Email Seed and Supression Lists- What you need to know

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Many times in the process of formulating an email campaign for a new client, the client will have questions about seed and suppression lists. These questions usually lead to some confusion. The confusion often stems from the misunderstanding of the terms themselves or their function in the process. This post will try to help answer some of the basic questions that come our way.

What is an Email Seed List? - An email seed list is a list of client provided email addresses for the client themselves and a selected few co-workers or associates.

   How does an Email Seed List work? A seed list is utilized in two ways. The first is to allow clients to view the their emails in the test phase to review and approve creative elements and confirm that links and tracking are working properly. The second way is to provide the client with real time delivery confirmation.

Seed List Guidelines -  There are no industry standard guidelines, but generally seed lists will include the client business email and a few other members of the clients team’s business emails. It is also advised to provide a Gmail, Yahoo or other non-corporate email to verify distribution. Although unusual, be aware that some providers limit the number email addresses on your seed list.

  What is an Email Suppression List? - There are different types of Email suppression lists. The first and most important is your opt-out list. Your opt-out list is a list of email addresses of the people that have requested that you remove them from your list. Other lists of email addresses that you may want to suppress from your email campaign may be lists of customers or current prospects that are further along in your sales cycle.

  How does an Email Suppression List work? - Suppression lists are sent to the third party that is deploying the email campaign. The third party undergoes a de-duplication process that eliminates all email addresses on the suppression list from the list that will be used for deployment in the email campaign.

Suppression List Guidelines In order to be Can-Spam compliant, you must provide all your opt-out emails to be suppressed from rental lists.  Depending on your market penetration, it may also be advisable to provide your house lists for suppressions.

If you have specific questions about email seed or suppression lists, drop me a line and I would enjoy hearing from you.

Email Lists and Younger Consumers

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In today's world, we all recognize that conventional advertising just doesn't cut it anymore. While it used to be the industry standard to advertise to the general population on television and in print, today's distracted consumers are difficult to reach and capture through these traditional means.


Today more than ever, a great way to get the word out about your product and brand is through direct marketing. Direct marketing uses email lists and postal mailing lists to target a select group of consumers. Renting mail and email lists is worth considering for the following reasons:
•    It finds people predisposed to use your products
•    It is timely
•    It is a great way to advertise to young people, who are used to building relationships with brands and companies

Using email lists and postal mailing lists to market directly to a pre-screened group of consumers, you save money by focusing resources only on consumers who are likely to become your customers. Renting targeted postal or email lists of companies you make sure that you don't waste advertising dollars on the wrong demographics.

Finally, direct marketing, particularly through email lists, allows you to track the success of your advertising strategy with a stunning degree of accuracy. Email contents can contain links that a consumer can click to make a purchase or visit your website. By tracking the open and click rates of your email campaign, you can quickly assess the effectiveness of your email campaigns. This data wil allow you to retool or redeploy another campaign quickly.

Renting email lists and postal mailing lists is one of the most effective strategies for marketing to young people. Unlike their parents, kids and teenagers live in a busy digital world full of distractions, and are much less likely to be passive receivers of general marketing campaigns. Direct marketing allows you to reach a pre-selected group of young consumers in a hurry, before the latest fad or trend has passed. Because so much advertising is about timing these days, you can ensure that your target audience receives and notices your direct appeal almost as soon as you send it, particularly if you rent email lists. By the same token, direct marketing allows you to adapt as quickly as the trends change.

Young people today are taught to express their individuality and to promote their own likes and dislikes on social media platforms. One advantage of direct marketing is that it taps into young people's sense of individual appeal and personal intimacy. While adults might find it unsettling to know that an advertiser is tracking their spending habits and marketing to their tastes directly, young people are not only used to, but expect and welcome it.

When you advertise directly to young people by renting email lists and postal mailing lists, you are building up personal relationships with your brand that can last a lifetime. If you take the time to help young customers identify emotionally and personally with your company's brand image, you are ensuring that they will remain loyal customers for years to come.

Here are the top four reasons for directing marketing:

1) Save money by advertising only to a pre-selected group

2) Track the success of your marketing campaigns

3) Respond quickly to industry changes

4) Build brand loyalty and a personal connection with young people

Email Tracking Reports -The Hidden Numbers

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On the first day of my statistics course in college, my professor stood in front of the class and pronounced " Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics". It was the single most important thing I learned in that class (at least the one thing that stuck with me after all these years). The lesson is that it is important to make sure you are looking at the right numbers, not just the ones they give you.

Here is a cool little video that illustrates how you can manipulate numbers.

For email list tracking reports, the right numbers are not always provided in standard reports.This is especially true as it pertains to open and click rates. The two email tracking sample reports below show how having the right numbers can provide you with more accurate reports.

Standard reports that you get from email list vendors provide the number of opens and the number of clicks. The problem is that they provide the percentage of opens and clicks based on the quantity of email addresses ordered for deployment.

The standard report below shows the open and click rates for an email test that was based on the quantity ordered. The open rate was 12.40% and the click rate was 1.10%.

The problem with standard reports is that quantity ordered is not the number that the percentages of opens and clicks should be based on. The real number that these percentages should be based on is the actual quantity deployed by the email list vendor.

Before the deployment of an email campaign, email list vendors have no way of knowing exactly how many undeliverable addresses there will be on their list. This is due to the dynamic nature of email addresses and their deliverability. A few reasons for undeliverable email addresses on a rented list can be that people's email addresses change due to a new job, a change in ISPs providers or changing from one free email account to another such as Yahoo to Google.

Email list vendors ensure that you get the quantity of email addresses that you pay for by  deploying additional email addresses to be sure that they deploy at least the quantity ordered. This is widespread and acceptable practice. The problem is that this practice can skew the open and click rates. The skew is determined based on actual quantity deployed and delivered, which will be different with each test list.

In order to be able to accurately measure and compare results between test lists, you need to make sure that you have the actual quantity of email addresses delivered. The report below shows the revised open and click rates based on actual quantity delivered.

The open rate for this email test is based on the quantity delivered was 10.00% and the click rate was .87%. Comparing actual rates based on quantity delivered allows you to measure test lists using a more accurate benchmark.

Remember to ask for quantity deployed and the quantity delivered. Don't just take the numbers that they give you.

Any questions or comments? Drop me a line.

Email Lists - Rent or Buy ?

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In the email list marketplace, renting vs. buying a list is where the rubber meets the road. It all comes down to value and common sense. As it is most times in life, you get what you pay for, or more importantly, you hope you are getting what you paid for.

Business people know how valuable their customer and prospect email lists are, same holds true in the email list marketplace. If someone is going to sell you a large database of email lists for a very low price, they obviously know there is little value to the email addresses. Why would they sell you their valuable lists for short money?

Email list owners that have valuable lists guard them with their life. They never sell their list or let them out of their control.

We have seen this type of data shenanigans before. In the early days of postal lists, selling high quantities of inaccurate lists was also a big problem. The problem was exasperated by throwing good money after bad. First you bought a crappy, out-dated and undeliverable list. Then you paid to print the mail pieces and have them processed through a mail house. And just to ad insult to injury you had to pay the postage bill. Over the years, unscrupulous list vendors fell by the roadside and postal regulations made lists more deliverable.

History does repeat itself. Fast forward to 2012. Postal lists are now all very deliverable based on technological advances and postal regulations. It is the email lists that are now the concern. Just because you can get a large file of email addresses for a low cost does not translate into a good value. The fact that they give you so many email addresses for such little money should raise a red flag.

There are costs in addition to the charge to your credit card. The most important of these costs is the real risk of being identified as a spammer.

Here are the top 4 reasons why you should rent an email instead of buying one:

Reason # 1 Value -By renting their list, the list owner demonstrates value by maintaining control of the email messages and how often messages are sent to their customers. They value the email addresses by protecting them against misuse.

Reason #2 Opt-in - All reputable lists for rental are opt-in or double opt-in. This means that the email recipients have acknowledged that they are interested in receiving emails. Be sure to confirm the opt-in policy of the list owner.

Reason #3 Tracking - Even if you are able to embed tracking codes within the links to your landing pages, tracking reports from email list vendors provide valuable data for deliverability and open rates.

Reason #4 Black Listed - Understanding and abiding by the Can-Spam Act is essential. If you are deemed a spammer by your ISP, it could negatively impact your ability to send emails in the future. By renting a list, the list owner deploys the emails and is respondsible to be Can-Spam compliant.

There are many respectible resources out there that provide email lists for rental. Talk to an independent list professional to help guide to those resources.

Renting Email Lists - Think Party!

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When requests for email lists come in, my first thought is: Do they understand what is really involved in an email campaign? Will I be providing a business solution or will this be a teaching moment? I'm OK with both. The trick is to try identify the folks who need some extra knowledge from the folks that understand the 3rd party process and want you to take care of their specific need.

To quickly determine the inquirers knowledge of how third party email list marketing works, I ask a few quick questions.

1. When will your creative be available for testing?

2. When will your suppression file be ready?

3. What date would you like us to deploy?

The uninformed inquirer may respond to my questions with:

Why do I need to send you my creative? What do you mean by a suppression file? How many emails would it be?  Can I use them as much as I want? Will the list be ready by late morning / early afternoon today? Then, I know it is a teaching moment.

When renting an email lists, you need to know who is at the party. There are 3 players or "invitees" to the party.The term 3rd party email lists relates to the 3 players involved in delivering and receiving a marketing  message via email.

They are:

Invitee # 1 - The marketer - They have a message that they want delivered to a defined audience.

Invitee # 2 - The list owner - They are the host. Their email list is the guest list to the party.

Invitee # 3 - The recipient - They have opted-in to receive marketing messages delivered to them by the host.

The marketer provides the message (html creative), the host deploys the message and the the recipient receives the message. If the recipient responds to the marketers message, the recipient can then be added to the marketers guest list.