Email opt in lists from those who sell their internal opt in lists

In addition to list owners and vendors, who rent their internal opt-in lists for one-time use, we also can add another source to find opt-in lists the e-mail list broker. A broker is not beholden to one list owner or vendor. Instead, it has access to dozens of vendors and, within them, hundreds of lists. It also can help in the list planning and research process, and can negotiate pricing. A broker earns its keep by charging a commission; yet more times than not, you do not pay any more than if you had gone directly to the list vendor because of the pricing method that many list vendors use. Most list vendors charge a gross price, whether they’re dealing with an agency, a broker, or directly with the advertiser. The gross price is the cost of the list marked up by a 10 to 20 percent commission.

Oftentimes, a broker can negotiate that price down, while still earning its normal commission. Therefore, the benefits to using a broker are twofold: First, you have one-stop access to hundreds of different e-mail lists, and second, you can also, more times than not, get a better deal than if you negotiated directly with list owners. We’ll delve into some nitty-gritty details of opt-in e-mail lists and how to find the ones best targeted for your promotion; but before we do, let’s define a few direct marketing terms that have transferred to e-mail and are specific to lists and list research.

Universe. When you first begin the search, your job is to find as many sources as possible for your target audience. If you have a broad audience, you may be able to reach a potential audience of 500,000 or more people across various e-mail lists. Conversely, if you have a small audience, you may only be able to reach 50,000. That number is your universe, or your gross potential audience. A universe also can refer to the total quantity of a list.

List test. New lists that have never been used by your company always should be pretested in small quantities. Even if you determine that a new list has 50,000 quantity and your budget can withstand the costs, the general rule of thumb is to test a small quantity of the list first. If it pulls a strong response, you can then go back to it at a later time. A minimum quantity of 5,000 is recommended for a list of 50,000. Generally speaking, the test quantity should be at least 10 percent of the segment or list that you’re testing. And to be statistically valid, you should aim for at least 50 responses.

Continuation and balance. After a test mailing has gone out, and certain lists have been deemed worthy by their response to be e-mailed again, a marketer can choose to “continue” on that list if he doesn’t want to rollout to its entire universe. Example: If a list has a universe of 50,000 and in the first e-mailing, the marketer tests 5,000 e-mail addresses within that list and it does well, the marketer can e-mail the balance of 45,000 in the next mailing. Or, if the budget is smaller, the marketer can take a continuation of that list a fresh set of 5,000 addresses in which the initial 5,000 is omitted.

Rollout. This comprises all the e-mail addressees within a campaign that are sent at one time, including list tests, message, creative and offer tests, and any other variables.

Statistical significance. In order to get a solid reading on a list, you need to make sure you have enough names so that any response you get can be applied to other promotions. For instance, if you glean a 5 percent click-through rate on a list test of 5,000 (where the total universe of the list is approximately 20,000), you can pretty much count on the fact that new names within that list i.e., names that have not yet e-mailed will give you similar results. However, if you get similar results from a list with only 500 names, you won’t be able to e-mail that list again with complete confidence that it will yield similar results because the quantity was not high enough to make it statistically significant.

Nth. This term refers to a specific randomly selected quantity, normally used for test quantities of a list. For instance, a list may have more than 50,000 names/e-mail addresses on its file. For testing purposes however, you may choose to pull off an nth of 5,000. If done right, it will not be the first 5,000 names on a list and it won’t be the last 5,000 it will be names randomly selected across the entire file. This is to ensure that the test quantity represents an accurate sampling of people within the list. Now that we’ve determined the basics, let’s explore some available categories within lists. Again, the Resource section at the back of the book lists sources of lists, including vendors and brokers, and also includes a brief description of what categories of lists they specialize in, if any.