July 27 2012

5 Good Reasons to Rent a Third Party Email List

We all know what a daily struggle it has become to keep our email inboxes clean. And whose inbox hasn’t suddenly been bombarded by messages from companies, both shady and legit, who seem to think you’re their target market? Unfortunately, experiences like these cause many marketers to balk at the proposition of renting an email list from a third party and miss out on what can be a profitable addition to any marketing strategy.

 

While the market is peppered with disreputable list owners who have bought, stolen and scraped their way to enormous email lists segmented by pretty much any industry under the sun, there are also many honest list owners whose lists are strictly opt-in, who care about their subscribers receiving relevant messages, and whose subscribers appreciate receiving updates and offers within their area of interest.

As long as you make sure you’re dealing with a reputable list owner, there are plenty of good reasons to generate new leads by renting a third party email list. Here are five reasons to get you started:

Reach brand new potential customers

Sure, you have a properly segmented in-house list that’s taken you years to build. But no matter how much effort has gone into building your own list, it’s unlikely you have the email address for each and every one of your potential customers. It’s a good idea to give your own list a break every once in awhile and send your messages to a fresh set of prospects who may be less familiar with your offering. You may even get a better response from third-party lists if your own list has become a bit desensitized to your messages.

Associate your company with a well-known brand

This is especially true when renting lists from niche publishers or associations that are trusted sources of information in your market. You don’t get this advantage at all when dealing with general list rental companies & brokers, meaning the recipient may end up thinking your company is sending spam. Whatever list you rent, make sure the list owner is compliant with email deliverability best practices (subscribers have opted in to third party communications, subscribers can easily unsubscribe, etc.)

Get immediate results

As a marketer, you don’t want to leave things until the last minute, but let’s face it, there are times when you need to generate leads fast in order to reach your targets. Sending the right message to a third party list can make the difference overnight. Rented email lists are also great places to quickly test the market’s reaction to your latest campaign, so you know right away whether to roll out the campaign to other target audiences, tweak it or pull the plug on it altogether.

Easily measure your campaign’s success

Most list owners will provide the number of deliveries, opens & clickthroughs for you. That means you’ll only have to worry about tracking the number of conversions on your end. You can do this by creating a special campaign landing page and/or tagging the links in your email so you can track how many reached the goal through your web analytics software. You can then compare these stats with your own lists and with other third party lists, as well as measure the ROI of the campaign.

It’s low risk

You can typically rent a B2B email list for a small minimum investment of a few hundred dollars. That small investment will then allow you to send your message to a sample target of the third party list in order to determine ROI for your campaign. If you get good ROI on the sample group, you have a great reason to invest more budget on your entire target audience. Convincing your boss is a breeze as well.

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Environmental Expert is an online resource & marketplace for environmental industry professionals. We offer online marketing services for suppliers of environmental equipment & software solutions, event organizers and providers of engineering & consulting services.

Advertisers can rent customized lists of Environmental Expert users who have opted in to third party communications. Build your list and get a quote here >>