Hi Wayne

I used to work with these lists some years ago and if you find a list with unique leads for your niche then absolutely. But be aware that a list of 10.000 will maybe just give you a response from 100-1000 of them. But am sure if you buy the right list you will get a very good response.

And also this is a very good and not too expensive way to test your Beta.

Hope this helped some!
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Daren Vickery

Admin@skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.co.uk

Thanks Daren. That's very useful information. I think we're going to give it a try.
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http://www.primeaccounts.com
@primeaccounts

No worries am glad to help.

Let me know if there´s anything you need help with being its just advice or business, just email me.

Best Regards
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Daren Vickery

Admin@skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.co.uk

The lists you build yourself will be infinitely more useful! If the product has a market Wayne, you should be able to get hold of them to try it for free. So where are your potential customers? Do they hang out on forums like this one? Is there a magazine which they read that you could get some PR in? Are there particular search terms that they would use to look for the product which you could use Google AdWords on?

Email lists are a great way of building your business but bought lists are just not as effective as someone saying "I'm interested!"
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Caroline Wylie

www.virtuallysorted.com

www.SocietyOfVirtualAssistants.co.uk

I can agree to some level with you Caroline, however being it´s a beta he is trying to see response to, it would be wrong to put all efford in making his own list which takes time and he can´t really direct targetted leads to his site without making some SEO on it as well.

Wayne if you want advice or help with one or the other thing here, it´s easyer that you give us a call and my team will assist you.

Best Regards
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Daren Vickery

Admin@skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.co.uk

The other way of looking at it of course, is if you bombard 100,000 people with unsolicited spam you will create a NEGATIVE image for your business.

As a business buying services we dont deal with spammers or direct marketers (phone, email or letter) as a matter of policy.

I dont think I have any clients who have built a successful sales channel through direct mail, cold calling or email campaigns. Many try it, most dont do so again.

Regards
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James Smith
Chartered Accountant
www.jamesesmith.co.uk

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Your indispensable guide to Small Business Bookkeeping, Self-Assessment & VAT

In my experience bought email lists tend to be quite poor value for money - though if you are looking for people to test a Beta version it might work. I agree with James that there is a risk of being perceived as a spammer - maybe use something like Jigsaw to get a smallish list of targetted emails you can send yourself, rather than doing a list blast.
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Premium Lead Generation & Appointment Booking - Get leads that actually turn into sales.

www.bighousebs.com

oh and forgot to say - if it's entirely online and suits the purpose, I've probably got a few VAs who could try it out for you. They are critically brutal though!!
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Caroline Wylie

www.virtuallysorted.com

www.SocietyOfVirtualAssistants.co.uk

I would like to agree with Caroline a great deal. Daren, I don't really think because of the product being beta there will be a problem with putting effort into building his own list.

By signing up for this beta product, it's a healthy indication that these prospects are in the market for accounting products and are likely to buy any other accounting products in the future.

See, that's the power of building your own list, because it's never going to be useless as you will have the ability to promote your services to it at will - "highly recommended".

Wayne, you can get in touch for some lethal strategies for your beta testers. I don't think SEO will even be very relevant for a campaign like this.

In my opinion, just like many others here, I would say stay away from lists you don't know where they came from as they may not be targeted. Having said that, SEO and Email Marketing can be costly as well, but I have got some very cost effective strategies that produce handsome results that I personally think are worth a try.
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Internet Markerting Resources, Tips, Techniques & Strategies
Proven Tips, Tools and Tactics To Succeed With Your Marketing Efforts??

I can agree with you on that if you buy a list you really have to make sure it´s a real list and not scam list. If you were to buy the wrong list it will be seen as scam and therefor can hurt your company in the longer run.

I have as said worked with these lists in the past and found them useful, but I always made sure that it was not scamlists.


So if you follow on the advise here to build your own list, use the advise and maybe even ask the people that replied on your post to help you with it.
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Daren Vickery

Admin@skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.com
http://www.skynetzz.co.uk

Unless you buy a list of email addresses of people who have agreed to be sent what is normally termed "junk mail" you are breaking the law by cold emailing them and as has already been said you are setting your company up for being labbelled as a spammer. A far beeter way would be to find a community website for accountants and ask the owner if you can tout for beta testers on there
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Richard How FIAP MAPM
How Associates - Programme Management Consultants
Quality Web Hosting
Photography Forum
Tourist Guide to Newport Pagnell

No one want to read spam emails and i think conversion rate for business point of view is very low. If you have good positive business than do some thing positive to promote it.
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Rental Property Management

Hi Wayne, I spent a fair amount of time and money on high volume email campaigns for a previous business. You do get a response, but not always the right one (or even a positive one!), and we found that as soon as the emails stopped, so did the enquiries. Because we got enough when the emails went out, it made us lazy in terms of more sustainable marketing, but it was never quite enough or cost effective enough to be self sustaining in its own right.

I am now much more in favour of what may be a slower approach in terms of online, direct marketing and the old favourite - word of mouth.
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www.imprint51.com

Response rates are certainly low; most online marketeers will measure delivery rate, open rate, click through rate and then depending on the site a number of measures until you get to conversion rate.

When you look at the drop offs at each stage they tend to be fairly massive. That isn't to say it is a bad idea, there are certainly a lot of organisations that do very well out of "spamming" people.

The key thing is to ensure, as far as possible, that the list is up to date and contains relevant people. To stay on the right side of the law, that the people in the list are all double opt in (agreed to marketing and agreed to third parties contacting them).

I am not sure that I would use mailing lists for trying to gather beta testers though. Depending on how many there are required I would have thought using forums or accountancies would be a better route.

What are you offering these people in exchange for being a beta tester for you?
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www.AstarothSolutions.com - Bespoke web development

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