HOW TO GET QUALITY SUBSCRIPTIONS DATA

A reader emailed me late last week, making an interesting point about obtaining quality subscriber list data for cross marketing. She works for a global campaign organisation in Bangkok and wants to rent subscriber list data from publishers so she can target them for awareness and action concerning her organisation in Thailand.
From a publishers perspective this can be a nice source of revenue. We spend a lot of money recruiting our subscribers and renting or selling the names and addresses, where permission has been obtained, can be lucrative. I know from my own experiences that buying quality data is expensive. I was once quoted 2 million baht to rent 10,000 names of apparent high net worth individuals in Bangkok. That's rent only. I would not get to see the names; the selling company would label our direct mail and send it themselves. The only way we would have known it was working was when the phones started to ring.
Some publishers guard their data well while others aren't so good. We once had two shady characters arrive at our office offering to sell the entire subscriber data of a rival publication. We declined.
If a company wants to be associated with a particular campaign they may will consider allowing the organisation to use its lists, just to be seen to be supporting the effort. It really depends on the publisher and the campaign or organisation.