Ep. 153 – Can I BUY AN EMAIL LIST? 😬 Museums? | Ask Us ANYTHING

Foreign. Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are here for Ask Us Anything from Do this, not that.

This is our short episode where all week long we get in questions, we get in work questions, and we get in ridiculous questions, and we try to tackle one of each. And if you want to submit a question, it's really easy. You can.

You just go to jschweddelson.com, you click podcast, and then there's a button that says, ask us anything. And you could literally submit anything. We get some wild questions and we try to tackle them here. So let's jump into it. First, the work question.

We got a question in from Sherry from Plainview, Long Island. That is in New York. That is very close to where I grew up in Jericho, Long Island. And, you know, I've been living in Florida for over 30 years.

When somebody says to me, hey, Jay, where are you from? I say, I'm from Florida because I've been here most of my life. And then they look at me and like, really? And I go, yeah.

And then they'll be like, are you sure? I'm like, well, I. I was born in New York, but I moved here. I've been here forever in Florida. The whole conversation's weird.

I never know what to say. I'm not one of these people that like, oh, my, I'm a New Yorker, whatever. I mean, I love New York, don't get me wrong.

But I don't know, the whole vibe is weird. I got to figure that out. Anyway. All right, here's the question from Sherry.

Jay, I know this is a really bad question, but my company wants to buy an email list. Is this horrible? You know, I'm glad you're asking this question, because it's not a good thing. But there is some caveats to that.

And every company has faced this business or consumer, where the size of your database is not big enough. And to organically grow your database takes a really long time. It costs a lot of money. It's not easy.

And you want that instant fix, and you go on Google and you're like, I want to buy a list. And there's a million of these different companies where you can just Buy a list. And you're like, should I do that?

And obviously there's legal issues with just buying a list. There's privacy issues in terms of people not giving consent. There's all sorts of those issues. But let's put aside that.

Let's talk about the marketing inside itself. Here's what really happens.

You go ahead and you buy a list and now you have the database that you want, you know, the coverage that you want in your consumer category or business category. And you take a deep breath like, all right, now we have a good size list to market to, but here's what really happens.

And again, this has nothing to do with the compliance side or any of that stuff. It also has nothing to do with deliverability.

Yeah, when you take an email list that you buy and you stick it into whatever your email sending tool is that you're utilizing, it will completely disrupt your sending ability because you're gonna get, you know, get hit spam traps, you're gonna have complaints, it's gonna be bad. But put aside all of that. Okay? Why is buying a list such a, a path? You probably don't want to go down.

Because what happens is when you buy a list, you start sending to it. Number one, it doesn't do very well because these people didn't opt into whatever it is you're offering. They didn't express interest.

They just happen to be in the right audience group that you're going after. So it's not going to do very well.

But the thing that I see over and over and over again with marketers, what happens is once you buy the list, your aggressive push to grow your list organically fizzles out. You no longer have that as a front burner thing. You're no longer focused on that.

You're not trying to make the best lead magnets, you're not trying to make the best offer offers. You're not trying to use pop up contact captures.

You're not trying to grab people to come off of social media and get their contact information because you already have a list. And now you may be saying, well, no, no, we'll continue to do that, but you won't.

It won't be as aggressive because you won't have that desperate need to do it. So buying a list really becomes a boat anchor in so many different ways for your business. Now why did I say there was a caveat?

There's a caveat because let's say you're going after, you know, a particular business account and you really want to find the three or four the best perfect people to reach out to.

And you want to go on a site like ZoomInfo or one of these other ones where you can, you know, download three or four contacts and you want to solicit them for the product or service that you are promoting. Or let's say you're doing exhibitor sales and you're at an association, you're like, oh, this company would be perfect to exhibit.

I want to reach out to them. I just don't know the person. Right. And you download a handful of records and you reach out to them. I'm totally fine with that. Okay.

To me, that's not buying a list. That is a very targeted, specific way that you're trying to do outreach. And as long as you're not doing that at scale, I'm totally on board that.

So can you buy a list? Technically you can. Should you buy a list? I don't think there's really any good that comes out of buying a list if you're going to email to it. Okay.

You could certainly do other types of targeting, use it for other types of things. Sure, that's a whole different conversation. But straight up, buying a list, I think you got to put that on the back burner.

Okay, so before we get to the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Now I got a piece of content that Marigold just released for free that you got to download. Now first of all, Marigold is my email sending platform.

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So check it out. Jschwettelson.com Marigold now let's get to the ridiculous question we Got a question in from Chris from Savannah, Georgia.

I have been to Savannah, Georgia. Love Georgia. I love all parts of Georgia. I remember going to Savannah because I remember eating shrimp and grits. No offense.

I think shrimp and grits are gross. I think grits are overrated. I. I've had them a couple times. Every time I have them, I'm like, why is this popular?

I've yet to have grits where I'm like, oh, this is really good. It tastes like bad oatmeal. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. No offense, Chris. All right, what's your question?

All right, Jay, I have three would you rather questions. Can you answer all three? Okay, here we go. Let's see. Okay. Would you rather attend the Oscars or the Grammys? That's a ridiculous question.

I would attend the Grammys all day. Who cares about the Oscars? Yeah, you see a bunch of famous people just saying boring stuff.

You go to the Grammys and you see all these people performing. It is bananas. I mean, if anybody says Oscars, that's weird. All right, next question.

Would you rather attend a Marvel movie premiere or a DC movie premiere? That's a tough question because back in the day, I would have said Marvel all day long, but every movie they've come out with is garbage lately.

Although, obviously the new Deadpool movie is going to be great. And the trailer I saw for the new Captain America movie looks awesome. But I'm very into the Batman from dc.

Although I would go to the Joker premiere, but the new Joker with Lady Gaga looks a little weird. I'm probably into it. I don't know. So I'm torn right now. I would probably say dc. All right, last. Would you rather.

Jay, would you rather visit the Louvre in Paris or the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam? These are both art museums. Well, I know what they are.

Okay, so I'm really not somebody that should answer this question because I am culturally like a two year old, but I've been to the Louvre in Paris. I went. Now, here's why I shouldn't answer the question. And this is something that I'm sure I will get some hate mail on, but. Oh, well.

So I can't do it. I try hard to, like, be an intellectual person. I'm just not, obviously. I watched the Bachelorette. I mean, who are we kidding? So I went to the Louvre.

I crushed the Louvre in less than 30 minutes. Meaningless. Like in and out of the Louvre in Paris with the greatest works of art of all time in less than 30 minutes.

I got in there and I'm like, all right, show me the Mona Lisa. I went, saw the Mona Lisa. It was ridiculous. It was like 5 billion people staring at this little painting. I'm like, check that box. Saw that. I saw.

What was it, like one or two other famous things. And then everyone's like, yeah, but you got to see this, you guys. That. I go, I don't care. I know it's famous. It's great. Rembrandt or Monet.

Or Monet, whatever. Good for you. You made a painting beautiful. I mean, that is terrible. I'm sure it is.

Like, everybody's like, oh, I would love to go to the Louvre and spend the whole day there and be cultural and absorb all this amazing works of art and talent or whatever. Great. I want to sit on my couch and I want to watch Love is Blind and that is my Louvre. All right, don't at me. I don't care. So that's my answer.

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