusive content with the same (or better) value for email subscribers.
In such a way, your newsletter promo sounds more natural, as you give people a reason to subscribe.
Host networking events, webinars, and workshops
Organizing networking events and webinars is one of the best ways to connect with prospects and turn them into subscribers. You can offer various post-webinar incentives, such as exclusive content or special offers to people who subscribe to your newsletter.
The more events you hold, the more you position yourself as an expert in your niche and, as a result, spread awareness about your service or product.
Partnering with other newsletters
A newsletter swap is a cross-promotion you organize with another newsletter your target audience reads.
Collate newsletters of the same size as yours (you can use tools like Paved for this purpose) and reach out to them with the offer to cross-promote your newsletters to each other’s audience. Sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it?
Paid ads
Paid ads will give you access to a larger audience pool. You can create a separate landing page with some useful resources and use these to entice people to subscribe to your newsletter in order to download them.
Conference stands
Conferences are not only a great way to network with professionals in your industry, but they’re also an opportunity to enrich your lead database.
As you can see, there are various ways to attract the email addresses of people interested in your offering.
But what should you do if you decide to buy an email list anyway? Let’s review the key characteristics of trustworthy providers to avoid falling into the traps we’ve already outlined.
Key characteristics of trustworthy email list providers
Of course, many low-quality email providers sell unverified contact data. The good news is it’s possible to spot them before parting with your money.
Here are some characteristics of trustworthy email providers and lead databases.
Transparency about data sources
Providers should be transparent about how they gather email subscribers and their data sources. Usually, email providers collect data using web scraping, data aggregation, or opt-in subscriptions.
Try to avoid buying email lists collected via aggregators or third-party resources as they’re usually packed with unverified data.
If the email list provider isn’t open about how they get their data, it can be a red flag that suggests they’re using shady data sources.
Segmentation and targeting options
Having just an email address isn’t enough.
You’ll want to make sure you’ll be able to segment and target your email list by industry, job position, company size, etc. This means you can make your emails more personalized without sounding spammy.
High-quality data
You should make sure the email list’s data is verified and high quality. Providers should also regularly clean their lead lists by double-checking and removing incorrect or invalid email addresses.
Willingness to verify compliance with major marketing laws
Ask how the email list provider checks compliance with GDPR and other email marketing laws. After all, you and your brand are at risk if the provider isn’t compliant.
Questions to ask your email provider
Before buying a lead data list from a provider, try to ask these questions:
- What data sources do you collect data from?
- How often do you check and update your data?
- Do you provide any filtering and segmentation options?
- Do you provide data accuracy guarantees?
- How do you comply with data privacy regulations and laws?
- Do you provide any support if we face any problems with bounce rates or data inaccuracy?
- How do you check that this email list will suit my business needs?
- Can you share any success stories and customer reviews?
- Can you provide a demo and explain how your email lists are created?
- Can you show me a sample of your database?
Best practices for using purchased email lists
Just selecting a reliable email provider is not enough. You need to mix in some effort at your end to get the bang for your buck and not accidentally position your brand as a spammer.
Warm-up campaigns
Don’t send emails in bulk to the entire email list. Start by sending a gradually increasing number of emails each day. Otherwise, your emails will end up in spam, or even worse, your email provider will block you from sending new emails.
Personalized messaging
Personalizing your emails is the key to getting better outreach results. Try to segment your list according to industry, job position, company size, etc., and create different email templates for each segment you use.
Clear opt-out options
If you contact people via a purchased email list, it means they have never signed up to hear from you. That’s why you must provide an easy-to-find unsubscribe link in your email to avoid penalties for violating email marketing laws.
Double (or triple) checking contact information before messaging
It’s hard to tell if the contact data you bought is relevant. That’s why we recommend manually checking out the emails by using email verification tools such as NeverBounce or Clearout.
Combination with other lead-generation tactics
Use other lead-generation strategies such as cold calling, LinkedIn outreach, and direct mail to increase the number of touchpoints with your target audience.
