The Best Way To Kill Your Email List In 2009
Tough economic times increase the pressure on marketers to hit their goals for open rate, click throughs, conversions, and new email subscriber acquisition. Some marketers believe renting email lists is a way to reach these goals.
MarketingSherpa reports in their new 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide that 29% of B2B marketers plan to increase spending on third-party list rentals (compared to 23% planning cuts). In this free excerpt of the report, their experts weigh in on this development:
“Pressure to meet numbers has always been a problem for email. It forces marketers to send too many emails to too many list members – the ‘batch and blast’ mentality that has eroded the trust of consumers and business[people] over the last 10 years…and that’s not necessarily good for the long-term health of the medium.”
(If you are interested in this report, you can get more information at the end of this post.*)
And yet, later in the excerpt, they report that 66% of consumers would be much more or somewhat more likely to subscribe to an email list if the company guaranteed not to share their information with other companies.
So, in this next year, we can expect to see businesses engage in an activity that decreases customer trust and engagement with that very business. A lot of marketers could kill their email list in 2009.
List Rental’s Influence On Relevance
Let me be clear: companies who use rented lists are inherently and unquestionably going to deliver content that is less relevant than what the subscriber signed up for. Period.
Lowered relevance equals lowered trust. The customer will trust both companies less – after all, one sold her information and the other delivered spam. Unless she agreed to receive third-party emails (and a default checked box does not mean agreement), she will likely unsubscribe and refrain from doing business with either company.
Lack of relevance is one of most complained about email marketing practices. From a recent eMarketer article: “‘There is a substantial gap between what marketers believe is relevant to the consumer, and what the consumers rate as valuable,’ said Lori Connolly, director of research at Merkle.”
List rental is the toxic waste of online customer relations. It poisons everything it touches.
Marketing In A Recession
A recent Merkle study, as reported in that same eMarketer article, said that about one-third of respondents said “they had stopped doing business with at least one company as a result of poor email marketing practices.” That’s almost the same percentage of B2B marketers who expect to increase their spam through list rental in 2009.
List rentals equal decreased relevance. Decreased relevance equals decreased trust. Decreased trust during an economic slowdown equals a serious threat to your business.
Loren McDonald from MediaPost’s Email Insider explains:
“Consumers with a growing concern about the future of the economy and their own pocketbooks with increasingly choose to do business with companies they trust and may be less likely to risk their personal data and inbox space on unknown entities or those for whom trust is questionable.”
You can’t afford to kill your email list during this economic downturn. But building your own list, building trust, and staying relevant can avert this disaster.
What do you think? Am I totally off-base? Or do you have a list rental horror story to share? Feel free to use the comments section below.
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(*The Email Benchmark Guides are one of my favorite resources. It’s a little pricey, but if you put the knowledge therein to use, you will likely save much more in the long run. Here’s a link if you want to purchase the new version: MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide.
Yes, I’m an affiliate, but I was singing their praises long before I signed up and I wouldn’t be an affiliate if I didn’t believe in their work. Plus, as an affiliate, I can occasionally get you discounts on their reports – yet another reason to subscribe.)
Tags: Business, Email, email list rental, email lists, eMarketer, Halloween, kill, list rental, Marketing, MarketingSherpa, MediaPost, Online marketing, scary
I will say that many marketers may see their list dwindle due to the fact that RSS Feeds make it much easier to keep track of any up dates or special offers. With an RSS that also means that the customer has full control over the option to stop receiving info. They also do not have to worry about having their info sold or a company that does not remove your name from their list even when requested.
I now only receive email from a very few companies (or people). My unsubscribe buttons went crazy and now I have saved so much time when checking email.
Ok, just my 2 cents.
I have rented lists in the past and not had much luck, but in the past year I found 2 sources where you can purchase the data outright! Which is great because like the article mentioned you are in a sense building your own database or use the list as a foundation for future sales and marketing efforts. Below are the 2 sources I use. The great thing about these companies too is that they guarantee all their records. I have checked references – nothing but positive response. I would give them a try:
ProspectDB – http://www.prospectdb.com
BigDirectories.com – http://www.bigdirectories.com
I have a couple of problems with this. First, it seems like a pretty dogmatic position you are taking, which seems to be based mostly on questionable inferences from sketchy data.
For example, while it may be true that “one third of respondents… had stopped doing business with at least one company as a result of poor email marketing practices”, you cannot conclude that this is from list rental. It might be from sending irrelevant content (as you suggest), or from mailing too often, or from not mailing often enough. We just don’t know. And I suspect that is a pretty normal turnover rate for email lists anyway – even for opt-ins.
Second, you seem to be confusing who it is that is being harmed through the practice of list rental. Are you talking about the list’s originator or the company/person using a rental list? I can’t see how someone would be “harmed” by renting a reasonably targeted list – even if the return is lower than it might be from an opt-in list. Something is better than nothing. Whether it is actually worth doing is a strategic marketing question.
I also can’t see how it would harm the list originator since it is very unlikely that the recipient could or would make the connection between what they consider an email-out-of-the-blue and the original source of the list.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating using rented or co-registration lists. My experience has been almost completely negative. But most internet marketers dress this up as a kind of moral issue (“Don’t you dare use a non-opt-in list!”) when it is really nothing more than a strategic marketing decision.
While the person who recieves the unsolicited email from a rented list may not be able to put all the pieces together in order to impact the businesses responsible for giving them spam, we as marketers will suffer in the end. Communication channels are being killed by bad marketing practices. We keep trying to figure out ways to shout our message at people and they keep finding ways to get around it. I think it is an issue that will impact our careers in the long-term. We need more long term strategies and more customer focused tactics or else response rates and customer satisfaction will decline. It is an ethical issue and ethics does have a place in business (I bet this economic crisis can be traced back to unethical business practices.) Just because something works some of the time doesn’t mean it is going to work in the long run. Don’t keep practicing bad marketing tactics just because you see a 2% response. That means 98% did not respond and most were probably annoyed. Stop bad marketing!
(Ironically my blog post today was on bad marketing tactics: Stop the Big Bad Marketing Machine)
A startup without a list of customers will often find that renting an email list is an obvious choice especially if the product has universal appeal and provides substantial and provable eco friendly benefits.
In this case it is a potential benefit to many list members and will provide a benefit to the list owner as well.
An opt in list is by far the best way to emarket.
If you are going to try a purchased list, seperate messages!
You need to maintain the integrity and trust you
have with the list you have sweated building name by name.
Once people on the bought list show an interest in your product
you can put them on your preferred eclub list.