Thinking About Renting an Opt-in Email List or Database? Read This First!

Sometimes when you don’t have a list of your own yet, or want to grow your list, renting a permission based opt-in list may be a viable alternative to send an email to. A permission based opt-in rental list is a list of prospects or a targeted group of subscribers who have opted-in to receive information about certain subjects.

Under no circumstances should you ever purchase a CD of millions of email addresses. These emails have been harvested from the internet and if you contact anyone on these lists, you will be spamming them. Also avoid opt-out lists where recipients are placed on a list involuntarily and then invited to unsubscribe if they want to.

It’s important to note that the lists are always rented, never bought. The list owner is the only person who ever sees the actual list. You rent the one-time use of the list, send your promotion to the list owner, who in turn sends it out to the list.

Since you only get the one-time use of the list, instead of trying to directly sell the recipients a product or service, pull out all the stops to try and collect their email address. Since most people are unlikely to buy from the first contact, this allows you to contact them again and again until you eventually sell your product or service to them. Offer a free gift or ethical bribe, get their email, then sell to them later. This way, not only can you try and sell one product to them later, but over the span of their lifetime with you, you can sell to them again and again,

The average list rental will usually cost between $0.01 and $0.50 per name with an average of about $0.20 per name. Additional specifications, including postal/zip codes, ages, gender and job types carry an additional cost of about $0.05 per name. A typical response rate from a rented list hovers around the 0.5% mark; of course it depends on the list, the copy and the offer, but 0.5% is average.

Since list sales reps usually work on commissions, they may sometimes try to sell you more names than you want or need, instead of the best names for your campaign. However, you should remember that it is list quality, not quantity that counts.

• Make sure you have a specific definition of your target audience for them to work with.

• Having a budget in mind will help as well.

• Find out if the list is single or double opt-in. How did they opt-in?

• Ask the list broker if they will review your offer/copy.

Although they will most likely not be a copy editor, they should have a good idea if it will be successful based on previous offerings.

It would also be worth it to insist that there be a warranty built into the contract that will protect your business should the rented list fall foul to spam or data protection legislation.

Perhaps the most important thing about purchasing email lists is to test them first. That means sending a test email to 5-10% of the list before purchasing it to test your response. Be wary of list owners that won’t allow you to test their list. Most will charge you for it (or include the initial rental charge if you do decide to rent the list) so don’t expect it for free. It’s also not a bad idea to send a couple of test emails testing different elements of your email before you blast it to the entire list.

If you’re just starting out, or looking to grow quickly, purchasing a list can be a very viable option. Always remember to research list owners to make sure they are reputable. If they have testimonials, or email/phone numbers of past clients you can call, all the better. Just remember, you’ll get what you pay for.

Back to JustinMichie.com