Email marketing remains the most effective marketing tool today because of its very high return on investment. It allows businesses to talk directly to warm prospects who are more likely to convert or reach new prospects. Creating an email list is hard work and some people buy email marketing lists to boost their campaign and reach a lot of people in little time and with little effort. What you might not know if you are considering doing this is that it is a bad investment. Here are the most compelling reasons why.

Poor Quality

When running an email campaign, you ideally want everyone on that list to be a warm prospect who will react favorably to your messaging.  You also want all the names and email addresses on that list to be up-to-date.

If you buy an email list, you will be communicating with people who have likely never heard about you or your business. These people are not interested in what you have to say or promote, which means you are unlikely to see good results by reaching out to them.

Second, you will never know how old the data on the list is. Email lists decay very fast, and about a quarter of the data they hold becomes stale within a year. This means your open rate for the emails you send out will be very low, leading to another serious issue.

Your Emails Could Be Blacklisted

The CAN-SPAM Act was enacted to protect people from unsolicited emails. Businesses that send unsolicited emails risk being penalized for sending spam emails. This could lead to your server’s IP address being blocked. This means very few of your emails are landing in people’s inboxes, where you want them to go.

Additionally, emailing people without their permission leads to them marking your email as spam. If you have enough people do this regularly, you risk being penalized.

Although it is not a metric used to blacklist email addresses or senders, email services keep an eye on open rates. If your emails frequently have a below-average open rate, it is highly likely you are sending unsolicited emails. The service provider will keep an eye on your IP and email addresses to see if you are indeed doing this.

If your email address is blacklisted, you will not be able to use it for marketing anymore, which will hurt your marketing efforts.

Legal Issues

Another reason why buying an email list is a bad investment is because of the legal issues that can arise. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was put in place to protect people’s privacy.

People have to give you their consent for you to send them emails, which means using an opt-in option wherever you want people to leave their information. If people do not opt-in, you should not email them. You are breaking the rules under GDPR if you go ahead after buying an email list.

Buying an email list is already a bad idea because the people on the list do not know you or your business, which means you are unlikely to get good results by doing so. Additionally, there are bigger issues such as legality and email blacklisting you also have to think about.