When you’re looking for a quick way to scale your database, purchasing a high-quality list is the way to go. The only limitation is how many contacts you want to buy. Some marketers (and executives) are hesitant to work with Purchased Email Lists.

Why? There’s a lot of noise out there about how risky and unreliable purchased data is. And that’s partially true.

But the risk usually comes down to one key variable: your data. If you purchase a list from an unreliable provider that collects scraped email addresses into “lists”, you’ll likely generate poor results.

However, if your list comes from a reputable data provider that aggregates their data instead, you’ll find yourself on stronger footing.

Why Send to Purchased Email Lists?

Simply put: for a B2B marketer, it’s an effective way to get your message in front of your target audience at a large scale. But your list needs to be targeted, your messaging needs to be well-crafted, and your sending schedule has to be well-thought-out.

You can spend ages improving your SEO, writing blogs, sending newsletters, and posting into the whirlwind of social media feeds – but you’ll see your leads come in at a trickle.

Slow lead generation can be frustrating. Inbound marketing is awesome when it’s going well, but when the flow of leads dries up, it feels like you’re two steps removed from being able to do anything about it.

Sending large-scale cold B2B campaigns to the well-targeted purchased email list can get your message out more proactively and directly. It’s not a replacement for inbound so much as it works in conjunction with your existing lead gen plan.

Sending Mass Campaigns

It’s not hard to find horror stories about marketing to purchased email lists. The problem is that you can’t approach purchased lists like opt-in lists. If you try to use them the same way, you’ll have a bad time.

First and foremost, this is key: you can’t use a traditional ESP or marketing automation software to send to purchased lists. They’re not equipped to handle that volume of data, and often outright prohibit purchased email lists from being uploaded into their software.

You need a dedicated platform that’s designed for sending large-scale cold campaigns.

Using an email lead generation software will take care of plenty of any challenges for you when sending mass campaigns.

For example, in order to make sure your campaigns have the best possible inbox rate, you need to “warm up” your IP addresses. This is basically teaching spam filters to trust you when you send huge campaigns. If done right, it will also build a high reputation on your IP as your target audience engages with the emails that you’ve sent out.

Another critical factor is list cleaning. Every list, whether it’s 100K cold contacts  to the most curated opted-in lists out there, they will degrade over time. People exit jobs, emails get repurposed; there are plenty of reasons as to why.

Sending to small-scale lists that’s is not a problem. Their home-grown and therefore the data is easier to clean by sending to it regularly to remove hard-bounced addresses.

When you’re sending a few hundred thousand messages at once, though, the minor inconvenience of cleansing your list can become a hurdle. You’re going to have some contacts that aren’t viable. This could be caused for a few reasons such as, the email address has changed, there’s a typo, it’s not a real email address, or whatever the reason. Cleaning out a purchased email list is important.

Using the proper software as well will ensure that your lists get cleaned (Clickback automatically puts every uploaded list through a super-robust series of hygiene checks) and your IP addresses are warm before it can impact your delivery rate.

What About Content?

With the right software and a good list, you’re poised for success. Now you just need killer campaigns!

That said, even with top-notch software maximizing your ability to hit inboxes, you still need to write good content. That’s a little more involved than opted-in content, because, in addition to convincing your contacts to convert, you need to craft content that doesn’t scare spam filters.

Content and engagement go hand-in-hand. The more engaged your audience is with your email message. The more likely they will open, click, and reply. Get enough interaction from your recipients, it’ll help build your IP and domain reputation with mailbox providers so you can increase the successes of your campaigns.

Now, it always pays to follow cold email best practices. Some things to remember when sending to purchased lists is Keep your content short and punchy, and focus on value for the reader (i.e. not just what your offer does, but what it does for the reader specifically). Don’t do spammy things like ALL CAPS and excessive punctuation. Watch for spammy language as well.

For example, “Free” is already going to make spam filters give your content the side-eye. “Free!” is even more suspicious, as is “FREE”. “FREE!!!” already looks spammy right here on this page, and that’s not even in a cold email.

Think of it this way: if your email looks like spam, it will likely get treated like spam, both by the filters and your contacts.

Set Smart Goals

One key aspect about crafting cold email content is this: you don’t need to explain your entire offering in one message. Don’t tell the contact your business’s (or your own) life story. Keep your entire message hyper-relevant.

Your goal (getting a conversion) is a series of smaller goals. You want them to open your message, learn about your offer, and convert on it.

Here’s how that translates to email content:

• Notice and open your message: your subject line handles this part. The best subject lines convey exactly what the contact is going to find in the email. Don’t be vague and don’t be dishonest. Tricking people into opens just gets you flagged as spam, which is what you’re trying to avoid.
• Learn about your offer: Once your subject line does its job, a contact clicks the email. It loads. What does it look like? If it’s a wall of text, has blurry images, plenty of colored fonts, and all caps, nobody’s going to read it long enough to figure out that it’s a legit offer. Make your email look nice and legitimate so people will start reading it. Use short, punchy language to drive home the value of your offer from the very first sentence. Give them enough clear value to make them want to learn more.
• Learn more about your offer and convert: Your email message is a good tool, but it’s not your only too. Because you can’t cram a ton of information into a cold email successfully, you need to pair your campaigns with dedicated landing pages that provide all the supporting information and context about your offer – as well as providing a way to convert. It’s a great spot to put your opt-in form and gives you space to present your offer in more detail without impacting your email delivery rate.

If you’re using marketing automation such as HubSpot, this is extra easy. Build a landing page and use a form to convert your email clicks into opted-in leads.

Do You Have the Right Software?

If you are using a traditional email sending tool or Marketing Automation Software. It’s likely you’re not equipped to send cold campaigns to purchased email lists. Most typical email providers don’t allow the sending of massive campaigns as they use shared IPs and your own corporate domain for sending.

First, you should understand how cold B2B email marketing platforms are able to send out massive amounts of emails.  Look for software that doesn’t have a cap to their sending and allows for unlimited volumes of emails sent. This is not possible with your typical mail email.

Before you launch a cold email campaign, it’s very important to warm up your IPs to improve your deliverability.

Using Clickback’s Email Lead Generation for B2B companies automatically increases your email campaign deliverability rates as well as increases your domain reputation and decreases the chances of your inbox and domain being added to any blacklists or deactivated for suspicion of spam.

Warming up your email account takes some time. But it can help email service providers recognize you as a safe and valid sender.

Clickback has your back and all the tools you need to improve your overall deliverability. So you can make the most of your cold emailing campaigns when it comes to sending emails to purchased lists.

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