Imagine this:
A close friend of yours tells you that they have met someone just
the other day who may be interested in purchasing a new vacuum
cleaner. As you are a vacuum cleaner salesman, this is truly an
acquaintance to meet. Your friend passes along their name and
phone number. The next day you make the call, but unfortunately
things don't pan out as you have wished. This newly acquired
contact, or 'lead' if you will, politely states that they know
not of you nor your friend on terms well enough to trust your
vacuum cleaner expertise.
Now you tell me. How is this direct marketing analogue any
different than what happens when you purchase email leads?
Let me answer it: In short it isn't....
This is common place with purchased leads. Results are very
unpredictable with return on investment usually abysmally low. To
understand why they don't work, we need to first understand how
they are gathered.
People run sites that are advertised in different ways across the
internet. Most offer free giveaways of one sort or another in
exchange for a person's e-mail address. In the fine print, seldom
read by anyone, is a statement that in effect states that they
agree to receive third party advertisements.
Now technically, these people have "opted-in", but only
technically. This is problem number one, and something that
sellers of leads use to bolster support for their lead generating
systems, claiming that they are truly "opt-in". As each e-mail
address is gathered, or harvested, it goes into a master database
to later be sold to those unknowing of the repercussions. The
entire process takes time to build up numbers large enough to
sell. This is problem number two.
To yield a bit to this argument I must admit that at first glance
the entire system does not appear to be all that bad. What's to
loose, right? I mean if you e-mail any of these people and they
don't decide to opt-in then big deal.
Well, that's not the problem here. None of these people ever did
truly opt-in. Instead they were in some ways tricked. But, is
there a way out of this?
How about sending a one time e-mail introducing yourself and
asking them to opt-in? Do you think that will work? Perhaps. But
highly unlikely when you put it in perspective. Why? You are
unknown to them. In some cases the leads you receive are weeks
and possibly up to months old. Do you remember what you did on
the internet last week? In the end you appear to these "leads" as
a solicitor, i.e spam. The result is a really bad reputation for
a very honest hard working person - namely you.
To drive home how bad it can be let me tell you about one of my
experiences not long ago. I tested one of the packaged leads out
today, known as MarsLeads. I bought 1000 leads for about $30 and
advertised to be several to 30 days old. However, the leads I
received were all over 30 days, some up to 45 days from the time
the address was gathered!
I then sent out a single e-mail to each, introducing myself,
telling them why they were receiving e-mail from me and what it
is that I do. I then asked them if interested to please respond
to the confirmation e-mail they would be receiving shortly.
Otherwise I will permanently delete their address from my
database. Very straightforward. Nothing covert here.
What were the results?
60% of the 1000 bounced back as undeliverable. 2% of the total
actually confirmed. The results were absolutely abysmal.
You see, none of these people had any idea who I was. We never
went through what I like to call the "courtship" period prior to
getting hitched. This is the short time immediately prior to them
requesting more information from me. After all they never did
request a thing from me. It is in this short time that you begin
developing a relationship with your subscribers to the point that
your e-mail and name stick in their mind.
The internet is a truly dynamic place. Doing business online
requires one to constantly stay on their toes, and makes
purchased leads ever more appealing. Some things require hard
work however for success to truly follow your hard spent time and
energy. There is no 'quick fix' for building a list of
subscribers.
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