Growing an email list is a tiring affair.
You need to entice people in with free eBooks, competitions, and other free goodies. Even when you bait people in, it will probably still take years of adding content to your website in order to generate the traffic necessary to acquire a substantial email list.
There is a quicker and easier way to do it.
Buy an email list.
Purchasing a list of email addresses will instantly give you thousands of people who you can send an email blast to. One company that helps you do this is Ninja Emails.
Check out my video below to hear my opinion about this service.
To find out more about Ninja Emails, keep reading on.
What Do Ninja Emails Offer?
Ninja Emails provides email lists that can be used to help you generate more leads. One of the key selling points about their service is that they give you a 1:1 exchange for any data that was not valid.
In the main navigation menu of Ninja Emails you can see the regions in which they provide data.
They have a large presence in Asia, but they also have a large number of lists in Australia and the United States too. In contrast, they only offer one email list for the United Kingdom.
On their home page Ninja Emails explains that their data is “aggregated from the top 20 database vendors, list brokers and mailing list service providers used by Fortune 500 and global MNCs”. That’s a professional way of saying that their lists aren’t garbage.
Ninja Emails also promises low bounce rates and a one for one replacement for any data that isn’t of good quality.
Their full feature list states:
- Highest Quality Premium Emails
- Low Bounce Rates
- No Payment for Bad Data – 1 for 1 Replacements
- Industry’s Most Up-to-Date List
- Strict Distribution Control
- Most Comprehensive Data Set
On the home page of Ninja Emails you will also see testimonials from customers. Call me sceptical, but most of these look fake. No one’s business or website is linked to and the video testimonials look a little too polished to be real (not to mention all testimonials have been uploaded to the Ninja Emails YouTube channel).
This is not to say that the company does not have genuine customers, but they should put more attention on displaying more information about customers so that it does not look like everyone was paid to give a testimonial.
Nina Emails also provide an email marketing service in which they send out your emails for you.
The Cost of Buying Email Addresses
The cost of an email list depends on the number of emails and the category of email. For example, whether people included in the list are professionals, marketing executives, accountants etc.
Prices generally range from around $99 to around $499.
I sent an email to Ninja Emails to get an understanding of how the process works.
They advised that:
“When you purchase our email database, you receive an excel sheet with the email address (and other fields such as company name, contact person, depending on the list). You can then use this to send out an email campaign on your own.”
A detailed explanation of the list can be found on the information page for each list.
Their email delivery service is designed to assist with bulk email delivery. Most online email marketing services, such as those listed in my article “10 Amazing Email Marketing Services for Bloggers“, are strict on importing email lists to ensure their delivery rates remain high.
Email lists can still be imported into services such as MailChimp, however every single person on the email list has to be emailed a request to become an active subscriber. Only those who opt-in to your email list can be emailed.
My advice is to never use a hosted email marketing service to send an email list you bought as you run a very high risk of getting your account banned.
The high risk of your account being closed makes the optional email delivery service appealing.
Ninja Emails provides a simple report on the number of emails delivered and number of opens (sent to you a few days after the emails have been sent).
Ninja Emails states on their website that typical open rates vary from 1% to 10%. If you email 100,000 people, you can expect between 1,000 and 10,000 opens.
Should We All Be Buying Email Addresses?
No. We should not all be buying email addresses. Of course we should not.
If you’re a blogger who has been growing your list for a long time, keep doing what you are doing. Likewise if you have an email list of your shop’s customers.
However, for the right project, buying email addresses from a company such as Ninja Emails makes sense.
You could use a purchased email list to promote your business, your products, or an affiliate product.
Again, you should not use a purchased email list with a hosted email marketing service. It makes more sense to use Ninja Email’s delivery service or use a WordPress plugin or self-hosted email marketing solution such as Sendy.
With the right affiliate product, you could generate a lot of commissions, but before you attempt to make money by doing that, it is best to speak to someone at the affiliate network or affiliate program. They will advise you what their policy is whether that kind of promotion is allowed.
Do not take any risks in this regard as many companies do not want to be associated with unsolicited emails and may not pay you for any conversions you make. They could even close down your affiliate account.
Final Thoughts
I have yet to test Ninja Emails myself, however the concept of buying email addresses does intrigue me.
If buying an email list would help me generate a lot of money or help promote Rise Forums, I would maybe consider it. That makes me a complete hypocrite as I hate spam.
Tell me this: If someone could provide you a targeted email list that was related to your business, would you buy it if the price was right?
What’s your thoughts on Ninja Emails and the idea of buying email lists?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue.
Kevin
Sending reputation is not something to be concerned about.
You can use their delivery service but or use a self hosted email solution such as Sendy. With software like Sendy you can choose whatever platform you want to send emails. Therefore, it one email service shuts down your account, you move to another. It would be better to start with a company you don’t mind being banned from, but there are lots of email services out there to choose from.
You make a very good point about testing. It would make sense to test part of the list and do the whole campaign in segments so that you can monitor everything.
Would love to hear a testimonial from someone who has used Ninja Emails.
That’s something I really need to start focusing on. I work hard, but I need to work smarter.
Update: Checked the lists. Possibly good for B2B but consumer data isn’t segmented. It could be anyone with an email address. Impossible to target.
Pity.
DW
Hmmmm… a tough one. The big problem is that you risk damaging your own sender reputation. I have a 99% reputation with Sendmail. I also mail directly via SES and send transaction emails from my own server. . If I rent a list and get lots of spam reports, the damage takes months to wear down.
On the other hand, I am an old-time, snail mail direct marketer. In the late ’70’s through early ’90’s renting lists was ubiquitous. You rang your list broker, specified the need, the broker would make recommendations, you’d vet and then pay to mail. You looked for response rates of 0.5% to 3% depending on the offer. Of course, open rates were incalculable but very high because few people can ignore an envelope with a well crafted offer printed on the outside.
I think if I REALLY knew the list was high quality and very targeted, I would test it. And that’s the old direct marketing adage… test, test and test again. Send 1,000 and measure both negative and positive results. And it’s as much about reputation as it is cost per acquisition or sale. If the positives win, test 10,000 to see if the results are replicated. If they are, move to 100k.
I’ve clicked your link so, hopefully, if I progress, Ninja Email will honour their agreement with you and you won’t be adding them to your list of affiliate grievances :)
DW
That’s for sure, not all of us should be buying email lists. But sometimes it’s quite necessary. Will check out Ninja Emails to see what they have to offer.
When we have many things on our plate, we have to work smarter and save our time!
Thanks Kevin!