Welcome to the Murky World of E-mail List Sales

Anti-spam outfit Aspews.org lists EmailAppenders and Sales Universe as two aliases among many used by Sloan Marketing. But it doesn't mention Data Champions.

Another company possibly related to EmailAppenders is NetSalesLists.com. A man claiming to be Jeff Parker from that firm e-mailed various firms this fall, pitching business-to-business append services. But his messages contained no postal contact information. When asked, he supplied this address: 14781 Memorial Drive, Suite #1155, Houston, TX 77079.

An Internet search revealed that this address is that of the Memorial Postal Center. An employee at the center confirmed that the “suite” is a post office box.

Parker reportedly said in an e-mail to a marketing executive that NetSalesLists and EmailAppenders are “just channel partners.”

But e-mail addresses of people claiming to represent various list sellers contain striking similarities, indicating at least a technical relationship.

An e-mail from someone claiming to be Keith Kentala at Data Champions Online pitching data services came from Keith.Kentala@psmails.com.

NetSalesLists' Parker's e-mail came from JeffP@psmails4.com.

A Raymond Murphy, claiming to be from EmailAppenders, sent his messages from Ramondm@psmails9.com. A B-to-B prospecting e-mail from Andy Fischer at ListGalaxy came from Andyf@smails69.com. A prospecting message claiming to be from Lance Carter at EmailAppenders came from Lancec@smails69.com.

Is it possible that the similarities between these addresses are coincidental, and that the salespeople using them in various locations across the country are unrelated other than as channel partners? Sure, but it seems unlikely.

Cooper says he's speaking from his home in an unnamed New York City suburb, and that his company and its divisions are not trying to be difficult to reach.

“We have an 800 number which is manned 24 by seven,” he says.

When asked if EmailAppenders was headquartered Bangalore, India, Cooper says: “We have offices there, yes.” But he denied any connection to Data Champions/Sloan Marketing. “We deal with hundreds of channel partners and they're all over the place,” he says.

So where is the company based?

“I will say we're a global marketing outsourcing firm,” he says. “Anything wrong with that? I think we are based in three countries; we service clients in over 20 countries now.”

Cooper adds that his 100-plus channel partners operate under dozens of different names.

“The reason we have separate divisions is that at the end of the day, it's just like InfoUSA [now InfoGroup] has 10 different Web sites,” he adds.

Immediately after speaking with Direct, Cooper contacted Harold and MacAdam, promising to make things right. As of deadline, he hadn't. But deadline was immediately after the interview.

All the facts are not yet in. But one thing is certain: EmailAppenders and other e-mail list sellers are responding to market forces — those driven by marketers' worst instincts.

Spamhaus maintains spam traps — addresses that never signed up for everything — to catch people mailing to harvested lists.

Many marketers assert to Spamhaus that their addresses are double or confirmed opt-in — that new e-mail subscribers have responded to a confirmation message. But it's not always the case, says executive director Steve Linford: “Some mailers use confirmed opt-in only on parts of their operation and buy lists from other places and then mix the two together.”

What happens when they're informed that the list is not confirmed opt-in, or COI? They usually admit that “one of our guys did buy a new list last week, which we've decided not to use anymore.”

As Linford puts it, this means: “We're generally COI except when we're not.”

Trouble Signs

You're getting pitched on an e-mail appending deal and the price is spectacularly low, the promised match rate ridiculously high. Too good to be true?

Yes, says Austin Bliss, president of appending firm FreshAddress.

Low pricing and high promised match rates are two warning signs that an e-mail appending firm may not be legitimate.

“I saw one company claim a 35% to 85% match rate,” Bliss says. “That is preposterous.”

In fact, a 35% match rate in appending — where a data services firm matches e-mail addresses to the postal names on a marketer's house file — is probably about as high as a marketer can hope for.

As for price, Bliss says he's seen vendors offer appending deals for as little as 2 cents per name. “You can't run a business and perform a legal, legitimate service at 2 cents a name,” he adds. “Price is the best indicator of quality.”