Thinking about buying an email list? It sounds easy, right? But what if I tell you that buying an email list is a huge mistake and a waste of money? I am sure you want to boost your conversion rates, increase your revenue, and make more sales.
However, that’s not the best strategy to do it. On the other hand, Email marketing has always been an important part of digital marketing best practices. With email marketing strategies, marketers can nurture their leads, and improve customer loyalty. And that’s critical when it comes to growing a business.
In this direction, if you want to apply the best email marketing practices in your business, it is an essential part of that process to engage your leads and make them see how valuable your products and services are.
Even with all those facts, some companies, agencies, and ecommerce businesses still insist on purchasing email lists, as a shortcut to success. But they are wrong!
In this article, we’re gonna show you why you should never buy an email list, and how to build your own organic, qualified and active email list. You’ll learn that the quality of your mailing list is one of your main goals. But before that, let’s see some reasons why buying an email list is a big blunder.
Low engagement
Imagine you are using your laptop or smartphone, browsing the web, and then out of the blue you receive an email from some brand you don’t know anything about. If you are a curious person you might open it, but even so, probably you’ll just delete it after reading it, and keep doing what you were doing.
Now imagine, that later you receive another email like that again, and again, and again. I’m sure you’re gonna be irritated. After all, some company has appropriated your email address to sell you something that you never showed interest in. And worse, you never signed up for that.
Will you want to be engaged with that brand? Will you feel willing to learn more about it? About its products or services? Of course, you won’t. So, what makes you think that it’ll be different if you do this with some random list of emails?
To get positive results, sending emails is not enough. We want to get high engagement, and make the email open rate high as well. When you buy an email list you don’t have control of those important things.
You don’t know if the people receiving your email want to receive it, or will be interested in it. In this case, your lead database will be weak, and ineffective. And consequently, your conversion rates will also go down.
Your Brand Reputation
I know that spam is a scary four-letter word. And we recognize that being marked as spam is one of the worst things that could happen when it comes to email marketing.
If your emails get marked too often as spam, Google, Yahoo, and a lot of other email clients will lead your emails to the spam box. And that means that your emails will no longer be seen by your contacts, and then your email open rate will increasingly decrease.
Therefore, if you buy an email list, sooner or later, you’ll probably end up having a bad IP reputation. Every and single one of your messages won’t be delivered anymore.
So, build your organic email list and send emails just for people who are really interested in what you offer. If you do something different from that, unfortunately, you won’t get good results.
CLICK HERE AND CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE: What Is Email Marketing? — Definitions and Benefits
Big Fine and Legal Bills
Different countries have different laws against sending out unsolicited bulk emails, such as the GPDR in the EU or the CAN-SPAM act in the United States.
In some parts of the world, even after buying an email list and sending unsolicited messages, you might be on the right side of the law. However, you can be sure that if you send a lot of emails and your contacts complain about it, you probably will have to deal with an expansive legal battle just to prove that you are not doing nothing wrong.
Also, don’t forget that some countries have more restrictive laws than others, and as you don’t know for sure where your contacts come from with a bought email list, maybe you’ll have to respond according to the law of different countries, and spend a lot of money with it.
Other People Are Using the Same Email List
Companies that sell email lists make money by selling the same email list over and over. It means that at the same time you are sending a message for some contact, maybe five, ten, or even twenty other brands are also sending emails to that same exact contact.
Some people, trying to get free of those annoying emails, close down their email accounts, and open new ones. You may have already done that too.
You don’t want your email lost among hundreds of others. But you can be sure that if you use a bought email list that’s exactly what’s gonna happen.
How To Build An Effective Email List
Now that you learned about why you should never use a bought email list, it’s time to show you how to acquire an effective, organic, and qualified email list.
As we’ll see, it’ll take longer to build a mailing list that really improves your conversion rates and business revenue. But trust me, it’s worth it!
One of the most powerful ways of doing it is by creating rich content. If you develop content on social media, website, blog articles, videos, and more, you will be contributing to engage your target audience, and make them realize how interested your brand and products are.
When prospects sign up for receiving a newsletter or to get an eBook, you obtain their contact information. You have already caught their attention, so they probably will keep interested in your brand. And that’s how you get more leads.
Another effective way to build an email list is to optimize your website and think about CRO (Conversion rate Optimization) and the customer journey. If you optimize your website, your conversion rates will increase indeed. Interactive pop ups and smart mental triggers are also an amazing way to do so.
Don’t Get the Shortcut
As you can see, there are a lot of ways of building an organic and qualified email list. So, do not try to get a shortcut in this case. It won’t be worth it, you will not get qualified leads, and your conversion rates won’t grow at all.
Instead, try to learn some of the many paths to get a good mailing list. Popconvert can help you throughout this journey.
Popconvert is a sophisticated software that uses gamification to generate valuable lead lists. Using the best digital marketing practices, Popconvert will help you to engage your customers, improve your email open rate, and boost your business revenue.
If you choose to use Popconvert, you’ll get a qualified email list, increase your conversion rates, and once and for all become the best version of your business.
Gian Desiderio is a writer for the web. He is on our marketing team, where he also manages our social media. In his free time, he seeks to expand his digital marketing capabilities and he often volunteers to teach English to children in Brazil.