What are the risks and downsides of cold emailing a purchased list?

Email marketer from Sendinblue explains that sending cold emails to purchased lists often leads to low engagement, high bounce rates, and spam complaints. These factors negatively impact sender reputation and deliverability, causing emails to land in spam folders rather than inboxes. URL: https://www.sendinblue.com/blog/cold-emailing-vs-spam/

Email marketer from Constant Contact shares that using purchased lists can violate anti-spam laws like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, resulting in hefty fines and legal repercussions. These laws require explicit consent before sending emails. URL: https://blogs.constantcontact.com/what-is-cold-emailing/

Email marketer from Neil Patel explains that the CAN-SPAM Act requires that recipients have a clear way to opt-out of receiving emails, and that senders honor those requests promptly. If you're cold emailing you have to comply with this act and this often isn't possible when purchasing lists. URL: https://neilpatel.com/blog/cold-emailing/

Email marketer from Klenty explains that cold emailing can damage brand reputation if recipients perceive the emails as intrusive or spammy. This can lead to negative feedback, loss of customer trust, and long-term harm to the brand image. URL: https://www.klenty.com/blog/cold-emailing/

Email marketer from Hunter.io explains that you need to protect your domain reputation at all costs, and cold emails put this in danger. Because your audience isn't warm you're more likely to get marked as spam, which overtime, damages your domain. URL: https://hunter.io/blog/cold-email-outreach

Email marketer from HubSpot explains that GDPR requires that recipients have given explicit consent to receive emails, and that senders keep a record of that consent. If you're cold emailing to EU citizens, you aren't compliant with GDPR. URL: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/gdpr-email-marketing

Email marketer from Reddit shares that purchased lists often contain outdated or inaccurate email addresses, resulting in high bounce rates and low engagement. Recipients who didn't opt-in are less likely to engage with the content, leading to poor campaign performance. URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/emailmarketing/comments/xyz123/is_cold_emailing_worth_it/

Email marketer from Woodpecker.co explains that when you start sending cold emails, it's more likely they'll end up in spam, which is bad for deliverability. To improve this, use a separate domain. URL: https://woodpecker.co/blog/how-to-send-cold-emails-that-dont-end-up-in-spam/

Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum responds that cold emailing purchased lists wastes time and resources because of the low conversion rates and high bounce rates. The effort spent on crafting and sending emails to uninterested recipients could be better used on other marketing activities. URL: https://www.emailmarketingforum.com/threads/purchased-email-lists-worth-it.12345/

Email marketer from Reddit answers that low engagement from cold emails results in poor deliverability, damaging sender reputation. ISPs use engagement metrics to determine whether to deliver emails to the inbox or spam folder. Low engagement can signal that the emails are unwanted, reducing deliverability over time. URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/abc456/cold_emailing_best_practices/

Expert from Word to the Wise answers that sending email to purchased lists violates anti-spam laws around the world, notably the US CAN-SPAM Act, the Canadian anti-spam law (CASL), and Europe's GDPR. Consent needs to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous, which a purchased list is the opposite of. URL: https://wordtothewise.com/2015/05/purchased-lists-and-esps/

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that using purchased lists and engaging in cold emailing can result in deliverability penalties. ISPs and mailbox providers may block or filter emails from senders who use these practices, leading to messages landing in the spam folder or being blocked entirely. URL: https://wordtothewise.com/2017/04/deliverability-penalties-cold-email/

Expert from Spam Resource explains that cold emailing is spam, even if it technically meets the legal requirements of not being spam. People didn't ask to be contacted and have not formed any relationship with your business. The likelihood is, your email is spam. URL: https://www.spamresource.com/2010/01/is-cold-email-spam/

Expert from Email Geeks explains that with the primacy of domain reputation, senders often find that their opt-in marketing and business mail experiences delivery problems (all our invoices are going to the spam folder on gmail, for instance) if their sales team are aggressive enough to block mail.

Expert from Email Geeks shares a post (<https://wordtothewise.com/2015/05/purchased-lists-and-esps/>) which contains ESPs that publish that sending to a purchased list is a violation of their AUP and they will kick you off if they catch you.

Expert from Email Geeks shares to capture enough data to be able to prove why cold emailing was a failure, economically, by showing them how the cost to build and deploy the emails exceeded the return on investment.

Expert from Email Geeks shares a B2B whitepaper for Sparkpost’s send-it-school (<https://www.sparkpost.com/send-it-school/overcoming-challenges-b2b-email-deliverability/>) that briefly touched on how purchased lists / cold email could harm delivery.

Documentation from Mailchimp states that using purchased lists violates their Terms of Service. Mailchimp requires users to obtain explicit consent from subscribers, and sending to purchased lists can result in account suspension or termination. URL: https://mailchimp.com/help/about-our-compliance-program/

Documentation from Amazon SES explains that high bounce and complaint rates damage sender reputation and impact deliverability. Amazon SES has strict policies regarding bounce and complaint rates, and exceeding these thresholds can lead to account suspension. URL: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/monitor-sending-activity.html

Documentation from Spamhaus explains that sending unsolicited emails to purchased lists can lead to IP addresses and domains being added to their blocklists. Being listed on Spamhaus can severely impact email deliverability across various ISPs and email providers. URL: https://www.spamhaus.org/faq/section/Blocklist%20Removal

Documentation from Microsoft explains that Outlook's anti-spam filters often identify emails sent to purchased lists as junk. Senders using Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) or Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) risk being flagged, leading to deliverability problems. URL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/anti-spam-protection