What are the risks and downsides of cold emailing a purchased list?

Key findings

• Legal risks: Sending to purchased lists can violate anti-spam laws like the CAN-SPAM Act in the U.S., GDPR in the EU, and CASL in Canada, leading to substantial fines and legal repercussions. Campaign Refinery explains the legal pitfalls.
• Reputation damage: This practice can severely harm your domain and IP address reputation, causing all your emails, including legitimate marketing and transactional messages, to land in spam folders or be blocked. For more, read about why purchased lists cause deliverability issues.
• Low engagement: Recipients on purchased lists have not opted in to receive your emails, resulting in exceptionally low open rates, click-through rates, and high unsubscribe or spam complaint rates.
• Bad data quality: Purchased lists often contain outdated, invalid, or even spam trap addresses, which directly lead to bounces, low deliverability, and blocklist entries.
• ESP terms of service (TOS) violations: Most reputable email service providers (ESPs), like Mailchimp, strictly prohibit the use of purchased lists, and detected violations can lead to immediate account suspension or termination. Learn about the dangers of scraping emails and ignoring compliance rules.

Key considerations

• List building: Prioritize building an organic, opt-in email list through legitimate methods, which yields higher engagement and better long-term results.
• Legal compliance: Always ensure your email marketing activities comply with all applicable anti-spam and privacy regulations in your target regions.
• Deliverability monitoring: Regularly monitor your email deliverability and sender reputation to detect and address any issues promptly.
• Impact on legitimate mail: Be aware that aggressive cold emailing can compromise the delivery of critical business communications, such as invoices and customer service emails, if your domain or IP becomes blocklisted.

Key opinions

• Not worth the risk: Many marketers conclude that purchasing lists is simply not worth the risk, as it can kill your domain and impact all future email efforts. Markempa highlights the deadly tactics that can occur.
• Reputation impact: The primary concern is the negative impact on sender reputation, which can lead to legitimate emails being blocked or landing in spam folders.
• ESP account termination: Email service providers are quick to suspend accounts that violate their acceptable use policies (AUPs) by sending to purchased lists.
• Low ROI: The low engagement rates and high bounce rates from purchased lists often mean the cost of acquiring and emailing these lists far exceeds any potential return on investment. This is often an ignored deliverability challenge with cold email sending.
• Alienating audiences: Unsolicited emails can annoy recipients, leading them to mark your messages as spam and fostering a negative perception of your brand. This directly impacts warm email deliverability.

Key considerations

• Financial cost: Consider not only the cost of the list but also the potential loss of business from legitimate emails failing to deliver due to reputational damage.
• Brand integrity: Weigh the perceived immediate benefit against the long-term harm to your brand's credibility and trustworthiness.
• Alternative strategies: Invest time and resources into sustainable, permission-based list growth methods, such as content marketing, SEO, and lead magnets.
• Internal education: Educate sales and marketing teams on the severe consequences of using purchased lists to ensure alignment on best practices.

Key opinions

• Domain reputation is primary: Experts stress that maintaining a good domain reputation is crucial for deliverability, and aggressive cold emailing can quickly erode it, causing even legitimate emails to go to spam. Learn about what happens when your domain is blacklisted.
• ESP policy violations: Sending to purchased lists almost always violates the acceptable use policy of legitimate ESPs, leading to account suspension or termination, as Word to the Wise discusses.
• Spam trap exposure: Purchased lists are notorious for containing spam trap addresses. Hitting these can instantly damage your sender reputation and lead to blocklisting. Understand more about how spam traps operate.
• Delivery problems for all mail: Aggressive cold emailing can result in deliverability issues for your entire email stream, including critical transactional emails and internal communications.
• Economic failure: The financial cost of acquiring lists, combined with low returns and the expense of reputation recovery, often makes this approach economically unviable.

Key considerations

• Prioritize opt-in: Always build your email lists through explicit consent to ensure high engagement and maintain a strong sender reputation.
• Understand blocklists: Familiarize yourself with how email blocklists and blacklists operate and the steps required for removal if your IP or domain gets listed.
• Long-term strategy: Focus on a sustainable email strategy that builds trust and delivers consistent results, rather than chasing quick, risky gains.
• Protect core communications: Ensure that any cold emailing activities are completely separate from your main corporate email infrastructure to protect essential business communications.

Key findings

• Legal frameworks: Laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act, GDPR, and CASL impose strict rules on commercial email, often requiring explicit consent (opt-in) from recipients before sending marketing messages. Campaign Refinery outlines these laws.
• Consent requirements: Documentation consistently stresses that data gathered without consent, as is typical with purchased lists, introduces significant legal and ethical challenges for email marketers. See risks of converting visitors to leads without consent.
• Email service provider policies: ESPs typically have explicit terms of service that prohibit sending to purchased lists to maintain high deliverability standards across their platform.
• Reputation and deliverability standards: Official guidelines from major inbox providers emphasize sender reputation built on positive engagement and low complaint rates, which are undermined by purchased lists. Authentication protocols like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM also become crucial.

Key considerations

• Adherence to laws: Always ensure your email campaigns fully comply with the legal requirements of every jurisdiction you send to.
• Unsubscribe mechanisms: Provide clear, functional unsubscribe options in every email, even for cold outreach, to mitigate spam complaints and legal risks.
• Provider compliance: Before using any ESP, thoroughly review their terms of service regarding purchased lists and ensure your practices align with their policies.