You can do a lot of harm to your company's image by using a purchased database. As someone who is often on the receiving end of unwanted and unsolicited email campaigns from other companies, I can tell you that it's incredibly frustrating and time consuming to get off these databases, and even harder to get it through to the people that use these databases why it was wrong. So I will attempt to explain the reasons below, and maybe in future you will think twice before making this mistake

Purchased databases are unsolicited:
According to the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act of 2002, which governs the sending of mass communication to subscribers in South Africa, there is a small provision for unsolicited commercial email. To comply with these rules you need to be able to state exactly where and how you got the email addresses that you have sent an email campaign to, as well as be able to offer these email addresses an opt-out method like an unsubscribe link. However, purchasing a database for these purposes is often viewed much harsher than the law actually states. TouchBasePro aims to comply with not only South African law, but international law as well, which are much stricter and can carry hefty fines or even jail sentences. This is why we impose strict fines on clients that have complaints against them. What also needs to be taken into account is the psychology of the recipients. Most are not willing to give the time of day to an unsolicited email campaign, and will complain to you, to us as well as to the authorities.

Purchased databases lack "quality":
You can never be sure what kind of email addresses are on a purchased database, and how up to date this information is. Imagine the money that is wasted on sending an email campaign to a list of which 50% of the email addresses are inactive or no longer in use. A purchased database has a low return on investment to start with (which we will look at below), so imagine that the percentage of subscribers that may respond is then halved, because the other half bounced. This is also going to damage your reputation, which we will also look at below.

Purchased databases are a low return on investment, and a high risk of complaints:
Imagine your email address is on a database that is doing the rounds to several companies. You are receiving three or four unsolicited emails a week, and are continually frustrated with the fact that, even if you contact these companies that are sending these email campaigns to get yourself removed, your name is still on the database and you will continue to get more. So, how willing do you think the subscribers on this purchased list of yours are going to be to do business with your company? They get email upon email from people like you every week. Even if it were a product or service they were interested in, out of principle they would probably junk the email and not even bother. When we talk about a return on investment, the positive response rate that comes from a purchased list is in some cases less than 1%. Then, you run the added risk of having many complaints against your company. You can be threatened with legal action, as well as have fines levied against you.

Purchased databases damage your reputation:
If you are constantly sending campaigns that are unsolicited to subscribers that never wanted to hear from you in the first place, chances are that you are going to run into a lot of trouble, and not all of it legality issues. Some of your legitimate subscribers might stop doing business with you, as word of mouth spreads that you send out mass email campaigns to people that don't care about your company. This honestly gives the impression that your company is unfeeling, and is only looking to drum up new business instead of nurturing the business relationships that are there now. Then, there is also the eventuality that your domain will be blacklisted, and you won't be able to send any more emails because client's servers will pick up that your domain is recognized as a spammer, and won't accept any emails or send them straight to junk. Your domain can also get blacklisted if you are constantly sending campaigns that have a high bounce rate, as mail servers pick up that you are sending email campaigns to inactive email addresses and this is a classic spammer tactic.

If my purchased database is useless, now what?
The general impression given to email marketing is that there is quantity over quality, and that is not the case. It is no use wasting the time and expense to bulk mail ten thousand people, if only a thousand of those are vaguely interested. It's better to start slowly, and only have a thousand customers that are listening to you. There are many ways to grow your database, and we have some useful examples on the Resource Centre.