I got an email recently from a subscriber who asked:
“Where can I buy good email lists from?”
And it is a question I am asked a lot. So, I thought I would answer it on the blog to clear up a couple of points.
Simple answer to the question is – you can’t buy good email lists!
You can’t buy and legally use email lists because the recipients will not have specifically requested your emails.
The end result of emailing to big lists that you have “bought” is that you will be, quite rightly, labelled a spammer.
You need to build an email list or, failing that, arrange a joint venture with someone who has an email list.
Another option is to pay for an advertisement in an ezine that targets your specific market.
Whatever you do, don’t buy email lists and mass mail to them. You will get in trouble.
To build your very own list, what you need to do is put up a web-page which advertises your email newsletter.
You then use sales copy on that website to gently persuade visitors that they really want to subscribe to your newsletter.
Make sure that all subscribers MUST be double opt-in to get on your list… which means they must click on a link in the first email that you send to them to 100% confirm that they really do want to be added to your email list.
If they do not click the link, they do not get added to your list.
I would advise you that you should only ever email somebody who has double opted into your email list.
Don’t bother collecting names with a single opt-in, ensure from the beginning that all your prospects have confirmed that they want to receive your emails.
Having double opted-in subscribers gives you a nice clean list. And one which is less susceptible to spam complaints.
A subscriber cannot accuse you of spamming them because you can quote the exact time and place where they opted-into your newsletter.
Also, you will know that your subscribers actually want to receive email from you, that they will probably read it and they also are likely to click on the links that you send to them.
All of my email lists are double opt-in, without exception.
I rarely encounter a problem from any of my subscribers because they know that they can unsubscribe from the list with just one click.
Having all of the confirmation details of each subscriber also comes in very handy when someone forgets why you are emailing them.
One subscriber recently asked:
“Hi Ben,I’m already subscribing to Andrew Reynolds’ Cash-On-Demand course have seen what Tim Lowe has done with his little classified ads I’ve also been invited to Bournemouth conference which i intend to go to but any information regarding what Tim is doing would be appreciated.
By the way, where did you get my details from?”
Now, if I had simply emailed this person out of the blue or “bought a list”, he could rightfully report me for spamming him.
However, because I had all of his confirmation details, I could fire off a quick email to remind him where he found me:
“Hi [subscriber’s name],Thanks for the email.
You signed up for my email newsletter on the 4th March 2007 at the following website:
http://www.BizOppsUK.co.uk/
I can’t go to the Bournemouth conference unfortunately and I am a bit miffed about it! I’m sure it will be a great learning experience and at a VERY attractive price.It would be great to hear how it goes!
As for Tim, check out the main site at:
and click on the Tim Lowe related links to the left.Hope this helps!
Thanks,
Ben”
I use AWeber to run all of my email newsletters.
It’s inexpensive, very easy to use and automates almost everything to do with email marketing. You don’t have to mess about hosting any scripts on your own server or anything like that – they do it all for you.
More importantly perhaps, AWeber can be setup to ensure that everybody has to double opt-in to get onto your email list and it also makes it very easy for subscribers to unsubscribe.
And, if that wasn’t enough, I hear that AWeber has one of the best email deliverability rates of all the autoresponder providers.