As a Dynamics ISV or partner, you no doubt receive the same list broker spam emails we receive on nearly a daily basis, especially during conference season. These days, they look something like this:
“Hi,
You can now send focused campaigns to Microsoft Dynamics Users.
We have compiled a dataset of Companies and Contacts who are using Microsoft Dynamics at their premises.
Please let me know your interest so I can share counts and samples.”
Maybe you’ve wondered if these pitches for list rental services are for real. Maybe you’ve actually used the services of one or another of these outfits….and are wondering what went wrong.
Hopefully you won’t fall for an email like this. But if you are tempted, here are three questions you should ask to determine how to deal with it:
- Can you trust the organization selling something too good to be true? Amazingly, a good number of them, like the one quoted above, don’t even have a web site. That’s a pretty big red flag.
- How did they obtain the “dataset of companies and contacts who are using Microsoft Dynamics at their premises”? Did they actually interact with the contacts? Or did they just “harvest” the names off social media or other questionable means?
- Does buying that list give you any right to spam it without a legitimate opt-in? And probably to be the fourth, twelfth, or thirtieth company to do it?
Bottom line: nearly all the outfits promising “datasets” or similar are old-fashioned list renters—the ones who have been around since the glory days of print marketing.
And such shady operations make things worse for all of us. For ISVs and partners, fielding the list broker sales pitches wastes time and attention. And, if you pay up, it wastes your money, too.
If you are tempted to give one of these outfits a try, consider buying a bunch of lottery tickets instead—you’ll have better odds of success. Or better yet, just mail your money directly to a casino.
Let us at MSDynamicsWorld.com (MSDW) provide you with proven online techniques to generate legitimate new leads that your marketing and sales teams will thank you for.
