Mailing Lists Info and Advice

Mailing lists can be purchased or rented from different sources, primarily from:

List owners are normally responsible for the mailing list and have collated the contact details themselves and maintain the mailing list. For example an organisation that has their own mailing list they use for their own reasons, but their contacts have opt-ed in to be contacted about complimentary services or products from third party organisations. Many List Owners employ a external List Manager who would be responsible for managing and maintaining the mailing list, they often do this full time for many different organisations.

List Brokers are experts at sourcing and selecting mailing list data, they normally work on a commission based fee for applying their expertise and data cleansing services. Because list brokers earn their money from a commission for their services, you generally would find that you should not pay more from buying data from a Broker, unless you use any of their added services.

The problem with commission based sales is that commission is based on the amount of mailing list contacts sold, so ensure you keep focused on purchasing quality relevant contacts, not just high volumes.

Most good organisations will offer to provide you with the data, or to manage the delivery of your communications instead of disclosing the list to you.  If they do disclose the list to you, then you should ensure that you only use the list for its original agreed intent. For all you know contained within the list could be a dummy contact which when contacted the company you purchased the data for is made aware that you have used the list again.