Buying an email list

ulterios

Well-Known Member
I have something that I want to try out and I am thinking about buying an email list. I have never bought one before and have always built my own lists because I want a quality list and not basically a universal list that sellers will say is good for this niche or that niche.

So, based on what information I can find I might actually buy one for testing purposes and I am wanting to know if any of our members have ever bought a good list and gotten good results from it.

Has anyone ever bought a good list and achieved good results?

This is for some things I want to test out around the first of January so I am mainly just gathering information for now unless I happen to get a little time to run some tests sooner.
 

eMonetize

Member
What is it you are wanting to try out or is buying data what you want to try out?

I have been monetizing data / buying data for over 16 years.

I buy fresh / vertical targeted data that I know what the users are interested in and that a PPL offer exist that matches their interest.

I also get fresh / vertical targeted data on a rev-share basis. Which is is data that has $0 upfront cost and you then split the revenue generated from sending it with the data provider.

I generated real-time co-reg data that targets specific PPL offers.

I also buy aged / domain targeted data. Which is a more advanced method, because it requires more resources to do.

As with any type of marketing, it's all about testing. You want to test a small, but adequate size amount of data of any new source and get an idea of the quality and how long it is likely to take to get to break-even. From the results, you can then make a decision on how to move forward.

You also have to test offers and find which convert the best. You can have multiple offers that are for the same vertical and one could blow all the others away...have a much higher conversion rate.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what you are asking/ want to know.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
What is it you are wanting to try out or is buying data what you want to try out?
Well it's for a couple of reasons and yes one of them is to test out buying the data/email addresses. Just to try to compare the numbers to what I have done in the past by building up my own lists over time. I am also wanting to try out some emails that are more visual in nature as the niche that I want to try out is a more visual niche.


Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what you are asking/ want to know.
One of the main things that I am wanting to compare is the effectiveness, conversion rates and all the usual basic things to see how a paid list compares to my own self-built lists.
 

eMonetize

Member
What does "visual in nature" mean?

Data that you buy is always going to be less responsive than a highly targeted list you develop. However, buying data is much cheaper and quicker than building.

Also, it's not entirely about the data you initially acquire. You are always segmenting the openers / clickers and removing the unresponsive users. That way you are effectively converting the data from quantity to quality.

I strictly promote PPL offers on the front-end and acquire data that is PPL vertical related, except with aged/domain targeted data. But even with aged/domain targeted data, I'm sending PPL on the front-end.

It is far easier to get a user to fill out a short form, than to take out their credit card and make a purchase.

So if you are pursuing a vertical(niche) where the offers are mainly purchase offers, you will likely have much lower conversions / success.

Plus depending on what the vertical is, it may very well be no data or very hard to find any for it. Because if it's not data that is highly sought out, it may not exist.

All the data that I acquire and the offers I promote are huge markets...insurance, education, loans, homeowner offers, etc... It's all about mass appeal and tiny niches are a waste of time.

This is what I do and I'm not an expert on all data. However, what I do really does work and can be very profitable. I can attest to that.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
Thanks for your reply and the information.

What does "visual in nature" mean?
Basically one that uses more images/pictures.


Data that you buy is always going to be less responsive than a highly targeted list you develop.
I know that it will be less responsive, that is expected. I am just wanting to compare a few things and what kind of percentages compared to my own lists to see many things including roughly how many email addresses would be needed in a bought list to compare roughly to one that I personally built.


However, buying data is much cheaper and quicker than building.
The quicker thing is one of the main reasons that I might get into this because I am looking to get into a couple of niches where I have not gotten into in the past.


Thanks again. :Thumb:
 

eMonetize

Member
The quicker thing is one of the main reasons that I might get into this because I am looking to get into a couple of niches where I have not gotten into in the past.

It is far more involved than most realize and IMO, it's really much more of a business model than a traffic generation strategy.

While I typically acquire data for a specific vertical, all the offers I promote have a make, get or save money benefit to them and have mass appeal. So while the specific offers are not directly related, they are fairly easy to cross promote. So I'm able to promote many offers across all the data sources. There is also an extensive amount of data available for the vertical that I promote.

Where depending on what the niches are that you are talking about, does the ability to cross promote them exists or is there at least many offers that you can promote with in the niche and is data easy to obtain. But even more importantly, at least the way that I do it. I'm promoting PPL (pay per lead...lead generation) offers. Which is far easier to get conversions (all a user has to do is fill out a form) over offers that require a sale. If all I ever did was promote offers that requires a sale, I would have never been anywhere near as successful.

Essentially, I'm monetizing the data using PPL offer, because they offer the path of least resistance to generating conversions / $$$ and converting the data into cash producing assets.

Anyway, doing what I have described has worked for me. How what you are want to do varies from it, you will just need to test and see how it works out. But it is certainly possible to buy data and profit from it.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
It is far more involved than most realize and IMO, it's really much more of a business model than a traffic generation strategy.

While I typically acquire data for a specific vertical, all the offers I promote have a make, get or save money benefit to them and have mass appeal. So while the specific offers are not directly related, they are fairly easy to cross promote. So I'm able to promote many offers across all the data sources. There is also an extensive amount of data available for the vertical that I promote.

Where depending on what the niches are that you are talking about, does the ability to cross promote them exists or is there at least many offers that you can promote with in the niche and is data easy to obtain. But even more importantly, at least the way that I do it. I'm promoting PPL (pay per lead...lead generation) offers. Which is far easier to get conversions (all a user has to do is fill out a form) over offers that require a sale. If all I ever did was promote offers that requires a sale, I would have never been anywhere near as successful.

Essentially, I'm monetizing the data using PPL offer, because they offer the path of least resistance to generating conversions / $$$ and converting the data into cash producing assets.

Anyway, doing what I have described has worked for me. How what you are want to do varies from it, you will just need to test and see how it works out. But it is certainly possible to buy data and profit from it.
Thanks again for your input, I appreciate you sharing your knowledge about this. This is just something that I never got into (buying email addresses/data) so it's kind of a grey area for me.

As for the testing part of it as you mentioned, I always run many different kinds of tests on anything I do in marketing, advertising, websites and all my other online activities. I am the type of person who is always trying to improve on my methods or basically anything. I like to be efficient as much as possible.

Thanks again for your input, I appreciate it.
 

Dean

Well-Known Member
I have never bought an email list before so I don't know first hand but I have read and been told by some friends that have that the conversion rates/sales are lower than a self-made list specific to your needs.

I would say that if you can get one cheap enough then it might be worth a try just to see how it goes. The good thing is that you will get a lot of email addresses fast so you can start marketing them right away. Just a thought...


Cheers, Dean.
 

KeralMTG

Active Member
I think that if you can get one for a cheap price then you should try it to see if it works better. Many people buy them so they must be ok if you get it from a good seller.
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
I would say that if you can get one cheap enough then it might be worth a try just to see how it goes. The good thing is that you will get a lot of email addresses fast so you can start marketing them right away. Just a thought...
That's about what I was thinking at first thought about this myself. Even if it doesn't produce much I can still use it for testing also. ;)

I think that if you can get one for a cheap price then you should try it to see if it works better.
I think that as well. At least it should be good to try out new marketing options at the very worst. ;)
 

Maria Marketing

Active Member
I think that you should just buy one and do your testing then come back and let us know how well it worked out for you. That way us that have never bought a list will know if it is a good idea or not. :p
 

Catherine1

Active Member
I haven't ever bought an email list but I have thought about it as a way to get a new list going quickly. If you decide to do this then I agree with Maria about sharing your results with us here to help us noob's. lol
 

ulterios

Well-Known Member
I think that you should just buy one and do your testing then come back and let us know how well it worked out for you. That way us that have never bought a list will know if it is a good idea or not. :p
I haven't ever bought an email list but I have thought about it as a way to get a new list going quickly. If you decide to do this then I agree with Maria about sharing your results with us here to help us noob's. lol
Don't worry, when I decide to buy the list and get the testing done I will make sure to let the other members know what the results that I get are. ;)
 
Top