If the owner of an email address has to give permission before unsolicited email can be sent to him, how can you buy an email list? Ever wondered how that’s done? Isn’t there something called the Canned-Spam law that says you can’t do that? People that buy email address lists must be spammers, right? Well here’s how you can do it legally, and why it might not be worth the bother.

I’m no lawyer and I’m not dispensing advice but logic tells me, and after reading the Can-Spam Act for the umpteenth time that, if you could find a list broker that would sell you an unpermissioned email list, that transaction by itself would not be illegal. It’s the using of that unpermissioned list that’ll get you in trouble. Those emails must be permissioned first, and here’s how it’s done by the list services.

1. Submit your existing database or list to a company that compiles or resells lists and email addresses.

You can also buy a list from your provider then proceed to the next step.

2. Request an “email append” to your list.

You’ve just asked the list company to review your list and add the appropriate email address to each of the contact names in your list. This assumes the provider has the email address for each contact, which they will not! If they tell you they do you’re being fed a good story and you believe it at your own peril. People change email addresses faster than they change their socks so if they did have a complete list at this very moment, by the time you finish reading this sentence a substantial percentage of those addresses would no longer be valid. Complete list? Not gonna happen.

3. Your provider will then begin the appending process.

Your list is scrubbed to eliminate duplicates then subjected to a dual process of automated and manual examination to match contact names with the proper email addresses, if available. You can expect to realize a match rate of somewhere between 40-65%, typically on the lower end of that scale.

This is a labor intensive, time consuming process so if you’ve waited until the 11th hour to begin this task, good luck. Might be a good time to polish up the resume. Next comes the step which makes it all legal to eventually use the list.

4. Your provider will now send an email to all of the appended contacts requesting permission directly from them for their email address to be used in your marketing effort.

• Those that respond positively, you may market to.
• Those that decline permission have their email address removed from your list.
• Those that fail to respond are counted as permission granted, by default.

Now your list is Can-Spam compliant.

Yippee. Maybe not. If only 45% of your list was matched and 50% of them declined permission you’re left with only 22.5% of your list with newly appended, permissioned email addresses. Is that bad? Depends.

You can count on those permissioned email addresses to cost you about a buck apiece or more. That expense is directly proportional to the size of your original list. Don’t forget you’re going to pay a sum for those email addresses that declined permission, too!

The final variable to determine the value of this process is the price-tag on the item or service you’re selling. The ROI on this equation usually works out much better on larger ticket items and of course the more highly targeted your list the better your probability of an acceptable outcome. You can read more about this point here in Jeanne Jennings exhaustive article on appending. She pays particular attention to the math involved in determining the value of the append process.

You can purchase email addresses and have them appended to your list but before you can use them in your campaigns your list broker or compiler will have to contact each one and request permission. Whether it’s worth the expenditure of resources, both time and money, is a function of your original list quality, the quality of the appended emails, and the price tag of the widget you’re selling.

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Phillip Crum is the Chief Idea Officer of MarketingMeasure located at 2414 Arbuckle Court Dallas, TX 75229, and is committed to the idea of helping small business owners do a better job of finding their next customer or client. He and his two sons,Tyler and Preston, also own a Sir Speedy Printing franchise and employ those additional capabilities in the overall marketing services menu of offerings. Phillip can be reached at 214-213-7445, or pcrum@MarketingMeasure.com.