E-mail Marketing What's the Risk of Buying A List? It's usually better to build your own in-house lead list than to buy one. Why? Leads opt-in to house lists. They're more likely to have current info, and to respond. And you want a list that has current contact information. The older the contact information the more likely it's out of date and stale, the less likely it will reach your lead. Bottom Lines: The best response rates for purchased leads come from leads no older than 4 months; and 72% of leads on a purchased list might be stale & out of date. How Do You Protect Yourself and Measure This? Get the date when the lead was last updated. Calculate the date difference from the day the list was delivered. Create cohorts of leads by months since they were last updated. Analyze your data by these cohorts. For extra value run A/B tests by cohorts. In one graph we see response rates fall off a cliff for leads older than 4 months ("4-Month Freshness Band"). In the other graph, we see there that only 28% of the C-Level leads we bought were in the 4-Month Freshness Band. Even worse 51% of leads were 12 months or older, and a complete waste of money. And the lower level leads, managers who might influence C-Level execs were even more stale; 72% were 12 months or older Conclusion: Leads with contact information 4 months or fresher are useful; 4 to 12 months have very low value, and 12 months or older are useless. Case Study: As Marketing Director for a tech company, I developed a go-to-market plan for a new product. It included email campaigns. We had a pre-existing contract to buy a large lead list from Jigsaw, which "crowd sourced" leads. People could become a member for free to upload contact information of their contacts. In exchange, they could download lead information others uploaded. The more times one lead is uploaded, the more likely it was to be current, or so Jigsaw claimed. Our contract let us buy a large and targeted list. I worked with the vendor to build a list limited to select industries, job level, and other criteria. Most importantly, I asked the vendor to include the date on which the last contact was updated. That let me perform this analysis, uncover that the 72% of list we bought had stale contacts; their delivery and response rate fell well below the best performing cohorts. Prepared Using Tableau Desktop

1. Email Marketing: Build your own list. Up to 78%of bought list might be useless &out of date!
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Pct Distribution by Age of Lead
37 mo. old:
7%
36 mo. old:
19%
24 mo. old:
26%
12 mo. old:
9%
9 mo. old:
7%
6 mo. old:
10%
3 mo. old:
6%
2 mo. old:
7%
Usable Part of List = 22% UnUsable Part of List = 78% 52% of List is older than 12 Months
We Bought Email Leads. Only Those Updated Within Last 4 Months Responded. Yet They Only Equal 22% Of the List. So,
78% Were Stale! THAT'S A PROBLEM!
E-mail Marketing
What's the Risk of Buying A List?
It's usually better to build your own in-house
lead list than to buy one.
Why?
Leads opt-in to house lists. They're more likely
to have current info, and to respond.
And you want a list that has current contact in-
formation. The older the contact information
the more likely it's out of date and stale, the
less likely it will reach your lead.
BottomLines:
• The best response rates for purchased
leads come fromleads no older than 4
months; and
• 72%of leads on a purchased list might
be stale & out of date.
E•S•Q Unlimited -- Analysis • Insight • Action! Want higher email marketing response rates? Contact Bruce E. Segal • 610-667-8188 • BruceESegal@gmail.com
Analysis • Insight • Action!
How Do You Protect Yourself and Measure This?
Get the date when the lead was last updated. Calculate the date difference fromthe day the list was delivered. Create cohorts of
leads by months since they were last updated. Analyze your data by these cohorts. For extra value run A/B tests by cohorts.
In the first graph response rates fall off a cliff for leads older than 4 months ("4-Month Freshness Band"). In the other graph, only
22%of the leads were 4 months or newer. When segmented by job level, only 28%of the C-Level leads we bought fell in the 4-
Month Freshness Band, and 51%of themwere 12 months or older and a complete waste of budget. Lower level managers,
were even more stale; 72%were 12 months or older.
Conclusion:
Leads with contact information 4 months or fresher are useful; 4 to 12 months have very low value, and 12 months or older are
useless.
Case Study:
As Marketing Director for a tech company, I developed a go-to-market plan for a new product. It included email campaigns. We
had a pre-existing contract to buy a large lead list fromJigsaw, which "crowd sourced" leads. People could become a member for
free to upload contact information of their contacts. In exchange, they could download lead information others uploaded. The
more times one lead is uploaded, the more likely it was to be current, or so Jigsaw claimed.
Our contract let us buy a large and targeted list. I worked with the vendor to build a list limited to select industries, job level, and
other criteria. Most importantly, I asked the vendor to include the date on which the last contact was updated. That let me per-
formthis analysis, uncover that the 72%of list we bought had stale contacts; their delivery and response rate fell well below the
best performing cohorts.
Prepared with Tableau
0.0% 1.0% 2.0% 3.0% 4.0% 5.0% 6.0% 7.0%
Response Rate by Age of Lead
4 mo. ago: 2.0%
3 mo. ago: 3.1%
2 mo. ago: 3.8%
1 mo. ago: 5.2%
37 mo. ago: 0.0%
36 mo. ago: 0.0%
24 mo. ago: 0.1%
12 mo. ago: 0.3%
9 mo. ago: 0.4%
6 mo. ago: 0.8%
Average 1.6%
Unless Leads Were Updated 4 Months Before Purchase,
Their Low Response Rate Makes Them Useless.
0.0% 5.2%
Response Rate (Ctr. = 1%)
19 1,505
Days Since Contact Info Was Last Updated (Ctr = 120 days)