Mailing List Brokers

Anyone who owns a business knows that advertising will help make you profitable and mailing list brokers can help business owners advertise with ease. You have to spend money to make money, and mailing lists are a great investment of your money in order to gather future income. The question about advertising is-how do you know where and to whom you should be advertising? Mailing list brokers might have a few answers.

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Mailing List Brokers Overview
Mailing list brokers are businessmen and women whose purpose is to help market your business. They do so by giving you what are referred to as “leads” to generate business. These leads come in the form of lists of potential customers who may be interested in the types of services your company offers. Further, mailing list brokers can help business owners identify specific, targeted audiences to advertise their products and services to.

For instance, list brokers might be able to sell you a list for single people under the age of 40. If you run a company that caters to singles events or a perhaps a dating service, then sending advertisements and promotional materials to people on this list may be a great way to drum up some new business for your company.

The lists they can sell you range from home addresses for postal mailing advertising, e-mail lists for Internet mailing materials, and even phone lists, if you wish to contact a person by telephone instead. A truly good mailing list broker can sell you one of dozens of lists that are broken down by many categories and demographics. All you have to do is tell them the proper group type that you are looking for, and they should have that kind of list available. Finally, the use of mailing list brokers allows for business owners to avoid having their advertisement time wasted: by emailing random individuals, such emails may be treated as spam and lead to legal complications.

How do List Brokers Gather Their Lists?
Good mailing list brokers have many ways of getting information in order to try and help you sell your goods or services. Many have advertisements on several websites that give you the option to "opt-in" for more information.

You may have already seen this several times and even signed up with a mailing list broker. If you have signed up for a website (even a free website membership), you may recall having to either check or uncheck a box that asks if you would like more information. You then may be asked if you would like more information from third-party partners. One of those third-party partners may be a sales solution company that will use the information to make e-mail lists for their clients.

An e-mail list full of people who opted to have that type of information sent to them is worth its weight in gold. People who “opt-in” for information are truly interested in what a business advertises and mailing list brokers can send a business owner a list of thousands of interested consumers. If you are open and responsive to offers that suit your needs and lifestyle, there are dozens of people who will buy your name off a mailing list to try and pitch their products to you.

Types of Lists You Can Buy from a List Broker
No matter what your needs are, you will likely be able to find mailing list brokers that can give you the exact list you desire. From the young demographic to elderly or retired persons, college-bound students to baby boomers who are at the highest level of their jobs, no list is impossible to find.

This of course begs the question—exactly what demographics can I ask for when buying a mailing list? Though the possibilities are endless as to what is already out there, keep in mind that if you want a specialized list that does not already exist in a list broker's database, they can use cross-sections of several lists that fit your demographic and come up with one master list that suits all your needs. Of course, this will cost you extra money, but in the long run it would be worth it, if it gives you any sales leads.

Common demographic lists that already exist in most good mailing list brokers’ databases include (but are not necessarily limited to) the following: income, age range, home value, property value, marital status, college education, high school education, race, gender, type of business, size of business, previous interest in similar products to your own, whether a person has children or not, types of vehicles owned, sales volume of a company, estimated wealth, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and much more. For all intents and purposes, mailing list brokers make contacting consumers a fast, efficient, and simple process.

Why Mailing Lists are Good for Business
Purchasing an e-mail list from reputable list brokers means that you are interested in what is commonly referred to as "leads.” Leads are a gold mine in most sales-driven businesses, because not only does that lead to profit for your company, it can also lead to excellent word of mouth and referrals to a company.

Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. If someone is not happy about a service or product they received, they may badmouth that company to friends and family, who may then in turn tell friends and family. Pretty soon, you have hundreds and maybe even thousands of people who think ill of a company.

On the flip side of this, if you do well by honestly marketing your business to people on the mailing list, then that person may tell others how happy they are with your product and service. Then, those people will tell others, and so on and so forth. It is a potentially endless string of great referrals and new business that can come your way from only one contact on that e-mail list. Think of what you can do with several dozen on that list.

SPAM
If you are looking to buy a list for e-mail marketing purposes, be sure that you are not using a list that was compiled without the permission of those on the list. Often times, some shady mailing list brokers will try to sell you a list where people did not opt-in to receive third party offers from you or anyone else. Therefore, they should not be on the list.

If you send out marketing materials to an e-mail list that was obtained this way, it could be considered to be spam. Spam is the Internet equivalent of postal junk mail, and it is illegal in most states and countries. It is also against the rules of most e-mail and Internet service providers, meaning if you send out sales material to any of the people on this type of e-mail list, you could potentially get booted from both your e-mail account and from your Internet service.

Because of these risks, you must always buy e-mail lists from reputable list brokers. Buying from anyone who has been in business a short time, or does not have a sterling reputation, means that you can potentially be in big trouble by sending spam instead of innocent e-mails meant to try and sell your company's products or services. It is the business owner’s responsibility and duty to research the mailing list brokers they intend to do business with.

Anti-Spam Software
If you are reading this article to find out how you get so much spam from e-mail lists and how to stop it, then this section is definitely for you. There are quite a few programs on the market that can filter out spam from your e-mail accounts, meaning that unscrupulous list brokers will not be able to get their messages through to you.

These programs work by blocking e-mails from known spammers. They do this not only by e-mail address, but also by using an illicit mailing list broker's IP (Internet protocol) address. Of course, all the person has to do is use different e-mail addresses or use a proxy server, and they can easily start spamming again. But, you can block yourself from these e-mails by installing the proper software.

Anti-spam software comes in a variety of brands that serve different customers. For instance, some are for large companies with their own e-mail servers, while others may be more suited for the home user who only casually surfs the Internet for fun. Some of these basic programs will be free, while others will cost money, because they provide even more security from spam and the dangers that come with it. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as dangerous spam, which is talked about in the next section.

Spyware and Mailing Lists
Spyware is a vicious little program that can be filtered onto your computer simply by clicking on a link you may have found in e-mail. This type of e-mail is not only definitely spam, but it is malicious spam to boot. All too often, this type of malicious spam was mailed to you, because you are on one of the aforementioned illicit e-mail lists.

In order to combat spyware, you should never click on a link that came from an e-mail that is unfamiliar to you. If the address in question is not one that you recognize, then that message likely did not come from a legitimate list broker's list. Therefore, they obtained your information illegally and may wish to harm your computer by installing spyware onto it.
As with anti-spam software, there is also a multitude of anti-spyware programs available to buy in stores or for download on the Internet. Some of these are free and have only very basic functions, while other, full-featured ones are available for a fee. These programs generally need to be updated on an almost daily basis, as new spyware hits the net on a daily basis. You can set the program to automatically update, so you don't have to worry about forgetting to update it yourself.

Removing Yourself from a Mailing List
If you open up e-mail, there is likely a small section on the very bottom of the message where you can opt out of receiving e-mails from that particular company in the future. Whether the company in question got your e-mail from a legitimate or illegitimate mailing list broker, they will have this option on almost all correspondence they send to you.
Here is where it gets tricky. If the e-mail in question came from an e-mail list that is legal and that you opted to be on, then you can safely click on that link and truly opt out of receiving future e-mails from that e-mail list. This is perfectly safe and highly effective, as you will no longer be getting information from them.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as honest as this. If you were put on that e-mail list by mailing list brokers who did not get your permission, then they might be sending out mass e-mails to all e-mails similar to yours. They may not actually know if the e-mail they got from the e-mail list is still working. When you click on a link on the e-mail to unsubscribe to the list, you may actually be inadvertently telling them that yes, this is a valid, functioning e-mail address that is being checked by its owner. In other words, you will now be placed on other illicit lists and receive even more spam.

Never click on a link from any e-mail that seems like spam. If it is indeed spam and you click on it, you are confirming you read it, and you will get much more spam as a result.

Summary
E-mail lists can be a very great marketing tool that can double or even triple your business, or more. It is easy to obtain a legitimate e-mail list from a reputable mailing list broker. You can order a pre-done list or a special one that has specific demographics that fit the profile of customers that you desire. A business owner must however, be sure that they are working with a respectable mailing list broker in order for advertising campaigns to be successful.

The same e-mail lists can be a pain to consumers who either did not give express permission to a company to be put on the mailing list, or who unwittingly gave permission by being tricked or duped. This can lead to what is called spam, or the Internet version of junk mail. Spam is against the Terms of Service (TOS) of most e-mail and Internet companies, so make sure if you buy a list, it is from a legitimate list broker.

Consumers can combat spam and the spyware that may be associated with it by never clicking on any links that come in spam and by installing anti-spyware and anti-spam programs onto their computers.


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