How Much is That Email List in the Window?
March 11th, 2010 | by hotmail |
Louis Chatoff asked:
My answer is pretty simple: “I don’t have to do much”, because I have already done one of the following:
1. Cancelled or abandoned my email account because of all the garbage email.
2. Set the spam filter so high that no bulk mail gets through.
3. Or, I just go down the list of messages in my inbox and click “this is spam”
Once your email address ends up on a ‘list for sale’ you learn to adapt quickly so the high volume of unwanted messages are not overly burdensome.
Aggressive marketing has many senders believing that there is value in using purchased lists. Sellers of lists will tell customers that all the addresses in their lists have recently opted-in to receive offers from the list purchasers. Who in their right mind would knowingly opt-in to such a list?
A recent Google search came up with lists of 250,000 addresses for as little $100. That’s a quick $100 for the list seller and 250,000 worthless email addresses for the purchaser.
Here is an example of how a purchased list can ruin a good sender’s reputation:
A sender starts with a good list of 40,000 customers that opted-in to receive their newsletter. Over the last 6 months they have increased their mailings from twice a month to twice a week. Since the increase in frequency, the number of active subscribers has decreased to just over 25,000, and the open rate has gone from over 20% to around 12%. Rather than reviewing their mailing practices, the sender goes out and buys 20,000 addresses that seem to fit their target audience. The sender now sends to 45,000 members with the following results:
1. They are blocked by AOL because the have more than 10% invalid email addresses
2. Messages are being deferred by Yahoo because of user complaints
2. Hotmail appears to successfully deliver messages but they do not arrive in the inbox or the junk folder because Hotmail is deleting messages once they receive them because the sender has added Spam Traps
Even after removing the email addresses from the purchased list, the sender must spend the next month trying to resolve deliverability issues.
windows live hotmail
My answer is pretty simple: “I don’t have to do much”, because I have already done one of the following:
1. Cancelled or abandoned my email account because of all the garbage email.
2. Set the spam filter so high that no bulk mail gets through.
3. Or, I just go down the list of messages in my inbox and click “this is spam”
Once your email address ends up on a ‘list for sale’ you learn to adapt quickly so the high volume of unwanted messages are not overly burdensome.
Aggressive marketing has many senders believing that there is value in using purchased lists. Sellers of lists will tell customers that all the addresses in their lists have recently opted-in to receive offers from the list purchasers. Who in their right mind would knowingly opt-in to such a list?
A recent Google search came up with lists of 250,000 addresses for as little $100. That’s a quick $100 for the list seller and 250,000 worthless email addresses for the purchaser.
Here is an example of how a purchased list can ruin a good sender’s reputation:
A sender starts with a good list of 40,000 customers that opted-in to receive their newsletter. Over the last 6 months they have increased their mailings from twice a month to twice a week. Since the increase in frequency, the number of active subscribers has decreased to just over 25,000, and the open rate has gone from over 20% to around 12%. Rather than reviewing their mailing practices, the sender goes out and buys 20,000 addresses that seem to fit their target audience. The sender now sends to 45,000 members with the following results:
1. They are blocked by AOL because the have more than 10% invalid email addresses
2. Messages are being deferred by Yahoo because of user complaints
2. Hotmail appears to successfully deliver messages but they do not arrive in the inbox or the junk folder because Hotmail is deleting messages once they receive them because the sender has added Spam Traps
Even after removing the email addresses from the purchased list, the sender must spend the next month trying to resolve deliverability issues.
windows live hotmail
