Is purchasing contact lists really an effective means of sourcing and promotion?
Another great article from The Research Goddess!
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Is purchasing contact lists really an effective means of sourcing and promotion?
© Amybeth Hale
www.amybethhale.com
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There has been a lot of buzz lately, well at least within the PR communities to which I subscribe, about the mass emailing of potential contacts, specifically with respect to an article written by Chris Anderson of Wired magazine. The basic gist of the article is that he is fed up with PR professionals who spam him with pitches when they have no established prior relationship. This has caused a lot of ruckus in the PR community as some companies had their employees ‘outted’ by Chris when he listed off their email addresses. I don’t necessarily agree with his choice to post the email addresses of the ‘offenders’, however an interesting question is raised at this point, especially regarding sourcing and research, on the effectiveness of purchasing contact lists.
I personally do not think that this is the most effective method of reaching targeted contacts. Granted, my purpose in reaching out to people is from a staffing perspective and not a PR story pitch perspective. But there are a lot of similarities to look at here and I think the end results apply in both situations. Look at a post by Al Iverson in which he quotes Mark Brownlow on the purchase of contact lists – “With very, very few exceptions, purchasing a bulk list like this is a shortcut to email marketing hell.” “No self-respecting list owner is ever going to sell copies of their address list. Not if they want to preserve its value.” Look also at a post where he talks about how purchased contact lists usually contain a “bunch of spamtrap addresses…or an admin address for somebody who runs a blacklist, or…addresses of people who are fed up with spam and are going to report your mail as spam and embarrass you publicly.”
With regards to PR firms, this particular statement goes completely against the whole purpose of our business which is to shed good light on our clients. I’m only 2 months into the PR industry and I know this. I am a Sourcing Strategist with Waggener. The title of my job function alone states my method of outreach to potential candidates. I’m not a Sourcing Spammer. The methods I use to reach out to people are strategic, and I carefully plan out my research and contact strategy. I do not use pre-established purchased contact lists because they are not effective. I remember having a conversation early on in my blogging days with Joel Cheesman regarding mass emailing people. We were talking about trying to reach as many people as possible in a short amount of time, and Joel made a very good point about this practice. Paraphrased, he said, “If you send a mass email to 100 people, sure you might get 3 or 4 who are interested in what you are pitching them, but in the same breath you’ve probably pissed off the other 96 or 97 people.” Good point!
You might be thinking though, the time it would take to personally reach out to people is crazy! Or you might be thinking that it’s just easier to blanket a bunch of people all at once and not be concerned about the people who are annoyed. Well, look at what can happen as a result. People are more likely to make noise about a bad marketing method than a good one. You risk more annoyed contacts than interested ones when you don’t take the time to qualify your list. It’s about quality of relationship than quantity of outreach in this case. Seth Godin alludes to this practice of establishing a smaller, more targeted contact list
So, here are my thoughts on a more effective method of expanding your outreach.
Develop your inner circle of contacts by networking! You can develop a tighter circle of contacts if you actually care about getting to know them and don’t just get them from a purchased contact list. Find out a little about the people you are reaching out to. Listen to what they’re interested in. Sometimes, doing this might lead you to find out that the individual might not be a good strategic contact for what you have to offer. I see this all the time when I am researching potential candidates. An initial glance leads me to believe that they might be a fit for something we have, but upon further investigation into their background, there might be a skillset missing. At that point, I either do not make an initial outreach, or I let them know that perhaps I can introduce them to someone who is better equipped to help them.
You’d be surprised how much people appreciate this practice. In fact, doing this will actually increase your contact list because people you treat professionally in this respect will be more likely to refer others to you. You then develop symbiotic relationships with these individuals and become known as a trusted and reliable resource.
Is this always effective? No way. Networking doesn’t work all of the time. Nothing works 100% of the time it is implemented. Is it time consuming? Of course it is. But you’re talking about your professional reputation here. Would you risk your reputation being tainted by being labeled as a spammer just to get a handful of contacts, or would you rather take a little time to develop your network of contacts and preserve your reputation? That is a choice that all of us have to make.
Has this always been effective for me? Absolutely not. In fact, I will share with you a recent outreach that I did that was not effective. As many of you know, I recently spent some time in San Francisco. Before I left, I thought it would be neat to meet some of my networked contacts who live in that area, so I checked my contacts for people who live around the area and I sent out an email to all of them. Did everyone from my network respond? Nope. In fact, only about 10 did. Also, one of my contacts responded to me and asked how she had gotten on my “email list” and that she be removed. I responded to her how we were connected and apologized. So, sometimes even people that you have networked with may forget your relationship or request no further contact from you. It happens.
The choice is yours. I personally don’t think purchasing contact lists is smart. If generating a contact list is that crucial to you, my suggestion is to hire a researcher who is skilled at name generation. This way you at least have a warm body forging those lines of communication instead of a cold list that is probably expensive and not as targeted.
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