Thinking about buying an Email List? Buying an email list sounds like a quick way to get some business, but it is actually a huge waste of money.

It is always better to follow the best practices to build an email marketing list. There are tones of email marketing list considered like spam through programs like Crawler also known as Harvester. They visit the pages in order to take information from websites to create a search engine index.

Therefore, you should be cautious where you're subscribing or leaving your email addresses. If you're going to buy an email list, this isn't going to be beneficial for you since they did not subscribe to your list. The recipients do not know your brand and most likely they will mark your emails as Spam.

Marketers should focus on creating their customers and prospects database from their website. The customer should opt-in in your email list to ensure your email deliverability.

Do not fall into spam list purchase and don't send emails to people who don't want to hear from you!

Finding a shortcut to the success of growing the list sounds attractive. It has been knowing that buying a list is very tempting for every business owners.

Why you should not buy a list

1. Who are you?

This is the first question that your recipient will ask when they'll receive your email. As the recipient did not opt-in your list this is still unsolicited, they have no relationship with you. It is very important in email marketing that you know your subscribers to send valuable content to them. 

How can you provide valuable and personalized content if your recipients do not even know you? Indeed, they will likely mark your email as spam and you will have a poor marketing performance, bad ratings, and spam marks.

2. Quality of the list

List sellers usually guarantee that they check the list with there protocols to ensure the relevance of the list according to your tailored needs. There’s a high chance of finding problems such as:

• Missing data
• Expired information
• Emails are being harvested with no consent

Even if it sounds good to have thousands of emails it will be worthless if the data are expired.

3. You will have problems with your ESP

If there are too many of your messages are marked as spam, you’ll be on the wrong side of your email service provider. You will see many of them do not allow purchased details from a third party.  Your ESP provides a service but will not risk their business ending up being blacklisted because of a shady contact list. 

 4. Other people are using the list

This is one thing that you should consider when buying a list, there are other people who will buy it too. They will be sending the recipients email after email. These people are unlikely to be receptive to your offers. They will probably delete without opening or mark your email as spam. It is very annoying receiving unsolicited emails from people selling you something that you don’t wish to receive. 

5. Your reputation is your brand

Your reputation is surely be knocked off when you encounter this kind of problems. Not just email service providers will cut you off but the recipients as well.

For instance, you will google your company and you will see a forum that talks about how annoying your company is sending relentless promotional emails.

Ouch, that would hurt your credibility in Email Marketing aspects and your business strategy.

Reputation issues are crucial especially many people use social media to comment, leave product reviews or tell something about the company. You have to handle a good reputation management.

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

 Here are the simple ways you can have a clean slate.

Start from scratch and build your list. Yeah, this might be tedious and lots of hard work but they will be worth it. When you see you’re list is growing and engaging in your email campaigns.

Always remember that “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and so as your business.

1. Engage your audience, the value of your email

If you want people to sign up for your email list, put a value or content that they can’t resist. Put the value first of what you can offer then it will come naturally that they will opt-in. This will build trust and you can, later on, sell something.

2. Lead Magnet

Offer an incentive “Lead Magnet” when your potential subscriber gives you their email address. You must know your niche and the resources that you can offer like startup toolkit or video tutorial. 

3. Reputable service provider

Find an email marketing platform that can provide you deliverability of your email campaigns. Stop using your private email when you send a mass email. You will be penalized for this and lose the other crucial feature of your ISP. 

There lots of option for your option form;

• Lightbox popups
• Floating bars
• Exit-intent pops
• Full-screen welcome gates
• 2 step option

This can easily integrate with your email service provider.

To summarize, do not buy an email list. It is simply not worth it.

Instead grow your list organically with a targeted, responsive list of potential customers who are eager to hear from you.