You can buy anything on the internet these days including email lists and social media followers. If those things are available it would be stupid not to take advantage of them, right? Wrong. 

It’s established that email marketing is an effective tool for communicating with and converting customers. But to begin converting customers from email you need to build up an email list of contacts to message. This is where many small business owners get impatient and get themselves into trouble.

Buying social media followers or in this instance, a list of email contacts, is never a good idea. Outside of the moral implications of spamming people who did not ask to receive your messages you are also potentially putting yourself at risk of legal trouble and potentially blacklisting your domain forever.

The Lists Are Never Quality

If you are a small business owner you probably have a good idea of who you are trying to sell to. Maybe your customer is local, maybe they are a specific age range or gender or maybe they have a specific interest. So how would it help your business to email thousands of contacts that are entirely outside your buyer persona?

The only thing you can be certain of when purchasing an email list is that it will be full of junk. Lists that are for sale are generally full of old and unused email addresses, email addresses that have become spam traps and maybe a few legitimate email addresses that have already been spammed by thousands of other companies.

More does not equal merrier.

You are much better off sending emails to a hundred contacts that have expressed interest in your business than sending a message to 50,000 contacts you bought online. It’s never worth it.

Your Deliverability Will Plummet

There are a lot of ways that spam is tracked and one of these is the use of spam traps. 

Spam traps are email addresses that are old or no longer valid that have been intentionally planted on lists to track businesses that are spamming. The only way one of these email addresses would get into your contact list is by using a purchased or spam list. Once an email is received by one of these traps your domain is flagged for spam.

If you hit a couple of spam traps you will likely be fine but if you hit a lot of them your domain and IP address will be flagged as spam and your messages will not be delivered. This means that emails from any email address associated with your company domain or IP address will be flagged as spam possibly for years to come. This can be catastrophic for a small business and will make sending emails very difficult even to legitimate contacts.

You Will Get Booted From Your Email Platform

Almost all of the widely available and used email marketing tools have explicit rules about sending to purchased email lists. And while they may not be able to tell the list was purchased when you upload it, they will be alerted when your messages hit dozens of spam traps.

This is an area that is well enforced. Email marketing platforms do not want to poison their own business by enabling businesses that are spamming people. This is why many have enacted strict rules about only allowing contacts that have explicitly opted-in to receive emails.

If you buy and use a purchased list your email platform will be alerted because your account will suddenly receive spam complaints and hit spam traps. If you are lucky they will give you a second chance and have you clean up your list but many will just simply cancel your account right then and there to avoid impacting their own business.

You May Violate The Law

Laws that regulate email messaging are always evolving. If you want to stay on the right side of the law it’s best to conduct your email marketing above board.

If you buy an email list and start sending emails to people who have never explicitly “opted-in” to receive emails you will be in violation of the General Data Protection Regulation. The GDPR is a European law that protects consumers by enforcing explicit consent. What this means is that all email lists must be populated by contacts that have asked to be put on the list.

Now you may be thinking, “Well I’m not in Europe so this doesn’t matter.” But that’s not the case. Email marketing companies throughout the United States have changed their platforms so they universally comply with GDPR regardless of what country they are in and who they are sending to. Additionally with a purchased list you never know where the contact you are sending to is located.

The law changes quickly and many countries all over the world are adopting or pursuing similar legislation. Don't put your business in the position of being vulnerable to ever-changing laws!

Final Thoughts

Buying an email list is never worth it and could damage your sending reputation for years to come. Put your money to better use by running campaigns to boost your email list legitimately with contacts that are actually interested in why you are trying to sell!

Always remember that there are no ways to cut corners when it comes to building a following of any kind - you have to do the work!

Here’s to your success!