It’s definitely important and ambitious to try and expand your list to include a huge number of contacts, but don’t get carried away so much so that it ends up hurting you more than benefiting you. Renting lists, although it can sometimes be useful, is many times more of a hindrance than a help. Here a few reasons why renting a list can ruin your delivery and hurt your email marketing effort.

The credibility of your sources is crucial. If you purchase a list from a source that doesn’t have a very good foundation and you send your emails to this list, your own company’s image can be damaged. It can be perceived as another SPAM feeding exercise rather than a legitimate effort to reach out.

Another reason why renting lists is not an advisable path is that most people don’t like to receive e-mails from sources that they have not requested. Most of us are inundated on a daily basis with SPAM, which we automatically flag and send to our respective email services. Even if we receive a legitimate non-SPAM email, if we don’t recognize it because we have not subscribed to it, we will most likely report it as SPAM. Don’t gain that kind of a reputation, as a company – it will only hurt your marketing efforts. If you must rent a list, then at least look for those with the closest in interest and demographic to your usual client base so that they will not be turned off by receiving your messages.

Financially, renting a list also works out to be less effective than having your own list. You will have to pay a good sum for renting a certain number of names – this does not give you any refund for email addresses that bounce back. Large lists for rent usually only have about a 15% success rate. You will be spending a good amount of money on only a small return from your list.

Finally, the reason it is important to cultivate your own lists is because you have an existing relationship with your customer. They have opted to be on your list because of their interest in your service or product and they are most likely to want to continue this relationship of their own volition. Approaching a client with whom you have had no contact will almost certainly make them less inclined to even consider the relationship, even if it would potentially be in their interest.