Should I Buy Email Addresses?

I have got­ten asked this ques­tion many times over the years: ​“Can I buy email address­es and then send them emails?” or ​“Can I have a mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny blast my mes­sage to 10s of thou­sands of emails on my behalf?” The sim­ple answer to either one of these ques­tions, in my opin­ion, is sim­ple No. Do not buy or mass email peo­ple. Now, if you would like an expla­na­tion of my rea­son­ing, read on.  There are more and more com­pa­nies pop­ping up today that offer ​“approved” or ​“ver­i­fied” email address­es that you can pur­chase or have them send emails to these con­sumers on your behalf. The prob­lem with this form of mar­ket­ing is that it is not per­son­al and is about as cold as pos­si­ble to find a prospect. I think it is far worse than door to door prospect­ing or pos­si­ble cold call­ing. Why do I think this? Because we all get too many emails to begin with. Many of us have our email address­es sold already. This hap­pened by us sign­ing up on a web­site and for­get­ting to uncheck the box, ​“you agree for us to send you emails with offers from our part­ners.” Or, some­times we do real­ly agree to this to get some deal but then regret it lat­er, because our email is sold to the mass­es! I have nev­er heard any­one at any­time say, ​“I love get­ting mass emails from com­pa­nies I don’t know!” Have you?

But David, It Is So Cheap & It Works

Real­ly? Does it work? Ok sure… I know of a few painters who have done mass emails. They pur­chased a list through an agency and had them email peo­ple who sup­pos­ed­ly were ok being on the list. Yet the amount of leads that come in are so lit­tle. It is extreme­ly rare to get a high qual­i­ty lead when this form of mar­ket­ing takes place.

The Best Way to Do Email Marketing

Get Per­mis­sion

Email mar­ket­ing still works and is and can be very pow­er­ful. Yet the best way for it to work is per­haps the hard­est for any con­tract­ing busi­ness to imple­ment. My blog post get sent to a list of indi­vid­u­als who have vol­un­teered to receive my blog updates. They had to sign up. I rarely get unsub­scribes if any. This is because I do not sell their emails, and I got their per­mis­sion to update them. Sell­ing a home improve­ment ser­vice should be no dif­fer­ent than what I am doing. When you ask first and get per­mis­sion, you’ll cre­ate a stronger list of prospects and repeat cus­tomers who are then will­ing to receive your emails, blog post and so forth. The rea­son this is so hard is that many of you already have hun­dreds if not thou­sands of emails in your sys­tem. It is hard to know where to start. There are sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ways to han­dle this, yet no mat­ter what, it is time con­sum­ing. It will require sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly going through your account and mak­ing sure peo­ple real­ly want to get your emails.

Qual­i­ty, Not Quantity

It has always been about qual­i­ty vs quan­ti­ty. Every­one wants qual­i­ty leads! To get more qual­i­ty leads, you need more qual­i­ty read­ers when it comes to email mar­ket­ing. The more you care­ful­ly nur­ture your email list and get rid of those who do not engage or open your emails, the more qual­i­ty sub­scribers and buy­ers you’ll get over­time. Here is one quick tip if you already have a large email list. This will require a bit of work. Per­haps bite this off over­time or assign to an admin assis­tant. Mailchimp, for exam­ple, rates your email list: 1 to 5 stars. I start with the 1 stars and find out the last time he/​she opened an email. Some­times I’ve found the emails are incor­rect to begin with. Some­times I will find the last time an email was opened was 2 – 3 years ago. When I do a deep dive on that email, I’ll come to find out they hired some­one else and stopped read­ing an email. In that case, I’ll delete them. I want qual­i­ty sub­scribers: peo­ple who WANT to be on the list. You can also see who your top engagers are. Per­haps you can do some­thing spe­cial for these people!

Don’t Just Take My Word For It

I read a post from a well known mar­keter, Jim Con­nol­ly, (that I sub­scribe to vol­un­tar­i­ly) who dis­cuss­es this very same thing and com­pares it to direct mail. There is a lot of talk in the con­tract­ing world today won­der­ing if direct mail (print) is dead! Well, take a moment and read the post I have linked here that might shed more light on that ques­tion and email mar­ket­ing too! His arti­cle is titled A Pow­er­ful Email Mar­ket­ing Les­son from Google and is such a valu­able resource. As always, I val­ue your thoughts in the com­ments below, by email or on Face­book.