About a month ago I wrote a post about buying lists in the Internet and why this was a bad idea.
Today I received a question from one of our customers about renting a list and the convenience of doing this.
Rented lists are different from selling lists in that, in the first case, you don't get access to the data in the list but the provider sends your email on your behalf to its own list of recipients. You must trust a lot the provider or otherwise you can not be sure that the list has a good quality and the recipients have given permission for receiving this kind of e-mails.
Companies that grow lists for renting generally get their recipients from vertical portals or from some specific websites. Probably this people give permission to these portals to send them e-mail from them or their customers and partners, but think about the consequences of the owners of the list sending an e-mail on your behalf: The recipients will not know you and probably get annoyed and click the “report spam” button. And most important: they didn’t give you explicit permission to send them any e-mail.
Sounds this familiar to you? Yes, it's the definition of spam: unsolicited e-mail.
Does this mean that this against the law? Not necessarily, but the point here, as always, is not only if it’s against the law (that’s supposed to be), but if it is against your own interests.
You will probably pay a good bunch of bucks for using the list, and you are surely getting a real low response for the emailing, and therefore a small ROI from the investment. And worse, your brand could be damaged if people think you’re a spammer. You don’t have a clue if the list is heavily used and consequently people in the list are angry about receiving your e-mail.
So the conclusion in (again) that you must not rent lists for emailing.
If you really need to grow your subscriptions’ list fast you can try to advertise in a vertical portal newsletter, co-brand it or make co-registration. But renting or buying a list is always a bad thing to do.
As always, I recommend that you grow your own in-house permission list (some tips here and here). It’s slow and painful, but it’s the only way to get results. In e-mail marketing always think in quality, not in quantity (more is less), and don’t forget that the most important asset you have is your brand and reputation, so don’t get a chance to drive it to a dead end.
In case you don’t want to hear my advice please review this interesting article by Jeanne Jennings: “Renting E-Mail Lists: What to Ask Before the Send”, and the ten rules of thumb for rented lists of Marketing Sherpa.