Mailing List Options

If you’ve got a product or service to offer, there is a good chance you have looked into the option of email marketing. Before you can sent out your well designed / engaging email… who are you going to send it too?

The two most popular options

1. Opted In Mailing List

Providing you with access to potential customers who are already familiar with your brand (perhaps they signed up to your mailing list, or opted in whilst purchasing something from your website.). These types of customers are invaluable as they are already invested in your products / services and therefore the chances of your email being read, rather than deleted, is significantly increased.

2. Bought Mailing List

Services like Experian / DataHQ can provide you with access to many potential email addresses via a database of email addresses. These email addresses can be filtered down through industry, location and various other factors to provide you with a quality list of potential new customers. The response rate for these will be significantly reduced due to the “cold calling” nature – they are not familiar with your brand/ did not specifically ask to be contacted by you – so will be more wary when choosing whether or not to open your email.

Without mailing lists you have no audience, but select your audience wisely, if you are not fortunate enough to have a collection of mailing list subscribers and you are looking to the option of purchasing a mailing list – there are several things to consider.

Prices – They will vary from each supplier, but consider the quality. If you have a cheap list of poor quality email addresses, you risk damaging your brands reputation by contacting people who have no interest in your product or service and subsequently mark your emails as spam (which has the potential risk of your email address being blacklisted). As with most cases, you get what you pay for.

Quality – If you get your mailing list from a non reputable company you risk the quality of the email addresses, not only in the quality of the business type, location but the even if the email address is still in use. From our experience it is often better sticking with the better know providers of mailing lists as they often provide the best quality email addresses/ leads that are regularly checked.