You’re launching a new product and you need to get the word out to buyers who would be very interested in hearing more about it. Or you’re hosting an online seminar and need to reach a targeted audience who could greatly benefit from the information you have to share. Or you’re exhibiting at a tradeshow and need to reach out to potential attendees to let them know you’ll be there and are scheduling product demos.
Question: How do you reach qualified prospects in addition to your current customers for your product or service?
Answer: You rent that quality, targeted business email list that’s already established, pre-qualified and ready for your email campaign.
Email Marketing is Effective
If you are communicating with your customers via email, you already know that email marketing is one of the best ways to reach your target audience, and it has the potential to generate the largest return on your marketing investment. It’s direct, immediate, trackable, measurable and effective. And, email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, just behind colleague recommendations and industry thought leaders. (Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 B2B Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends)
There will be times when you want to increase your customer base. That’s where renting email lists comes in —and this can generate solid results for your business. In this article you’ll learn what business email list rental is and what information you need to choose the best email lists to rent.
What is Email List Rental?
Very simply, when you rent a business email list, you pay a third party to use their customer list for a one-time email blast, unless you pre-negotiate for additional email transmissions. With a rented business email list, the owner of the list agrees to send your email message to their customer list on your behalf. You supply the copy, design and subject line, and they do the rest. You will not be able to view contact names, email addresses or other contact information, but you will be able to review a datacard (more on that later), which provides important audience targeting information about the list. Once you agree on the list you want to rent and provide your creative, the owner will transmit your email campaign.
What’s the Process?
The process to rent a list of business emails and send an email is straightforward:
- You write the copy and create the html design for the email that you wish to send.
- You choose the number of recipients you want to receive your email.
- You provide a sample of your message to the list owner for approval, and sign a list rental agreement. Note: List owners will generally not approve competitive offers to their customers.
- You provide the list owner the date and time you want to transmit the email.
- You provide your suppression file that contains email addresses that you do not want to email to as well as your unsubscribes to the list owner.
- Then comes testing. You are sent a test of the email through the transmission system for final approval.
- Once approved, the owner sends your email on the agreed upon date and time using their server address.
- A few days after the campaign is transmitted, you will be provided with tracking results that will give you information such as open rates and click through rates
Finding a List Rental Source
There are three ways to rent an email list.
First, you can rent directly from the list owner who will handle your campaign transmission.
Second, you can procure the services of an audience development (AD) specialist from a reputable email marketing agency. Look for an experienced AD specialist with established industry contacts. He/she will help you choose the lists that will work for your offer from all the lists available on the market and will negotiate the best pricing for you. Once you choose your list, the AD specialist will then make sure your email campaign is tested and transmitted and will provide you with tracking results. He/she receives a commission from the list owner so you are not charged for his/her services.
And third, you can go through an email marketing company that offers list rental solutions. You will work with a list manager, who acts as a broker for the list owner and who often will handle the transmission for the email campaigns. Like AD specialists, list managers receive commission from the list owner so you are not charged for his/her services.
Now Let’s Talk about Datacards
After you determine what audience you want to reach, the list owner/manager will provide you with a datacard. A datacard gives information on the list you are interested in renting, such as number of email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses available, costs based on price per thousand, and a description of the list. Make sure the datacard includes an update frequency to ensure a clean, up-to-date list. Click here to view datacards of email lists that Reach Marketing offers.
For larger lists, you can further segment the list by choosing from datacard selects such as job title, company size, sales volume or geographic region to narrow your list to the exact audience you want to reach so you can achieve better results.
When choosing a business email list, it’s important to ask what other brands have used the email list and what its success has been in terms of results.
B2B email lists generally cost in the range of $300-$400 per 1,000 names, with a rental minimum of 5,000 names.
Deliverability and CAN-SPAM Considerations
Prior to transmission of your campaign, the list owner will test your creative against a spam filter to assure better deliverability and also in a rendering program to make sure your creative renders properly in major email clients, such as Outlook and Office 365, and on mobile, including Androids and iPhones. When using a rented email list, you need to ask the list owner to run your suppression file against their list. A suppression file will remove your unsubscribes from the email campaign and will also remove any email addresses you want omitted – like your customers who may also be on the rented list – from the transmission.
With a rented email list, you must include an “opt out” from your company in addition to the “opt out” that the list owner must provide. This differs from a house email list that only has to include one unsubscribe option. The creative that you provide to the list owner for the mailing also must include your physical address to comply with CAN-SPAM requirements.
Designing Your Email Message for a Rented Email List
Let’s turn our attention to your message. When you’re sending an email from your own customer list, your recipient most likely already knows something about you. When you use a rented list, you are most likely dealing with a completely new audience – email recipients who know nothing about you, your products, or what services you provide.
So when you’re designing your email copy, it’s a smart idea to include an introduction – tell your audience who you are, what you do, how long you’ve been in business, who you serve, and what your unique value proposition is. Add some credibility to your brand with quotes from existing customers or links to video testimonials of satisfied customers.
How We Can Help
Reach Marketing is a reputable email marketing agency offering audience development and list rental solutions. You can rely on our expertise to ensure that your campaign runs smoothly. We provide quality business email lists through our list owner partnerships that you can rent, and our experienced list managers/AD specialists will help you reach your ideal audience by identifying key firmographic and demographic segments that align your offer with the most promising leads.
Reach Marketing also offers ReachBase for list rental and list licensing. With more than 35 million unique, accurate email records, ReachBase is a responsive B2B prospecting database. This multi-sourced, multi-channel database spans a vast array of influential professionals and decision-makers, including C-level executives, technology thought leaders, financial advisors, architects, engineering contractors, healthcare professionals, marketing managers, supervisors and more across all industries. With detailed firmographic data on individuals and extensive company profiles, the database encompasses everything from single-owner businesses to large corporations. You can also choose to perform a multichannel campaign, giving you multiple touch points to directly connect you to your new prospects.
