Purchased Lists

8 December 2017

On the second day of Listmas, my data showed to me … 2 purchased lists.

Did you know that people in the email delivery space hate list purchases? We really do. It’s because we know how strongly linked permission is to customer success.

I’ve spent some time in the past talking about things like permission and policy but I haven’t really spent much time talking about purchased lists. Really, there’s [acp author=”Mickey Chandler” title=”“The recession has forced us to drop this etiquette.”” year=”2010″ month=”February” day=”22″ year_access=”2017″ month_access=”December” day_access=”7″ media=”blog” id=”MLC121701″ url=”https://www.spamtacular.com/2010/02/22/the-recession-has-forced-us-to-drop-this-etiquette/”]one blog post[/acp] where I spend a lot of time talking about purchased lists. (And, yes, I know that there’s [acp author=”Mickey Chandler” title=”Are appended lists really purchased lists?” year=”2011″ month=”January” day=”20″ year_access=”2017″ month_access=”December” day_access=”7″ media=”blog” id=”MLC121702″ url=”https://www.spamtacular.com/2011/01/20/appended-lists-really-purchased-lists/”]one post[/acp] regarding appending and purchased lists, but I don’t spend much time talking about why.)

Read moreThe Spock Trap

But, just because I haven’t really mentioned it before doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion. Purchased lists are bad news. They indicate a lack of permission, which, in turn, results in higher spam complaints which lead to increased bulk folder placement and lower overall delivery. Why is this? Well, it’s because email users are not only your consumers; they’re also the product sold by the mailbox providers. Anything which causes those consumers to want to spend less time looking at mail (and the ads helpfully inserted by the mailbox provider over to the side of the web interface) costs them money. And a lot of that can be attributed to lack of permission.

So, how do those providers take care of their users — the product that they’re selling to the advertisers? They institute spam filters and establish blocks against senders who would cause a poorer experience for those users. Filters based on mass voting (“This message comes from a sender that many of our other users…”, or machine learning (“This message looks like messages….”), or even simple content filters. And what kinds of messages are more likely to tick the boxes for getting sent to the spam folder or even blocked:

  • Messages with blue backgrounds
  • Messages sent to purchased lists
  • Messages consisting of images with no text

So, there’s a reason why purchased lists are prohibited by email service providers (See [acp author=”Laura Atkins” media=”blog” title=”Purchased Lists and ESPs” year=”2015″ month=”May” day=”13″ year_access=”2017″ month_access=”December” day_access=”7″ id=”LA121701″ url=”https://wordtothewise.com/2015/05/purchased-lists-and-esps/”]{author}’s posts on the subject here[/acp] and [acp author=”Laura Atkins” media=”blog” title=”Purchased lists and ESPs: 9 months later” year=”2016″ month=”February” day=”1″ year_access=”2017″ month_access=”December” day_access=”7″ id=”LA121702″ url=”https://wordtothewise.com/2016/02/purchased-lists-and-esps-9-months-later/”]here[/acp]). It’s not because the ESP is mean. It’s because they’re listening to the gatekeepers who are saying “We want to block messages sent to purchased lists because our users don’t want to see them.”

Read moreBad Advice

…And that’s why they’re having slow delivery.

Mickey Chandler
Latest posts by Mickey Chandler (see all)