What would you do with 750,000 emails?

**Mreyes** · August 29th, 2010, 06:08 PM

What would you do with 750,000 emails (UK based)? They are emails where people have shown an interest in cheap insurance and discounts.

Also what sort of cost can you get for emails. I have some ideas, but would be interested if anyone knows how much businessess etc have paid for emails.

Any ideas would be welcome.

Cheers,

**ChrisG** · August 29th, 2010, 06:49 PM

Isn't that illegal in the UK to sell emails if they were obtained without direct notification to the user that their emails may be sold later, etc...?

**Andy** · August 29th, 2010, 06:57 PM

Chris, it depends on a lot of things, but it is not necessarily illegal.

Mreyes, 750000 emails (I'm assuming addresses?) is a relative thing. Is the list warm or cold? Under what conditions did folks sign up? What do they expect?

Lot's of questions before I can offer any ideas.

Andy

**Mreyes** · August 30th, 2010, 06:24 PM

All email adresses warm. People had signed up for insurance discounts and quotes and ticked a box that they could receive emails on discounts and deals on services and products in the future by partners and thrid parties. A completely legitimate mailing list.

**tke71709** · August 30th, 2010, 06:33 PM

Originally Posted by Mreyes

All email adresses warm. People had signed up for insurance discounts and quotes and ticked a box that they could receive emails on discounts and deals on services and products in the future by partners and thrid parties. A completely legitimate mailing list.

That makes the list legitimate, not warm. I'm not even going to ask if these are double opt-in or not.

Have you been emailing the list on a regular basis? Have you emailed them lately? That would make the list warm.

**Andy** · August 31st, 2010, 05:00 AM

tke71709 beat me to it. A list is a dynamic thing - more like a bonsai tree than a static garden statue. It needs to grow and take shape. It needs care and nurturing. Parts are pruned off from time to time to let other parts grow.

Other factors to consider is how long have you been building this list? Is it segmented? What about the geography of the list. As I'm in the US, I have no clue how the insurance industry works over there, but here - prospects living in Maryland would generally be worthless to someone in California.

Andy

P.S. I''m a bit curious about something - why haven't you monitized this list yourself?

**Clinton** · August 31st, 2010, 05:06 AM

What would you do with 750,000 emails (UK based)?

I'd clean the list and sell directly to them. I have some finance and insurance sites and brokers pay very well for leads. The ones I know aren't interested in unproven lists - all 750K could be junk - and the broker has no control over how many times you sell the same list.

If you're convinced of the quality of your list, do a deal with a broker to mail your subscribers with his offer and an aff link to his form.

Welcome to experienced-people.net

<added> Monetising: Andy has this unpleasant habit of beating me to things

**ian** · August 31st, 2010, 09:25 AM

The 5 replies in this thread alone have more value than I've found on any other forum. I love it here!

I have nothing else of value to add other than Clinton and Andy both hit the nail on the head with blunt, to-the-point genius.

**Mreyes** · August 31st, 2010, 04:26 PM

P.S. I''m a bit curious about something - why haven't you monitized this list yourself?

I have recently used the list but only about 100,000. It was to promote a new discount service. However I was stopped sending any more as I was contacted by my hosting co. as I was sending too many emails without going through the correct process (BTconnect). They said I had to go through an email marketing company, who charge £1,000's per month.

Other than that the advice given is great and appreciated.

**Andy** · September 1st, 2010, 05:28 AM

Originally Posted by Mreyes

I have recently used the list but only about 100,000. It was to promote a new discount service. However I was stopped sending any more as I was contacted by my hosting co. as I was sending too many emails without going through the correct process (BTconnect). They said I had to go through an email marketing company, who charge £1,000's per month.

Other than that the advice given is great and appreciated.

Mreyes,

How did your mailing work out for you?

One thing to consider is your hosting company doesn't care about your problem so taking their word on how to fix it may not be the best idea.

An autoresponder service is your best defense against spam complaints. How they would react to such a large list, I don't know but there are still options open to you better than just letting the list get cold.

The bad news is most services don't even offer standard service above 10-25 thousand addresses. The good news is they do handle huge volumes every day so they know how. It's just a matter of negotiation.

One option is to take a chance on getting shut down and running your own email system using a dedicated server. This circumvents the problem hosting companies have. I've never done anything like this so I can't tell you what the downside is. However this is probably the least expensive option.

Something that might be worth considering is to sign up for a service and load up 10,000 email addresses and run a list. If you can prove the list is responsive and profitable you have already increased the value of it. I might run two lists at the same time - one with the newest addresses and one with the oldest - this way you can get an idea of how fast the list deteriorates.

Andy