You were young and naïve. You signed up for that brand’s email campaign and were spammed badly. It offered you discount for signing up and in return filled your inbox with spam of a different level. Worst, you could not even opt to unsubscribe.
Not a decent experience even at best. 1/10 would not do again!
Fast forward to the present and you are now a digital marketer, handling a marketing campaign. You need leads and what’s the best way to do it? Email lists. You buy one and get ready to fire some readymade templates to the leads.
Stop right there! You are doing it all wrong.
You will make your leads to go through the same experience that you went through. Don’t spam them with unwanted emails.
It’s time to re-strategize your campaign. The way to use lead lists has changed. Inbound marketing is the replacement.
Let me rephrase that. The time of mailing people on the lead lists without permissions is over. In fact, it is absolutely illegal.
You will have to be outright careful with your email marketing campaigns. Not following the target country’s spam law requirements can lead to fines that crosses the 10000$ mark. Expensive and crazy – at the same time.
Forget about those fishy list sellers. Even the list you got from some reputable and highly acclaimed sellers can get you in trouble if you don’t plan for your campaign.
Yes, go and buy one. Buy it from a good seller, though. Buy the expensive and verified option as these will bring you significant cost savings per lead generated. Sounds wrong but it is true, B2Bleadblog has some good pointers for lead list choosing.
Now you have the lead list, a decent one, that you should know how to use. Here is a brief but utterly necessary primer-
You will get the temptation to send some emails right away but control the feels. Instead, think of using this list to increase the effectiveness of your inbound marketing campaign.
Lead lists are easy to buy but using them to their full potential is difficult. Once you master their use, you can create inbound marketing campaigns that not only will convert, but also bring in more prospects.
So let’s start-
No matter what list you get, it will always have some data that is best defined as garbage. It will have details that lead to nowhere.
You will have to filter out the data. List sellers will promise that they have their databases clean, but don’t trust them. You can pay a service to clean the data for you but that will be extra charges. But a more targeted and cleaner list will save your time.
Using Facebook and LinkedIn are great for using purchased email lists because you can target and use remarketing to inform them about your products and services.
You will have to be aware of the needs and pain points of your targets. You can start by promoting relevant stuff that helps the targets in solving their problems. Help them first and promote yourself second.
This promoted system will turn in to an inbound campaign in itself. Your targets will come to your product and here, you can ask for opt-ins. Take permissions. The prospects who will sign up this way are more likely to convert.
Facebook also provides a nifty tool in the form of Lookalike Audience that allows you to select a target segment based on the email list you provide.
So you have cleaned up your purchased list, used tools like Facebook and LinkedIn for a little bit of promotion, it’s time for some action.
Starting a mail with Dear Sir/Ma’am and sending it from a mail address that looks something like this [email protected], is a sure shot way of killing the vibe.
Be more personal. Use a mail that has your real name and that comes from a trusted server.
And for inbound marketing’s sake, don’t send your first mail with blaring promotion of your products, please. Keep it about them and not about you.
In fact, this should be the foundation of all your marketing tactics.
They don’t know you, yet. Give them a reason to know you. You should give them the answer to their question – Why should I even read through this?
If you are so adamant on using the prospects provided on the purchased list then go ahead. Done? Good.
Did they open the mail and convert? Congrats. You made it.
Did they greet your mail with the trash or spam filter? Good on you. You learned something. Do this from the next time-
Start implementing email retargeting or CRM retargeting. They cannot unsubscribe now. They are trapped. Be wary that you are treading a thin line here.
Use this opportunity to serve them promotions that tempt them to check your work. The main principles of inbound marketing will still apply here. Address their pain and needs. You will have to tell them how they can use your help.
Email lists were never a great tool for marketing. But it matured and turned into inbound marketing. It is a good thing – It is more targeted, has higher chances of conversion and overall spam free. It is like search engine optimization, it’s slow but the end result is always sweet.
All in all, you should use purchased lead lists but never use it directly. Use it as a catalyst in your inbound marketing efforts.
INSTANT SEO SCORE AUDIT