Should I Buy An Email List?

[pow-wow]

I want to do an email marketing campaign. I am planning to buy an email list, though i think there must be some alternatives.

Is it a good idea to buy email lists? Or are there more effective and less expensive ways?

Ideals will be appreciated.
Thanks

[KingPin]

Be very careful when buying lists. Maker sure they are relevant to your product/service.

Usually the seller lets you have a test sample. So say if the total list database is 10,000 ask for a test of 1,000.

KP

[itconstruct]

I regard all emails sent in this fashion as spam mail therefore so does my email setup regime!

I would think that you could use a better marketing strategy.

What are you trying to market?

[mtb]

Agree with everything itconstruct said.

- Matt

[KingPin]

So you dismiss the power of email marketing? If you do you're mad.

Pow-Wow is talking about people that have signed up to opt-in lists, not out right spamming lists.

KP

[kappa84]

As I was saying KP in other thread, people rather mark as spam these email than reading it...

[KingPin]

So I guess that email marketing campaign that I done for a large, well known German car manufacturer was a total waste of time and they wasted a lot of money on me doing it for them.

I'm not even going to get into a debate about this right now. I will put it down to lack of understanding of email marketing and having no concept of the idea.

KP

[kappa84]

One thing is an email campaign from VW let's say and other is an email campaign from an unknown company.

You don't have to be rude when you reply. Sorry for interfering, that will never happen again.

[rhyswynne]

I'm with KP on this one. There are thousands of opt-in lists out there, and we do three for various sized companies.

One bought a list of business marketing contacts, and he said that the sales from day one of the marketing campaign via email paid for the e-mail list. We'd only emailed 5000 of the 500,000 contacts!

Of course you'll get people unsubscribing, bounces and more, but the fact is that it does actuallly work.

[ms4u]

Hi KP,

Interesting reply on this thread. I wonder, do you have any recommended reading material you can advice on this area of email marketing? I am also planning to launch my own email marketing campaign but not really know where should I begin. I already start looking at the mass email script as a starting point, but lacking of knowledge on how to write a good email. Do you have any recommendation?