Everybody has the same goal in mind; both marketers and salespeople just want to fill their sales funnel as quickly as possible. This is where the temptation to buy leads usually pops its ugly head up, and people often fall victim.

When you buy leads, as opposed to organically generating them, it is known to be much easier and obviously takes a lot less effort and time on your part. But it can also be costly to buy leads.

A lot of business owners and entrepreneurs often think that because they are going to pay for advertising at some point in their business venture, why not just pay for leads and skip a bunch of lead generating steps. They actually think it’s a trick that works.

This couldn’t be further from the truth! Those lists of leads you’re considering buying don't actually know you. In fact, they've probably ‘opted in’ at some other random website when they were signing up for something.

The problem is they didn’t actually opt into receiving anything from you or your company. They probably have no idea who you are or what your services or products are about.

Think about those emails you get that are soliciting products and services you never heard of and certainly never gave your details to so they could start sending you all kinds of emails.

We’ve all been there; probably on a daily basis, you get some of these emails and either block the sender, mark them as spam, or just delete them without even opening or reading them.

What Happens When You Buy Leads

In a perfect world, we all hope that when our emails get delivered, they get opened, people are interested and engage with our CTA. Then they convert into regular paying customers that last forever.

Sounds great, right? Sure, but that’s just not how it works!

When you buy a list of names and email addresses, the messages you are sending them are solicited unwanted messages. In fact, these unwanted messages are intrusive and often a violation of privacy rights.

Sure, you didn’t violate anybody’s privacy rights - at least you think you didn’t. But do you really know how all those names and email addresses were accumulated in the first place? Exactly.

When people don’t signup to receive your emails, they are already on the defensive side when they see those emails coming into their inbox. It doesn’t matter how great your content is - if they never open your emails, they’ll never know how great your company, services, or products are.

If the ‘potential client’ has never heard of you or been to your website and indicated an interest in you, your products, or your services, then trust us, you’re bothering them in more ways than one.

What’s Can Go Wrong With Purchased Leads

This is something a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs get wrong. They think about what could possibly go wrong with sending emails to a list they purchased for leads and come to the conclusion that it’s harmless.

But here’s the deal, if people on that purchased lead list never opted in to actually receiving emails or messages specifically from you, then a lot can go wrong!

Here’s a few things that could happen:

• First, there's an extremely high chance that those purchased leads could flag your emails or messages as spam, which is never a good thing! Their email provider could start filtering out any emails from you and prevent them from ever being delivered to this person again.
• Next, once enough of these purchased leads start flagging your emails or messages as spam, you will be put on a ‘blacklist,’ which is probably the worst thing a business could endure because then that blacklist is shared with a lot of other email providers. You can try to get off that blacklist, but we won’t lie; it’s nearly impossible to get back off of it.
• Lastly, your email deliverability and IP reputation will take a hit. In fact, your email software could ban you from using their service due to deliverability issues. Their reputation is also on the line when their client’s abuse the power of sending emails to potential customers.

Rather than put yourself, your company, and your brand at risk - why not just start out on the right foot and generate organic leads that are interested in everything you have to offer. It's always better to create leads honestly rather than buy them.