KickstarterForum.org

I have developed a new product that I know electricians would love to know about as it saves them time and money. I am considering purchasing an email list of electricians and sending them an email sales letter to introduce it and ask them to support my KS campaign. I understand that there are email abuse issues I have to be aware of for send bulk email blasts. but from what I understand this can be circumvented by using tools like Rapid Mailer that enables you to schedule email deliveries throughout the day to stay within the rules. Has anybody tried this successfully?

Generally, what you will be doing is spamming these people which is never a good idea.
If you find an electricians list to rent where they have subscribed receive newsletters and updates via a third party such as yourself then that's fine but it would be difficult to find.
Having years of data mining and mailing experience the only real wat for you to do it successfully is to build your own list I am afraid to say.
If the product is great then trade magazines will love to feature it, build a subscribe form on your website and build contacts.

Thanks for your feedback on this, but it does make you wonder how these companies, and there are many, are allowed to sell these lists. Surely the obvious solution to the spam problem is for the authorities to target these companies, rather than go after the individuals that purchase from them. I am definitely going to give it a test, by trialing with a small number and then ramping up if it works. No matter what these marketing guys say, it takes a lot of time and a lot money to create a mailing list and the social media presence etc. Let's face it, when we are in the early stage of a product launch, time and money are the two things you do not have. It's okay to spend the time to build your list if you are selling marketing courses and there is an opportunity for back end sales, which when you look at it, this is the business these guys are in. The bottom line though is, when you are crowdfunding you only have a small 30 - 60 day window to get eyeballs on your product to help fund your start up. I am not saying not to be always building your list, all I am saying if you have a great product for a targeted niche and you can purchase 5000 names and emails for $100 to enable you to quickly show and tell you target market your product. Surely it makes sense to Kick Start your crowdfunding campaign, and your own list, this way.

Yes the laws are different all around the world when it comes to privacy, data collection etc., and there are plenty of legitimate businesses out there renting lists of people and businesses that want regular newsletters, updates, product offers etc.
A good active list rents for one time only use and it is seeded (they don't sell) will start off around $250/1,000 emails and go upwards from that depending on what target market you are after.
There are lots of web based businesses out there 'selling' and renting lists of 5,10,20,100k and beyond for exceedingly low prices but these will not be verified, you will have huge bounces and big scam rejections as they will old generic lists that were scraped from the web and spammed by all and sundry.
The first 5 to 8 days are the most crucial for crowdfunding, so if you can build up interest and followers as much as possible before you launch you'll have a better chance of success.

I understand what you are talking about if I bought a generic type consumer list, but if I am targeting a specific niche, like electrical contracting businesses compiled, in most cases, by their own associations. I do no think the problems you mention will apply to this type of list when you have a unique patented product that I know they will like. Surely it makes sense to send them an email to tell them about it and make an early bird offer on Kickstarter. I will likely test the process in New Zealand to see what works and then go into the US market, using Whitebox.co , a Baltimore based company, who I am using for another one of my inventions. Check them out.

you have your own niche. i cant stress this enough. i keep remind the others about this particular stuff over and over again :

if you need to educate your audience, you need to go through the influencer UNLESS you know how to reach them with very good headlines on your ads.

Thank you for your input. Yes, I understand the process regarding testing headlines, split testing etc, which I will likely do with a Facebook ad and email campaign with a sales funnel aimed at electricians in the New Zealand electricians market. I am a semi-retired electrician myself and while my product has multiple uses in other niches, I do know it saves electricians time and money, which is pretty good material for email subject lines. Once I know exactly what works regarding headlines etc. I will use these in my email campaigns, in conjunction with my KS campaign in the US market.

This is the first time we're doing this, so take with a grain of salt.

From what we understand, the key is the list quality. If you send enough emails to enough random people you'll find a few that pledge / buy. Even if your list is not so random (electricians), they'll still be people who opted in to some other thing somewhere else, and are suddenly being emailed by you out of nowhere. That's still low quality reach IMO.

That aside, from a pure business perspective, it's about what kind of conversion rates you can reasonably expect from a 'purchased' list and whether that conversion is worth the expense of getting the list.

Add to the cost the potential problem of tarnishing your name and brand with spam complaints, I would personally have hard time seeing it being worth it. It doesn't set a good precedent for a fledgling company either.

At Shonin, we have been steadily building our own list, and of course it takes time to do so which is frustrating, but the quality of the list is going to be many times better than something we just buy off the shelf.

As others have pointed out, I'm not sure you will receive the return you desire. In my experience purchased lists are poor quality. If you are leasing or getting the list from someone who has frequent interactions with their subscribers, you may see better results.

-> Out of curiosity, did you end up moving forward with the list?

I'd love to hear how it worked out for you.

Cheers,
Mike

I have not purchased the list as yet, but I am definitely going to purchase a list to do a test in my local New Zealand market during my pre-launch over the next month. As I have said previously, if you are targeting a niche industry and buy a list of business owners in that niche industry, it is a bit different than buying a generic consumer list. That being said, I will definitely not be doing an email blast to the entire list. Initially,I will likely use the data as an "audience" in a Facebook ad campaign, then follow up with an email campaign, whereby I structure it so I send out a certain amount of emails a day through Rapid Mailer, with a link to a "squeeze type" page offering an "early bird" discount code for them to use on my Kickstarter campaign. Rapid Mailer is a plugin to the ProfitBuilder theme, which I highly recommend you Google and look at if you are deciding to build a sales type web site. I tell you if a "sad old sparky" like me can use it, anybody can!