Why you should not buy email lists

Many enterprises yearn for a shortcut to lead generation. There are moments when many companies feel a sense of desperation, and consider taking shortcuts to acquiring leads.

Here are the reasons that you do not want to buy lists of email contacts. Reason number one of our list is a strong enough reason to not purchase lists, but if you need more continue on to point #2 and #3 and so on...

6 reasons why you should not buy email lists

1. It will create crippling email deliverability issues for the company, which are hard to fix and cause longterm harm to genuine emails. This will make it challenging to nurture leads in the future because your domain sender value will be lessened for email.
2. It will hurt your reputation. Contacts that a company can generate legitimately may be turned off if you spam. Prospects will be turned off to future communications and content, because they will perceive you as a spammer.
3. It will yield nothing or next to nothing for your company. Emailing to a purchased list yields an astonishingly low to nonexistent ROI. The low email open rates are partly due to the fact that your recipients don’t know you. Also, if you continue to send these spam emails, your future emails will be flagged as spam in greater numbers--further driving down your engagement rates.
4. Purchased email list data is not as accurate as providers say it is. Often the data is long out of date or the recipients (after being flooded with emails) have set up increased filters to dismiss the spam and bulk emails.
5. The inboxes of these contacts are flooded with similar spam messages, which further irritate the recipient as they continue to receive more and more spam. This does not make the recipient receptive to your message.
6. Reputable email publishing and marketing systems will not let you use purchased email lists. This is for a good reason and for your brand's health.

There’s no such thing as an opt-in list for sale! --Madmimi

Spam is a problem, and email service providers are eager to fight it. According to Kaspersky from data measured in the first quarter of 2013 spam accounted for 70.7% of all emails sent. Emailing to purchased lists makes your company part of the problem and a target of anti-spam laws and efforts. Additionally, your emails and email account will be grouped into the bulk of that 70% of spam emails--drowning out your message in a sea of desperate and wasteful emails.

In a nutshell: Purchased email lists harm your delivery to inboxes, brand reputation and have terrible ROI.

SOURCE: https://usa.kaspersky.com/internet-security-center/threats/spam-statistics-report-q2-2013