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Mistake #2 - Buying Lists

Many organizations will be desperate to capture additional market share this holiday season. And while it might be tempting to set aside your list acquisition best practices in order to reach additional potential buyers, it is extremely important for you to weigh the pros and cons first.

While the process is still legal in the United States as long as your messages comply with the
CAN-SPAM rules, and while it's true that unsolicited messages will garner a few responses, the lists will never perform nearly as well as permission-based lists. Purchased lists run the risk of having old and inaccurate data, including spamtraps and honeypots, which can quickly damage your reputation and lead to all of your emails being delivered to the junk mail folder or being blocked completely. Also, even if you purchase or rent a targeted list and present an offer specific to that group of recipients, many of them will consider your message to be spam and will report it as such, damaging your reputation further.

Instead, continue to build your lists organically across all customer touch-points and give people a reason to opt-in with exclusive offers or special discounts. Email is a personal way of communicating with your audience; and if you take the time to build solid relationships with your subscribers rather than forcing all of your messages upon them whether they want it or not, you will get much better results.

Sample 2 - untargeted email sent to purchased, rented, or scraped list