Renting Email Lists - Think Party!
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.