

Of course, if you’re buying an email list, you’re not complying with these requirements. In short, you can only contact people who have given their explicit consent to be contacted, or, in some cases, people with whom you have an existing business relationship. The first one is that citizens must provide their consent before you can email them. The CASL (Canada Anti Spam Law) set precise rules for commercial messages. The Rules in CanadaĬanada maintains one of the strictest positions when it comes to email lists. To avoid that pitfall, make sure to exclude all the people who have opted out from your communications. One of the main risks, if you’re buying or renting an email list, is contacting people who’ve previously asked to be removed from your list. Identify the message as an advertisement.Include an opt-out mechanism and honor opt-out requests promptly.Don’t use false or misleading header information.The law makes it possible to buy or rent email lists, as it doesn’t require you to get the recipients’ consent before contacting them.īut for the email to comply with the law, you have to observe the following rules: The rules that apply to commercial emails were defined in 2003 in the CAN-SPAM act.

Here’s what he told me about what’s legal in the US. To understand what is acceptable in the North American zone, I spoke with Travis, a lawyer working in the compliance department of a prominent American bank (and yes, he wanted to remain anonymous). Sample Google The Rules in the United States Let’s review what the law says in North America and Europe. Is It Legal to Buy or Rent an Email List?Ī quick Google search returns a lot of promising results…But this doesn’t mean it’s legal. That’s probably why legislators chose to define rules for this kind of activity. See? I feel like I still don’t know how they collected the data or if I have the right to contact the people on their lists… Here’s a page from a prominent player in the field that explains their policies: Most companies selling marketing data don’t clarify how the data is collected. Use surveys or phone calls to collect the contact details directly.Scrape emails online (in this case, the company providing the list is scanning the web to find public email addresses).There are a few ways to build an email list: Then there’s the question of the type of lists that you’re buying. It’s as if you paid for an ad in someone’s newsletter. The list owner will send the email for you, and you’ll never get to see who received your email. When you rent a list, you send your email to someone else’s list. When you buy an email list, you get a file containing a list of contacts that you email yourself. There’s an important distinction to draw between the email marketing lists that you can rent and the lists that you can buy. Of course, everyone knows what buying an email address list means.īut things are not as simple as they look. What Exactly Does Buying an Email List Mean? In this article, we’ll tell you why it’s not and how you can build your own list effortlessly. And you don’t have the time to build one.įortunately, you find a shortcut: websites offering to sell email lists. You read that email marketing’s performance has no equivalent.īut to send emails, you need a recipients list. You’re trying to grow your own business or please your boss, and you want fast results. Acknowledgements: this article was written with the help of Emilie de Vaucresson ( her website) and Guillaume Robez ( his website).
