To quickly summarize WebProfiters point of view - don’t buy them, they don’t work.
A lot of companies have their own subscriber bases which they use like mules, sending poor customers tons and tons of emails with “buy this” and “buy that” and suprisingly these work to a certain extent, providing that you don’t send too much and too often.
So when you want more you might think to yourself - maybe I should buy/rent a list consisting of my target audience people and I will have the same success. You write a couple of emails to different vendors, they respond, give you price quotes, you pay, try and… it doesn’t work - either your cost per lead is (waaaay) higher than usual or your ROI is negative.
Why?
- List rental providers don’t show you the names, they don’t show you the demographics of these names and emails, so if they say that they selected the audience you want, it means nothing because you have no proof. Liste rental providers can possibly not have this informations at all and just send your email with no selects and filters.
- Your subscriber base is familiar with your brand and products, they may have bought something or tried something and when they receive an email from you it means that they agreed to receive this email and take it positive. When a user receives an email from something he is subscribed to but the subject is about some vendor which they don’t know of, they may not open it at all. They don’t know you, they aren’t waiting for you to say hello, they certainly aren’t waiting for you to try and sell them right from the start.
It’s like watching a TV commercial - a user is sitting in front of the tv watching his/her favorite prime-time movie (same as the user is scrolling through his emails in Outlook) and then the commercials start (your email arrives). A lot of marketers have said many words about commercial-blindness and I won’t repeat them, but the thing is that list-rentals are no different.
Save your company a couple of dollars - don’t buy list rentals.