Renting Email Marketing Lists vs. Buying Email Marketing Lists

One of the quickest and easiest ways to bring awareness to your product or service is via email marketing. But thanks to CAN-SPAM and bad lists, getting a hold of the right email marketing lists of procurement decision makers and influencers can be tough. Email marketing lists are getting more precise and more customized within the last few years – which helps you reach more of the right people that will influence your sales cycle. There are two ways to go about targeted email marketing campaigns – you can either rent a list or buy one. I’ll give you a run-down on both options so you can decide on the best option for your company. Plus, I’ll go over additional email marketing tips.

Renting an Email List of Government Decision Makers

An email list rental is the purchase of another party’s email list, to be used one time only. Sometimes you may be able to negotiate using the list more than once. The key part of an email list rental is that you never get access to the list of email names. In addition, when the decision maker looks at who the email is from, it will reference the name of the party who is sending the email out on your behalf. You get to supply the other party with your own copy / product message and then you decide on the date and time the emails will be sent out.

Buying an Email List of Government Decision Makers

When you purchase a list of government decision makers, the list is yours to keep for repeated use so you have complete control over your marketing process and information. What’s even nicer is that many government contact lists have more information than just an email address – you’ll get postal addresses and the name and title of the contact. That allows you to maximize your marketing through both mail and email efforts. With a list that’s yours to keep, you can integrate the information with your database of clients and prospects so you can market to them now and in the future.

Targeted Email Marketing Lists: Things You Need to Know

• Make sure that the party who is distributing the list is a leader in government business information and that the company has comprehensive resources to gather the right data.
• Abide by the CAN-SPAM rules. For example, if you’re sending out marketing emails, be sure that you include copy that includes a way for the prospect to opt out with instructions on how to unsubscribe so you abide by the CAN-SPAM regulations. In addition, include your physical street address at the bottom of your email message.
• To keep track of which contacts are opting out of your emails, have your office administrator monitor black lists and specific email groups/agencies so you can focus your efforts on a targeted email marketing list contacts that show the most sales potential.
• Try a few different approaches with your postal and email marketing messages. Track the progress of each campaign so you can utilize the same copy for targeting prospective clients down the road.
• Marketing Copy: Keep in mind that these are new clients, so don’t make a special offer up front. Talk about the benefits of your product or service, and point out how you set yourself apart in the industry. Talk about who you are, what you offer and establish trust points.
• Understand response rate metrics. With email marketing, your response rate is expected to be low…and by low, you may see a 10% response rate but that’s more of a “normal” percentage for an email marketing response rate.

Pete Ross said,

April 8, 2009 @ 9:36 pm

I think there’s several large generalisations in here about marketing lists that are complete fallacies. I’ve never heard of a list owner or broker specifying that rentals cannot have postal/phone/etc information included, OR specifying that purchases necessarily do. Your company might do these things, but in a supposedly informative email, it merely sounds prohibitive and misleading.

“The key part of an email list rental is that you never get access to the list of email names” - what? What is an email name anyway? If you mean the contact name, and you’re talking about personalised addresses, then….

Good points about different marketing approaches and metrics.

Pete Ross said,

April 8, 2009 @ 9:36 pm

Correction:

“…in a supposedly informative email..”

*article, not email.

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