Summary
The allure of purchasing pre-compiled lists of 'top email marketing companies' or similar industry-specific databases can be strong, promising immediate access to a targeted audience. However, the consensus across email deliverability experts, seasoned marketers, and official documentation is overwhelmingly against such practices. These lists often carry significant risks to your sender reputation, deliverability, and overall marketing effectiveness. While they might appear to save time in list building, the long-term consequences, such as increased spam complaints, low engagement, and being placed on a blocklist (or blacklist), typically far outweigh any perceived short-term gains.
Key findings
- Low quality: Purchased lists frequently contain outdated, inactive, or invalid email addresses, including spam traps, which can severely damage your sender reputation.
- Legal risks: Sending to unconsenting recipients violates major anti-spam regulations like CAN-SPAM and GDPR, potentially leading to legal penalties and fines.
- Damaged reputation: High bounce rates, spam complaints, and low engagement from purchased lists signal poor sending practices to internet service providers (ISPs), leading to poorer deliverability and potential blacklisting. This can be critical for understanding your email domain reputation.
- Poor ROI: Despite the upfront cost, purchased lists rarely yield a positive return on investment due to low engagement, high complaint rates, and the subsequent negative impact on your email marketing efforts.
Key considerations
- Ethical marketing: Focus on building an organic email list through opt-in methods, ensuring recipients genuinely want to receive your communications. This approach aligns with best practices and fosters stronger customer relationships.
- List hygiene: Regularly clean and validate your email lists to remove inactive or invalid addresses. Investing in email list validation tools helps maintain a healthy list.
- Content quality: Even with a good list, irrelevant or poor-quality content can lead to disengagement and spam complaints. Prioritize delivering value to your subscribers.
- Long-term strategy: Building a permission-based list takes time but results in higher engagement, better deliverability, and a more sustainable marketing channel. Mailchimp's stance underscores that buying email lists is almost never worth it.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often face the dilemma of quickly scaling their audience versus building a list organically. While the desire for immediate reach is understandable, many marketers who have considered or experimented with purchasing lists share cautionary tales. The overwhelming sentiment is that such lists lead to more problems than solutions, undermining the very goals of effective email marketing, such as credibility and genuine engagement.
Key opinions
- Negative return: Many marketers report that the promised benefits of purchased lists, like increased website visits or credibility, rarely materialize and often result in a net negative impact on their business.
- Spam and legal violations: Purchased lists are frequently acquired through scraping or other non-consensual methods, leading to unsolicited emails that violate anti-spam laws like CAN-SPAM.
- Credibility erosion: Associating with sketchy list providers or engaging in spammy practices can damage a brand's reputation and make it harder to build trust with legitimate subscribers.
- Exposure fallacy: The idea of gaining 'exposure' from being on a paid list often doesn't translate into tangible business results. Marketers highlight that exposure needs to convert into revenue to be valuable.
Key considerations
- Audience intent: The fundamental issue with purchased lists is the lack of explicit consent and intent from recipients. People on these lists haven't asked to hear from you, making genuine engagement unlikely.
- Deliverability impact: Sending to purchased lists frequently results in high bounce rates and spam complaints, which can severely impact your sender reputation and lead to your emails going to spam.
- Alternative strategies: Marketers emphasize focusing on organic list growth through content marketing, lead magnets, and effective opt-in forms. This builds a more engaged and valuable subscriber base over time. For more on this, consider the pros and cons when you buy email lists.
- Avoiding blocklists: Using purchased lists is a fast track to being added to email blocklists and blacklists, which can severely disrupt your entire email program and make it impossible to reach legitimate inboxes.
Email marketer from Email Geeks warns that paying for a spot on a 'top companies' list, especially when they offer fewer website visits and dubious credibility, is a red flag. These schemes rarely deliver on their promises, leading to wasted resources and negative outcomes.
Marketer from Email Geeks suggests that if a company trying to sell you a list or a spot on a list has to cold email you, it's a strong indicator of their own questionable practices. Their tactics often mirror those of spammers.
What the experts say
Email deliverability experts consistently caution against the acquisition of paid email lists. Their perspectives are rooted in deep understanding of how ISPs, spam filters, and sender reputation systems operate. The general consensus is that any perceived shortcuts in list building through purchasing lists invariably lead to long-term damage to deliverability and brand reputation.
Key opinions
- Reputation is paramount: Experts stress that maintaining a good sender reputation is crucial for inbox placement. Purchased lists typically contain spam traps and unengaged users, which quickly degrade this reputation.
- Engagement signals: ISPs prioritize engagement. Lists not built on explicit consent lead to low open rates and high complaint rates, signaling to ISPs that your emails are unwanted and should be sent to spam or blocked. This impacts your overall email deliverability issues.
- Blacklist risk: Sending to non-opt-in lists significantly increases the risk of landing on public and private blacklists, which can severely impede email delivery across many providers.
- Ethical considerations: Beyond technical issues, experts highlight the ethical implications of sending unsolicited mail. It erodes trust and diminishes the overall value of email as a marketing channel.
Key considerations
- Organic growth: The only sustainable way to build a healthy email list is through organic, permission-based methods. This ensures engaged subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content.
- List validation: For existing lists, regular validation and cleaning are essential to remove problematic addresses and maintain high quality. This helps mitigate the risks of high unknown rates when validating purchased email lists.
- Monitoring deliverability: Implement robust deliverability monitoring to track your inbox placement, complaint rates, and sender reputation metrics proactively.
- Focus on value: Deliver relevant, valuable content to your subscribers. This builds trust, encourages engagement, and naturally improves your sender reputation over time, leading to better inbox placement.
Deliverability expert from Email Geeks explains that the reputation of the entire SEO community can be tarnished by bad actors who engage in scam-like practices, much like legitimate email marketers suffer due to spammers. This creates a challenging environment for those who follow best practices.
An industry expert from SpamResource emphasizes that sending to purchased or scraped lists is a primary reason for high spam complaints and low engagement. These negative metrics directly impact sender reputation, making it difficult to reach even legitimate recipients in the future.
What the documentation says
Official documentation and reputable guides from major email service providers and industry bodies consistently advise against using purchased or third-party email lists. Their guidelines are designed to ensure fair use of email as a communication channel, protect user privacy, and maintain the integrity of their email ecosystems. These documents often highlight the technical and legal ramifications of non-permission-based sending.
Key findings
- Violation of terms: Most legitimate email service providers (ESPs) explicitly prohibit the use of purchased lists in their terms of service, leading to account suspension or termination if violated.
- Spam traps: Documentation warns that purchased lists are highly likely to contain spam traps, which are email addresses used to identify spammers. Hitting these immediately flags your sending domain. Learn more about spam traps, what they are, and how they work.
- Permission-based marketing: Official guidance emphasizes the necessity of explicit consent for email marketing. This is the cornerstone of good deliverability and avoiding blocklists.
- Reputation and deliverability: Documentation explains that sending to unengaged or non-consenting recipients leads to poor sender metrics (low opens, high complaints, unsubscribes) which harm your reputation with ISPs.
Key considerations
- Compliance: Adhere strictly to email marketing laws like CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL, which mandate consent and clear unsubscribe options. Purchased lists almost never meet these requirements.
- Organic list building: Invest in strategies that encourage voluntary sign-ups. This includes offering valuable content, optimizing website forms, and clear calls to action. A local business considering purchasing email lists should weigh these risks carefully.
- List hygiene: Even with legitimate lists, regular cleaning is vital. Documentation on deliverability practices often highlights the importance of removing bounced addresses and unengaged subscribers to maintain list health.
- Focus on engagement: Documentation from Mailchimp and similar platforms provides ample resources on strategies to maximize email marketing effectiveness through engagement, rather than just list size.
Official documentation from Mailchimp strictly advises against buying email lists. They clarify that engaging with unconsenting recipients means people don't want to do business with companies who buy email lists, leading to a negative perception of your brand.
A blog from Selzy indicates that the financial cost of email lists is often just the beginning. The hidden costs, such as damage to sender reputation and poor deliverability, can quickly escalate, making the initial purchase far more expensive in the long run.
