Effects of Email List Overabundance

Welcome to Broker Roundtable, where each week we ask list brokers to give their opinions on issues that matter to the marketing community. This week’s question: What effect is the overabundance of email lists having on the market?

Our panel includes Geoff Batrouney of Estee Marketing Inc.; Michael Peterman of Veradata, Stefanie Pont of Pont Media Direct and Herb Torgersen of DirectInnovations. Would you like to be considered to be a member of our roundtable? Contact Larry Riggs ([email protected]).

Geoff Batrouney, executive vice president, Estee Marketing Services Inc.:
One welcome development is the much more reasonable price being requested for an email record, compared with what it was five years ago. That price reduction is a reflection of at least three email realities. One is supply and demand. An email list complying with the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM) is no longer a rarity. Two, offshore data aggregators, primarily based in India, have commoditized the email list product. Every broker in America is receiving dozens of unsolicited pitches for email lists that are affordable and reasonably priced, offered by companies we have (for the most part) never heard of. The reasonable pricing is itself a reflection of the much lower payroll costs involved in the compilation of the data, and the ever-decreasing cost of technology. Third, the price reflects the relatively slim yield delivered by cold prospecting using email. The results tend to be so slight as to barely register, much like an unsuccessful package insert program. No email data owner can get away with charging $400 per thousand when there is very, very little "R" in the return on investment equation.

Michael Peterman, CEO, VeraData:
This is highly dependent upon how one opts to market through this medium. The main impact of the overabundance of email lists occurs in the low end, compiled email space. The less-than $40 per thousand email list market uses tens of millions of aggregated names, most of which are legitimately opted in) through default settings on major sites. This means that if a consumer has ever signed up for anything, there’s a good chance he or she unknowingly opted in to receive unsolicited commercial emails. The problem is that even though they are technically opted in, these lists are not well targeted—they are simply CAN-SPAM compliant. Response rates to actively opted in email lists are holding steady and performing well. We have considerable success with high-end prospect email lists. Those are the kind that have consumers requesting information on a specific topic/interest and have a well-known sender behind them that alerts the recipient to the relevant nature of the email being sent. They are also the kind that are fully white-listed and get past ISP filters because they are a recognized and approved sender. These “good” lists are simply that and the overabundance has not created a problem for the high end market.

Stefanie Pont, managing partner, Pont Media Direct:
I think the term “overabundance” is very misleading.
There is a significant lack of qualified, solid, original sourced email. There is an overabundance of email lists that are just resold data. When you purchase a postal compiled list, for the most part the provider will tell you the source. I’ve found that many of the email providers feel no need to honor the same niceties.

Unfortunately, many of these resellers are leaning heavily on the old “non-disclosure agreement” standby, which means they won’t tell you what the original source of the emails are, or even if you are renting the same data from another provider. This opens up a mailer to higher costs, higher duplication rates, decrease in opens and clicks and increase in opt-outs. It’s a bad way to do business, and only serves to erode both consumer and client confidence. A true abundance of email lists with quality data would be a great thing.

Herb Torgersen, president, DirectInnovations Inc.:
Right now, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to weed out bad email lists. To a large extent email addresses are transient and it seems like everybody is coming out with a new email list. New vendors tout their email lists as best in class when in actuality they are not. It takes a lot of hardcore research to determine which email lists to use. From my point of thinking it is best to use email files that also have a direct mail component. Additionally I will only recommend email lists where I can truly certify the source of the names.

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