I recently had a client ask me about “purchasing a list” of email addresses and I thought I would give some explanation about this practice.

First, the rules are very different between mailing addresses and email addresses. There are many market research companies that sell lists of mailing address segmented by any number of factors. For instance you could purchase a list of all households with kids age 7-9 in a certain zip code who’s birthdays are in March. Or a list of mailing addresses for CEO’s of Real Estate companies in the Chicago Metro area. This has been going on for a long time and is perfectly legal.

Then email came along and what was once junk mail became SPAM. And where the cost of printing and postage kept junk mail to a manageable level, the incredibly low cost of sending an email caused even well-intentioned salesmen to send so many marketing emails that email was almost unusable. So CAN-SPAM laws were created to give regulations and guidelines to ethical salesmen and allow the prosecution of unethical SPAMers. These laws state that, among other things, you can only send marketing emails to people who have signed up (opted-in) to receive emails from you or who have purchased something from you.

This means that you cannot, by law, send marketing emails to another company’s “list,” because the people on the other company’s “list“ have not opted-in to receive emails from you.

Now, there are still companies who gather names and email addresses the same way they gather mailing addresses. Ever see a box when you purchase something that says something like ”Would you like to receive special offers from our partner organizations?“ If you check that box, you are officially opting-in to receive more emails from them. And those emails will probably be advertisements for products that are not from that company.

​

If you are a company that is interested in ”purchasing a list“ of emails, what you are actually going to do is hire a company that has been gathering email addresses to send an email to their list on your behalf. You will never see the email addresses. It is a one-time deal. Those people did not sign up for your list, they signed up for the other company’s list, which means you cannot contact them directly.

But, if anyone sees that email and purchases something from you, then you have every right to add them to your email list. I also suggest putting some kind of call to action in your email that encourages people to opt-in to YOUR email list. This may be asking them to sign up for a contest or filling out a form to receive something for free. If you can get those people to give you their email address, then you have every right to contact them directly in the future.

If anyone ever offers to sell you a list directly – to actually hand over the email addresses – it is most likely a scam (or the other person is very misinformed). However, YOU will be the one breaking the law if you actually email those people. Just say no.

Comments(0) - Join the Conversation

Katie Hawkey Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Web