Would You Rent a Mailing List?

Mailing list rentals has its benefits Every issue of DMNews includes a section entitled Lists & Databases. It’s a compilation of mailing lists for rent directly from publications and brokers who maintain subscribers’ or prospects’ names and addresses.

Each featured list is described along with its quantity (number of people on the list) and contact information for rental.

I admit that I’ve rented lists in the past. It was easier than looking through stacks of college reports to find the names and addresses of deans and coordinators. How many hours and valuable time would be wasted on that task rather than going to a source to get what I needed for marketing purposes?

List rental obviously has its benefits as I stated above and for other reasons that work for the renter. But there can be problems.

How current is the list? Years ago I worked at a firm that rented a list to send out 5,000 mailers. Close to 3,000 were returned because the list was old.

How precise is the list? Your campaign may fail if attempting to sell something by mail to an audience that prefers to buy online, or vice versa.

Are you choosing the right target? When branching out to a different group of prospects, you might squander dollars if you don’t thoroughly research the market before buying a list.

Before renting lists earlier this year, I believed that such a move was wasteful. Now that I’m a renter, I understand the other side of the issue.

The article, The Value of Buyer vs. Subscriber Lists, provides more insight into this controversy.

Is list rental to broaden your marketing campaigns a viable option for your business, or do you view it as a waste of your marketing dollars?

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