List Buyer Beware

Among all the entries in the 2009 Email Marketing Haiku Slam, my favorite is this one from our own Kris Dougherty:

If you even think

about using purchased lists

you are not my friend.

I love it because Kris has communicated in 17 syllables a theme that took me thousands of syllables to express in a previous post: deliverability problems stem more from the choices you make than from the technology you use

But CAN_SPAM doesn't say it's illegal to use a purchased list, right? That's beside the point. The point is that when you email people who don't want your messages, your reputation as a responsible sender of email goes in the tank. Because let's be clear...those people on the purchased list didn't ask for your email messages. They might have opted-in to receive something, but it wasn't from you. Chances are, they merely failed to opt-out of receiving "special offers from our partners" when entering a contest or signing up for some kind of service. No, they're not hoping to hear from you; they just forgot to read the fine print.

Legal or not, your mailing to a purchased or rented list is apt to annoy the recipients in large numbers. It doesn't take many of them to click the "Report Spam" button before the ISPs and blacklist services take action against you. Even if you're lucky enough not to be blacklisted, and your messages not accepted by the receiving systems at all, you won't escape the consequences of spam complaints. For example, ISPs may refuse to accept your mail as quickly as you want to send it, or may continue to deliver your mail--but only to the bulk folder.

Complaints aside, there's also the issue of exactly how mailable those addresses are. They might have been people's valid email accounts at one time, but are they still? Sending to a high proportion of invalid addresses is another excellent way to draw unwanted attention from ISPs. Further, some of those formerly-valid addresses may have been re-purposed as "honeypots," accounts that now exist only as traps to help identify and block senders--some call them "spammers"--who are sending unsolicited commercial email.

It's such a bad idea to send to purchased lists, that Delivra does not allow their use in our system. We can't be responsible for what happens to someone that tries to send to a purchased list, and we can't afford to let our reputation suffer along with theirs, imperiling our ability to deliver mail on behalf of clients who have complied with our Terms of Service. So in case I haven't made it clear: