Beware Of Data Depot’s Email Databases

Data Depot is one of many online email database providers who seemingly provide quality data on a wide variety of business and consumer areas.  What they DON’T tell you is they do little or nothing to maintain the accuracy of these databases.  Specifically, they do little or nothing to purge out the dead email addresses in their list.  So the actual number of currently existing email addresses in their lists is grossly exaggerated.

I have bought two email databases from them: their US real estate agent email database and their US restaurant email database.  Approximately 50% of the real estate agent database was dead addresses of people who have either switched companies or (most likely) are no longer in the business.  

Give The Boot To “Shrute” Thinking About Email Marketing!

How fast word travels in the apparently small world of email marketing!  Until last week I hadn’t written anything in my own blog since Jan. 2009.  My writing time has been consumed since then by ghost writing a blog for a client (nearly 350 articles to date for them).

Yet less than 24 hours after I wrote about Mail Chimp’s attitude toward purchased email lists I had inspired a sort of modern caricature contest on Mail Chimp’s blog for who could best combine the pictures of kindred spirits Ben Chestnut from Mail Chimp and Dwight Shrute from the TV show The Office.

As I looked at these two characters more closely, I realized there were more parallels between them than I thought:

Mail Chimp, Please Keep Your Head In The Sand!

As evolved as the people at popular email service provider Mail Chimp are in certain areas of email knowledge (especially email deliverability), they still fundamentally have their heads stuck in the sand about the fundamentals of commercial email.

I came across an article on Mail Chimp’s blog by one of their weasely Dwight Shrute-ish corporate-type bloggers named Ben entitled “Can I Use A Purchased Email List?“.  It’s worth quoting the full article:

A lot of people who are checking out MailChimp will call or email us and ask, “Can I use a purchased email list with MailChimp?”

So we created this: http://caniuseapurchasedemaillist.com/

If you run an abuse desk somewhere, and you’re tired of answering that stupid question over and over, feel free to link people to it. If you’re not sure why importing a purchased email list into a 3rd party ESP is a bad thing, then promptly turn off your computer and unplug it from the wall. Thanks.

Now honestly, I’m really *not* out to evangelize anyone about the gospel of targeted mass email.  Why?  It’s far better for me to keep quiet, smile knowingly, and let people like Ben sound off about what they don’t have any actual experience in and keep policing everyone about why anything but an opt-in list is bad.

That’s just fine with me.  The more Bens there are around, the fewer competitors I’ll have.

By the way, when people ask me if I they can use a purchased list, I promptly send them to the following page: http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs28/f/2008/156/4/b/HELL_YEAH_by_Hemi_427.jpg

The “silly” question is the first intimation of some totally new development – Alfred North Whitehead

Today’s Misconceptions and Assumptions About Commercial Email

“All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.” -George Bernard Shaw

I’ve made the above quote my company’s motto because from the very beginning I knew advocating the idea of targeted, unsolicited B2B email in the context of our still nascent internet goes very much against today’s conventional internet practices.  Consequently, I knew my ideas would draw fierce resistance, doubt and scorn, even condemnation.

But I think if we can understand (and therefore come to terms) with the assumptions and misconceptions underlying our current thinking on commercial email practices, it will go a long way to dispelling the negative emotions associated with this subject.  Hopefully, that will open the doors up to meaningful dialogue and progress.

Permission Based Email Marketing Is Merely A Reaction To And The Opposite Of Spam

Whenever we collectively feel a form of advertising has become undesirable (in whatever way(s)), we naturally feel the need to avoid it.  The more undesirable, the more we want to avoid it.  A National Do Not Call registry is just as much a reaction to unwanted telemarketing as permission based email is a reaction to spam email. 

Permission Based Email Marketing Is Primitive

The idea a business must receive an individual’s consent before advertising to them isn’t found in any type of advertising but email. 

Unsolicited Commercial Email Is Legal But Regulated

The most common misconception of today’s businesses is unsolicited commercial email is illegal.  It isn’t.  Neither the US nor Canada has created any laws prohibiting unsolicited commercial email.

Spammers Use Other Businesses’ Resources Unjustly

There are two reasons businesses have been persecuted or suffered financial loss due to their unsolicited commercial email campaigns (spammers):

Spam Is Completely Subjective

“Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – Shakespeare

We must remember that spam is a totally relative word.  It’s a value judgement.  What’s spam to you may not be spam to me or someone else.

Responsible B2B Commercial Emailers Don’t Do What Spammers Do

“The ‘silly question’ is the first intimation of some totally new development.” -Alfred North Whitehead

The silly question today is: can legitimate B2B businesses get involved with unsolicited commercial email?

The answer is a resounding yes!

Contrary to what the seemingly authoritative, reactionary anti-spam pundits say, businesses do not incur legal liability or risk of financial loss to themselves or others when they practice responsible unsolicited email marketing.

Responsible Unsolicited B2C Emailing Is Currently Impractical

Responsible unsolicited commercial emailing all comes down to how well you target your prospects.  For this reason I can’t advocate unsolicited B2C email marketing.  The reason is it’s not possible to isolate qualified prospects for your business on your own through conventional, publicly available sources.

Targeted, Unsolicited B2B Emailing Will Become A Major Force In Advertising

With commercial email we’ve truly been throwing away a golden opportunity for far too long.  In time, people will begin understanding the vast potential for unsolicited B2B commercial email has been there all along, right under our noses.

Kill Them All! God Will Know His Own

I’m so glad my heresies on targeted commercial email have so quickly attracted the attention of those self-appointed inquisitors of unsolicited commercial email, CAUCE (the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email).  Their executive director Neil Schwartzman left the following comment on my article Don’t Fear CAN-SPAM or PIPEDA With Targeted E-Mail:

Quit Learning SEO Rules, Use Targeted Email and Rule Over Your Competitors!

I have a client who is a search engine optimization (SEO) expert.  She teaches classes to real estate sales people on getting their websites high ranking in the 4 major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.  I’ve taken several of these classes and was amazed at the great amount of time and expense involved in achieving SEO for a website.

Who Are You?: Building Rapport With Email Prospects Who Don’t Know You

When doing mass email campaigns, it’s critical you understand the differences between an opt-in, permission based list and a non-opt in list:

Spam Blockers: Getting Your Emails Past Them

Spam has reached epidemic levels.  It’s estimated 80%-95% of email is spam with 100 billion spam messages currently sent per day.  Poor Bill Gates reportedly receives 4 million spam messages per year or nearly 11,000 per day.

Consequently, an entire sub-industry of anti-spam technology has arisen to combat spam.  The problem is everyone’s emails get analyzed with the same rigorous standards as spam. 

Don’t Fear CAN-SPAM or PIPEDA With Targeted E-Mail

Due to spam, a great deal of misunderstanding surrounds the whole idea of commercial email.  Most businesses are too worried about being labeled as spammers to even consider the idea of doing mass email campaigns.

SEO is Fool’s Gold Compared To Targeted Email Marketing

One of the big internet buzzwords today is SEO – Search Engine Optimization.  A veritable cult has grown up around major search engines, especially Google.  Years  before Obama declared any presidential aspirations he visited Google’s headquarters to find out how to best wage a political campaign using the internet.