Mailing list quality research: To collect, to parse, or to buy, what is the best?

The most difficult stage of the email campaign is a collection of the contact list. For someone, the mission to get a high-quality database in short terms turns out to be impossible. It takes a lot of time to collect addresses by themselves. But buying the ready variant is risky. Is it really so? In this article, we are going to check which email base is more qualitative: the one collected manually or the bought one.

3 ways to collect contacts

From the most difficult to the easiest:

• Attracting the mass mailing subscribers with the help of the web form. This method is universal, but very slowly. You can fasten it with the help of lead-magnet. Create a useful piece of content which a user will get in exchange for his email. And you should do this at least 2 months before the campaign in order to have time for collecting enough addresses.

• Extracting with the help of parsers is much faster. Instead of several weeks or months, it will take only a few hours.

• Buying a ready-made email database. This is the way which requires the least time and effort. Many people are tempted by the opportunity to get the contact list at once. Just a few clicks and a base is yours. But is it worth it? Let’s find out.

We will show you everything in practice. We will find out how relevant and valid the addresses collected in each way are. Atomic Email Verifier (a program for checking if emails exist) will help us compare the quality of 3 contact lists: collected through a form on the website, extracted with the help of parses, and bought on the Internet.

The experiment: the comparison of 3 email databases

So, let’s start. For our research, we have chosen a commercial topic. We imagined being a seller of affordable women’s clothing wholesale and retail. So, our target audience is:

• Individuals who want to buy goods retail at an attractive price.
• Shops which want to purchase clothes wholesale for further retailing.

To attract new clients, we have decided to start a cold emailing campaign. The first contact list we have collected by ourselves through a form on the website. The second one we have extracted with the help of a parser. And the third one was bought on the Internet.

Step 1. Collecting addresses through a form on the website

We have posted a lead magnet and collected 142 followers within a month. It was advertised with the help of target ads on Instagram. A 30% discount was offered to the users who left their email. A landing with the form for email addresses

Step 2. Extracting addresses with the help of email parser

There is an Atomic program for contacts collecting. So, we have run Atomic Email Extractor and have started searching for addresses. How it was: We clicked Search — A new Search. Then selected Do a keyword search to target your niche. Then entered the keyword we need. In this case, it was “buy cheap clothes”. We have decided that our target audience might be interested in the websites of his topic. So, the program is expected to extract addresses from them. Then the region of search was selected. In our case, this is the USA. Within a few seconds, a program has extracted 1747 addresses. It is enough for us because we don’t the research to take too much time. But you can find 10 or 20 thousands emails or even more if you need.

Step 3. Purchase of the base on the Internet

While searching for the base which satisfies our requirements, we have found a website which sells contact lists and bought one with 1800 emails. The declared parameters are:

• Country — USA.
• Sphere of interests — women’s topics.

Step 4. Checking all lists with the help of Atomic Email Verifier

Each contact base was uploaded to the program. Then we clicked Verify and waited for software to check the addresses. So, here you can see what results look like: On the right, you can see the detailed statistics: the number of addresses that are valid, invalid, uncertain, and disposable. After this, we have saved only valid addresses from each list.

Step 5. Comparing the results

The base collected with the help of Atomic Email Extractor is 74,41% valid. 25,47% of addresses are missed. And only 0,11% is invalid. The one we have bought on the Internet has shown worse results. It is only 38,89% valid. 55,44% of addresses are uncertain and 5,22% is invalid. The one which was collected through the form on the website turned out to be the most qualitative. It is 88,03% valid. 10,56% of addresses are uncertain and only 1,41% is invalid.

Database	Validity
Collected through a form on the website	88,03%
Created with the help of Atomic Email Extractor	74,41%
A bought one	38,89%

Summary

• The most qualitative is the contact base collected with the help of the form on the website. Though it is the smallest, but it is 88% valid. So, this way of collecting is slowly but effective.

• The list created by Atomic Email Extractor has twice more valid addresses than the bought database (74% versa 39%). So, if time matters for you, this variant can be used. Quality is not much lower than the base collected through a form on the website has.

• The purchased contact base has shown the poorest results. It is only 39% valid. This is just throwing money away.

So, collect the lists of emails by yourselves. It’s not that difficult and long as it can seem. And the result will definitely satisfy you. Use the form on the website if you have enough time for this. If you need the list immediately then use parsers. And don’t forget to check if the email database is valid. There is Atomic Email Verifier, a convenient, fast and effective instrument for this.

Download the free demo and try all the features of the program for 7 days.