Renting Email Lists

Anyone have any experience with this?

[CalArch90]

I am considering renting an email list to increase my reach for my newsletter email campaigns.

The company says their lists are all double opt-in and they only rent on a one time basis, they don't sell their lists.

Sounds legit, but I was wondering if anyone has experience with this and can give me some input.

I'm hoping that people will enjoy the sample newsletter and register directly on my site. I'm also hoping to get some direct sales on my site as a result of the email campaign.

I'll have to experiment to see if this works from an ROI standpoint, but I am a bit concerned about working with a rented list. Is my concern justified or am I just being paranoid?

[dataguy]

I only get email addresses from people who sign up from my own sites, but I think it is generally accepted that if a person doesn't subscribe specifically to your newsletter, they are highly unlikely to read it. The targeting will be so far off that you would likely get the same results if you were to purchase untargeted website traffic from a bulk traffic vender.

If you choose to rent a list, please post your results for us to see.

[CalArch90]

The list can be targetted to specific groups, so it is not just a blanket email campaign, in theory it should be well targetted.

I spoke to someone who works in advertising and they told me it is pretty common for even the big names to rent out lists, mainly for postal advertising, but the concept is the essentially the same with email advertising.

My own list is very small, which is why I am looking to increase my reach. It would take a very long time to acquire a list of that size directly through signups on my site.

I'm considering trying it out on a small scale first. I'll let everyone know how it goes once I run the campaign, but it won't be until later next month.

[jonrichd]

I have had a lot of success with this in the past. There are legitimate list brokers that can provide targeted email addresses for you to market to. (Think trade publications that off