Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Reputable Opt-in Email List Providers

Posted by tjh on 6/16/2005 at 5:15 PM ET 500 Points
I'm looking to speed up my search through a countless, and hit-and-miss list of email address sources and am hoping you can help narrow down my search with providers you know of.

In this case, I'm looking for email addresses of online children's party supplies buyers, or an approximation thereof.

The campaign management functions are under control from a different vendor, though we could switch if required by the list owner/broker.

So, would you mind giving me your short list of email opt-in address providers? Hopefully you've used them, or have another trusted reason why they should be considered.

Thanks in advance,
Tom
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 6/16/2005 at 6:13 PM Accepted
    Tom,

    I could be wrong, but I think you're looking for a needle in a haystack.

    I do not think you will have much success in finding email addresses for "children's party supplies buyers." (And to be clear, you're talking about the buyers who work for the retailers, not Mom and Dad who are in the market for streamers, correct?)

    Your best bet (and this is a long shot) would be if there's a trade publication that serves these people. Perhaps they have an email newsletter with an opt-in list.

    I'm all for being proven wrong, though, so if someone has a vendor that can provide this kind of detail, I'd love to know about it!

    Paul
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 6/16/2005 at 8:57 PM Accepted
    Tom.

    I concur with Paul, I don't think you are going to find opt-in list providers get anywhere near that specific in target.

    I would contact a couple of your local party-supply stores, one of them being a chain and one of them being local owned and talk to the owner/high-level manager and ask them where they would go to get this information, they should be able to direct you to a trade magazine, trade show etc. or somewhere else to find this out.

    I hope that helps.
  • Posted by tjh on 6/16/2005 at 11:32 PM Author
    Ah, my bad.

    I'm actually looking for the consumers....
  • Posted by Pepper Blue on 6/17/2005 at 11:54 AM Member
    Tom,

    Wow, big market, anybody with kids.

    You might want to consider co-marketing with somebody who already has an established list:

    Toy stores
    Children's book sellers
    Children's activity centers i.e. day gyms
    Parenting magazines, both national and local.

    Plus, there are many "reputable" list brokers out there with permission-based lists of housesholds with children, have you looked into them?

  • Posted by tjh on 6/17/2005 at 1:00 PM Author
    Yeah Tim thanks.

    Yes I'm working through a much too long list now, and thought I'd speed up the search by asking here for any experienced recommendations on list providers (brokers, direct sources).

    I'm after the email addy's, not the postal ones, and this continues to be a bit of a surprisingly difficult find. Maybe I'm just not far enough down my list yet.

    But - any recommendations are welcome!

  • Posted by tjh on 6/17/2005 at 6:45 PM Author
    Thanks Conrad. I often use Experian for direct mail lists, but alas, they don't have email address lists.
  • Posted by tjh on 6/19/2005 at 12:25 PM Author
    I'll leave this question open for a few more days to see if anyone has a list of opt-in email address sources that might help me out.

    Thanks!
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 6/21/2005 at 11:43 AM Member
    I know this is not answering your question, but I still think that you will never find an email list of "children's party supply buyers." The best that you're going to do, IMHO, is find a list of people with children. If you know that party supply buyers tend to have a certain income or some other identifying characteristic (homeowners?), then you might be able to narrow it down a little.

    Even then, my feeling is that you'll be wasting your money, however. First, the odds that you're hitting someone right when they have an event coming up are probably about 11:1, but of course those odds get better in multi-child households. Then you factor in the percentage of people who plan to buy supplies for a party, then the percentage of people who would want to buy those supplies online...I dunno.

    If you're looking for a reputable list dealer, you're going to pay a lot more than the $1 CPM that some of the low-quality brokers will quote you. A LOT more. When all is said and done, I think your acquisition cost will be far too high, and I don't think you can count on repeat business to make that acquisition profitable in the future.

    Again, I know this is not the answer to your question, but I wonder if the question is worth asking to begin with.

    Please let us know how it turns out, though.

    Paul
  • Posted by tjh on 6/21/2005 at 1:51 PM Author
    Paul thanks.

    I think we're going to initially test a hundred thousand or so of any reasonable "parents of smallish children" lists I can find from a known house.

    We'll look to drive click throughs to the web site, then newsletter signup, with a maybe a short survey (age of kids, months of birth, etc.) to see how well we can build our own list.

    Any direct sales, or immediate sales that happen as a result of the tests or campaign itself will also give good knowledge...

    We already do local direct mail to birthday month names, for supplies and other reasons. It works very well of course, but won't scale for just supplies (at this time).
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