In order to run a successful online business, you’ll need to have traffic. However, traffic is too general of a term. What you need is relevant traffic to your website.
And that’s why most beginners make the mistake of paying for low-quality traffic to save money. Little did they know, that there’s a huge difference between high-quality and low-quality traffic.
Now the same goes for email marketing. Let’s say you have a great campaign ready to be sent out and generate thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, you don’t have a list to mail to. So you decide to buy an email list off of someone else.
Is buying an email list a good idea? Will it really help you generate thousands of dollars with little to no work at all?
In short, the answer is: No, buying an email list from someone else is a terrible idea!
In this article, I will go over the reasons why you should never buy an email list. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Reason #1. Quality Of The List
You can’t trust the people who sell you the email list. Because you didn’t capture these emails on your own, they can make any sort of claims and blatantly lie about it.
Here are potential problems that can affect the quality of the list:
- Where did they acquire the email addresses? Did you know that people are protected by the CAN-SPAM Act? While it looks great on your email list, but if the emails are acquired illegally. You could be subject to penalties of up to $41,484 for each separate email you send.
- Missing Or Invalid Information: I have a 2 step opt-in process for my email list to ensure that people who subscribe do so intentionally. Now if you purchase the email list, you might end up with missing or invalid information.
Let me ask you this! What good is having 5000-100,000 email subscribers if it’s full of missing or invalid information? Plus run the risk of getting penalized for the CAN-SPAM Act?
Reason #2. Consequences In The Long Run
With a poor quality list, you will notice an increase in bounce rate which will negatively impact future email sends. When this happens, you will notice your email marketing effort slowly go downhill because people aren’t receiving emails from you like they used to.
And also, with having a low-quality email list, you’ll also see a higher unsubscription ratio and spam reports. If you get too many, your email marketing service provider might terminate your account.
Personally, I use AWeber as my email marketing service provider and they specifically mentioned that you can’t use email lists that you purchased, rented, leased, or bought from a third party. Check out AWeber’s Anti Spam Policy.
Reason #3. Poor Response Rates
An email list is designed to nurture your audience and building relationships. That’s why you can’t expect the same results when you buy an email list compared to growing one organically.
Let’s say you purchased an email list with 100,000 names. What good is it if nobody on that list is interested in your offer? Also, keep in mind that you’ll have to spend more money to maintain a list with 100,000 names.
Reason #4. Risking Your Reputation
Can you imagine googling the name of your website or company and find angry rants from people reporting you for unsolicited emails? Now all potential collaborations and opportunities will go down the drain. Nobody will want to work with an email solicitor.
Your online reputation is just as important if not more important than your offline reputation. Once you’re known as an email solicitor, it will spread like wildfire on the internet. You might even see a MEME of yourself down the road.
In Conclusion
Buying an email list is fast and easy, but what good is it if you’re not going to see the results? That’s why you should always build organically. Whether it is your website traffic or your email list.
If you have not started building your email list yet, you can learn how to do so by checking out my article on how to build an email list with AWeber (30-day free trial included).
I hope this short article was helpful! If you have any questions, please let me know by leaving a comment down below. I will try my best to help you out!
Cheers,
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