by Jonathan Paston

There’s always a massive debate amongst Internet Marketers about the usefulness, or otherwise, of email Lead-Generated lists.

Every new marketer is so eager to build a ‘massive list’ that Lead-Gen lists along with safelists and traffic exchanges, look like the ideal way to build your own subscriber list fast.

But do they really work? As you can see from my post on The 2020 Challenge - Day 19 I set out to find out whether Lead-Gen lists really are worthwhile.

What I did was buy a 10,000 strong email list from an established marketer. This list had been compiled from people who had opted in to a page offering information on the home business arena.

As my book is of general interest to that type of market I am hoping that they will also be interested in my new book. But it is going to take a few weeks to find out the answer to that. So, in the meantime, I thought it would be interesting to document what happens when you take on a Lead-Gen list.

First of all it is called a Lead-Generated list because people have opted in to a registration page other than your own. That means their details have been captured because they actively requested information, rather than by some underhand, spammy, method.

Even so they haven’t opted in to your own autoresponder subscriber list. And if you are using a reputable autoresponder service, like Aweber, you’ll know that double opt-in is a requirement.

So somehow you need to ask the members of the Lead-Gen list to opt in again. And that’s tough. Because it is difficult to get someone to give their name out twice for the same information.

The classic method is to offer a gift. You can build a relationship by sending messages to your list from your own server or desktop. In my case I imported the list into the desktop software I used for one of my autoresponder tests. The great advantage of the software I chose, MailList King, is that it automatically integrates with Microsoft Outlook, so I can manage my messages using my usual email client.

So I created a few warm-up messages, including a link to a squeeze page with a suitable gift on it, and imported my list.

The first thing I found out is that, for whatever reason, a proportion of Lead-Gen list opt-ins give false, or soon to be deleted, email addresses. Why they do this I have no idea. it is the same conundrum which faces users of autoresponder services - why do people opt in but then never confirm their address in order to receive the information they requested?

The outcome of my first mailing is as follows:

9995 imported addresses (MailList King identified five addresses which were not correctly formatted or were known ’scammers’).

Bounced emails from first mailing - 1844. These were 98% undeliverable with 2% ‘out of office’ or ‘delayed’.

Unsubscribers from first mailing - 3

Initially I was disappointed. I bought a Lead-Gen list of 10,000 and ended up with 8223 after just one mailing! But, hey, that’s 8108 more than I started with! If just 1% of those convert to sales I’ll be more than happy.

I’ll return to this subject to give you more statistics as the days go by. Like how many join my Aweber list, how many unsubscribe and so on.

In the meantime you may like to read more about my views on Aweber and MailList King and which Autoresponder is right for you here.