Thinking of Buying an Email List?

[KHALID HASSAN]

The only difference between a successful online business and an internet business that is struggling to make a buck is the availability of an email list to stay in touch with your existing customers and to build a relationship with potential customers. But what is the best way to create a successful email marketing campaign? Using Purchased or Rented Email Lists There are always places that you can purchase a massive email list or use the services of a bulk emailer. But you must consider several things before you decide if that is the best way for you to go. 1. You cannot guarantee the emails on the list are current and active. 2. What is the deliverability of the services? It doesn't do any good to send a bulk mailing to 100,000 emails at a high price if the company does not have a high percentage of deliverability, otherwise, your emails will go straight to the spam folder and never be read. 3. Do you know how these email addresses were collected? You have no real way to verify that the owners of these email addresses even want to receive your email. Were they opt-in emails or were they simply harvested through the use of software used to crawl the web capturing email addresses. If that is the case, your email would be spam and be against the anti-spam laws in most countries. 4. Are these emails even remotely relevant to your business? How can you guarantee that your email campaign will be delivered to customers who are interested in what you have to offer? You can only take the service at face value and accept what they are telling you. You have no way of proving the effectiveness of the campaign until after the fact and at that time, you have already paid for the service. 5. If your offer is very generic, this service may very well be for you. If your main concern is to just get your offer in front of as many people as possible and, based on averages, make enough sales to make it a profitable venture. 6. There is a cost involved with purchasing or renting email lists. These costs can vary from $300 for 10,000 to $1,000 for 1,000,000 emails or more. If you are confident that your copywriting is very compelling and your CTR has been extremely high, perhaps the cost outweighs the benefits for you. However, nothing is guaranteed. The company can guarantee delivery, but they cannot guarantee results. Building a Contextual Email List A contextual email list is obtained, usually through the use of a lead capture page, by potential customers visiting your website, articles, squeeze page and choosing to opt-in to your email list. This can be as a result of you offering an incentive such as a free information report, consultation or an email mini-course. The lead capture page would have an opt-in form where the visitor would input their name and email address. Things to consider when building a contextual purchase email list. 1. You would need to build a lead capture page or have one designed for you. There are some very reasonably priced squeeze page creator programs available that do not require any technical skills to use. The cost of the software is comparable to having one squeeze page designed for you but the cost is still considerably less than purchasing or renting a list and can be used over and over again. 2.The emails on your list would be very targeted and you are assured your subscribers are interested in your offers making the conversion rates much higher than any results you would get from a rented or purchased email list. 3. With your own opt-in list, you have the opportunity to build a relationship with your potential customers. This creates trust and facilitates future sales. It is often necessary to have contact with a potential customer 5-7 times before they will buy. A one-time mailing from a rented list does not allow for a relationship. 4. Having a mailing list makes your business more valuable should you ever decide to sell your business. The email list of existing customers is considered an asset and can triple the resale price of your business. 5. It does take a bit of work driving traffic to your list, but since the cost is so low, you can use that money you would have spent on a rented list to pay for PPC advertising. PPC is low cost, targeted advertising which you only pay for if someone interested in your offer clicks on the link. 6. With a subscribed list, it makes it possible to do repeat business. It is always easier to sell to someone who has bought from you before. This makes the cost of future sales much lower and increases your profits. As you can see, there are more advantages, in the long run, to building your own contextual email list for more effective email marketing. There is much more to be learned about lead capture and squeeze pages. I go into much more detail in my website.