Internet Marketing and List Brokers
More and more people are turning to the Internet for shopping as well as business opportunities. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have a few email addresses or who hasn’t ordered online at least once. This huge marketing opportunity beats the expense of postage and snail mail to reach the buying public. This has created challenges as well as exciting new opportunities for list brokers. Email lists are a real boon to getting the best value for advertising dollars. There are different kinds of lists on the market and the business owner who is considering using email for marketing needs to understand the lists out there and how to find a reputable list broker.
One type of email list is simply a list of addresses. These can be verifiable email addresses, but may never pass the spam filters out there. It may be unknown how these lists were compiled. It may well be that some list brokers or list owners simply “scraped” the Internet for addresses. This is illegal, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. Most spam filters just dump those emails from questionable sources directly into the junk mail folder. Some list brokers will advertise lists for $19.95 for 100,000 addresses. This is probably a list in this category.
Another type of list is called the “Opt In” list. It’s probable that at least 30% of email is considered spam. A business marketing department needs a viable way to get to their targeted market and around those spam filters. Reputable list brokers use specific data bases of people who have opted in to receive emails about a particular specialty or topic. Those addresses go into that list owner’s database. Another type of list is the “Double Opt In” list where people have opted in on more than one occasion for a specialty or topic. These types of lists make it to their destination.
All list brokers are not equal and neither are their lists. In shopping for a reputable list broker, evaluate the source and type of list that they are trying to market. It’s relatively easy to evaluate the time a list broker spends in research and getting their lists updated by list owners. It’s true that Internet marketing is possibly the wave of the future. There are plenty of advantages and one of those advantages to the business owner would be to find and cultivate a strong business relationship with a reputable list broker.
