Mailing lists...effective or just bad?
 

Hi, I have a question hoping you guys will give me some input!

I was approaced by someone to buy a list of webmaster email address and because of the price I was considering it. Is there anything I should be conerned with before I do this? And one I get it what is the best approach to using it without pissing a lot of people off? Is this an effective way to market? I see alot of the big names out there always sending me spam so i wasn't sure??

anyway thanks for any input you can give me!

I love your content and service but if I found out that you had sold my email address to anyone, I would *never* buy from you again. Ever.

well if people that did not signup for your webmaster list are going to receive emails from you they are going to see you as a spammer...

And I don't think that that is the kind of reputation you are after.

just my :2 cents:

I don't do business with spammers in any form, ever PERIOD !!!! and if you buy some bullshit list and send out some stupid email telling us how great your product is then that is exactly what you will be... A SPAMMER !!

I will say this tho... if you do go for it, then at least give webmasters a little credit for having some common sense and don't say things like "here's the info. you requested" or "I found this great new content company"

You're always gonna piss a lot of people off if you do it.

Everyone knows I could give a fuck about spamming...I'm quick on the delete button and not so quick on the crybaby button......

if it's a straight up email, I don't mind, but like The Truth, I hate that "here's the info you requested" crap....just tell me straight up, what the program is, what it pays and what seperates it from all the others out there........

Hell, I remember in the good old days, you wuld email a webmaster for link trades, now you can't even do that without somene hitting the boards crying like a baby.........hell, first time I heard of Pete The Fly, he was emailing me to trade links (along with a lot of other people) and I was like "who the fuck is this kid?" I didn't trade links as I wansn't actively trading at that time, but I'll bet he got a ton of responses and judging by his posts here, he's doing ok business-wise so he must have gotten a few responses on his emails....I guess those days are gone forever though.............

damn Spam Hysteria, damn it all to hell

I am glad you like our service and products....just to clarify. WE WOULD NEVER SELL OUR LIST of address, we are just considering buying one to get more exposure.

Everyone has made some good point and certainly I am not trying to hurt our business. I am also one that delete the email rather then crying about it unless I get 5 emails from the same person in one day!! That is what pisses me off!

If we decide to do this it would be straight forward....what i was considering is offering these people a promo of some sort. I was also going to state on the top that this is a one time email from us as I didn't plan to continuosly email these address. I just wanted to introduce our service and if from there they would have to join our newsletter if they wanted future mail from us.

As long as you were good enough to put the name of the company that sold you the list into the email itself, I don't think you'd take too much heat.

FantasyContent,

First of all, there is a good change that the emails are simply harvested (not matter what the company says). This not only means you will have a large number of unread emails BUT dupes as well. Shit, I sometimes receive up to 100 copies of the same email.

Also you said you would not sell the emails on the list but you are buying them which means the other guy is selling them.

You will always get complaints but the bottom line here is not that but the ROI. You should not spend much unless you are mailing to double opt in webmasters and from a company you know and trust.

Just be careful out there.

Mogul
ContentLotto.com