Do not use borrowed or purchased email lists

While buying email lists might seem like an easy way to build a list of subscribers, it can damage your reputation and the deliverability of your email campaigns. These types of lists typically contain poor quality email addresses and spam traps. Spam traps are fraud management tools that monitor email communications to identify spammers and senders with incorrect contact management practices. 

One thing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor to determine whether they should deliver a domain’s emails is the quality of the domain’s contacts and the recipients' engagement. By contacting people from purchased databases, your messages will be considered unsolicited emails, and there’s a big chance that you will experience high bounces and low engagement. It will hurt your sender reputation, and that will cause emails to go to the spam folder instead of the inbox. 

Also, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires that each subscriber must explicitly opt-in to receive any email marketing. This means that the GDPR does not allow brands to use purchased email lists since those subscribers didn’t formally opt-in to receive their emails. So, not only will buying a list of emails put your email deliverability at risk, but it also goes against the requirements of the regulation. 

How to properly build email lists 

Purchasing email lists will hurt your marketing efforts and your marketing strategy, as this is considered as a spamming method by ISPs, email clients (Gmail, Yahoo!…) and Email Service Providers (ESPs). To properly collect email addresses and improve the deliverability and conversion rate of your email marketing campaigns, you should: 

• Use an organic marketing list and building techniques. For example, you can build your list organically via subscription forms on your website, social media contests, premium resources, etc.

• Collect and store consent by adding a box to check on all your forms. You can even implement a double opt-in process and ask for a subscription confirmation two times, leaving no doubt when it comes to the consent of your contacts.

• Regularly clean your database. Monitor your mailing results, and remove blocked emails, hard bounce emails, spam, unsubscribes, and non-engaged recipients. This practice will significantly help you increase your open rates and click rates. 

• It’s also recommended that you use email segmentation to better target your contact list and send more personalized emails.