Incredible, I recently saw a landing page promoting a email extractor, as a secret tool capable of extracting thousands of highly targeted emails in minutes.
What surprised me most was the prospect of getting highly targeted leads, thousands of email addresses in a matter of minutes.
I was curious
How could this tool find leads directly on the Internet?
A lead, by definition, is a person who has visited the website and would be interested in our products or services.
Does it work?
And highly targeted leads, a person who is ready to buy
Does the tool detects and selects only those who are interested in buying from you?
Certainly a very unlikely promise to fulfill, actually.
Fortunately there was a video on the website to address all these unimportant questions.
How does this email extractor work for your email campaigns?
Is it that easy?
Well, it is very easy
The tool includes a search box where you can enter the keyword you want to search.
For example, if you offer email marketing services, you would try to search for: email marketing
Just adding the keyword you want to search, the system will display the number of pages on the screen, you click and the system starts extracting the emails it will find on these pages.
And that is it
Wait, I said to myself, is that the process of getting highly qualified leads?
We are ignoring two small things, which many users don’t think about:
The legality of this method of obtaining emails.
The fact that none of these people registered in a subscription form, they didn’t subscribe voluntarily, unfortunately some companies may be tempted by the offer of getting highly qualified leads in minutes, thousands of contacts to send campaigns to, and ignore these two points.
Okay, let’s ignore these points, and analyze how this secret and advanced software actually works.
This tool will search for emails on all websites based on the keyword you entered, for example “email marketing”. The user will type in the term and click the button that will start the search.
But if the software is searching for a keyword, isn’t it very likely that it will include in the results:
1) emails from other companies which are offering the same services and Products? Let’s think for a moment, if they are companies which are offering these services, certainly they will use the same keywords on their own websites, in the example of email marketing companies, you would find this keyword on all websites.
Do you really believe that a competitor is a potential customer? A highly qualified lead? Do you think that if this company receive a newsletter, they would buy from you?
2) people dissatisfied with the type of product or service?
For example, someone on a website, blog or forum, etc. Criticizes this kind of products or services because it didn’t work for this user. Is a person unhappy with the service or product we offer a potential customer?
Can this email extractor distinguish people seeking information about a product from users who are criticizing the same product? I have my doubts.
3) People who have already bought or solved an issue with a product? Or people who are no longer interested? Normally, if a person leaves a question on a forum, or a comment on a blog post, after resolving their problem, they will not go back to the website to delete the entry or to inform that they no longer need the service.
For example, if someone visited a forum in 2007 searching for information about a rural home to spend the holidays, will this user be interested in finding a home in 2015?
4) Emails that no longer exist or spamtraps?
5) People from other countries who speak other languages, how could an email extractor know all this? Are these emails really highly qualified leads?
How could the software filter all these aspects? If all the software does is copy the emails that appear on a web page, and, to my knowledge, when someone wants to buy a product or service, the person will not create a website, indicating his interest, and leaving the email to receive offers.
At best, the software would search on a forum, but it can also get the email address of a user who is complaining about the product, asking about a particular brand or who posted the message 10 years ago.
This means that
As we can see, it is impossible that this tool can collect a list of useful leads and much less highly qualified.
All it does is to copy all the email addresses it will find.
This is almost as effective as if the tool were generating emails randomly.
I’m sure, but that is the problem, we have to be honest here, it doesn’t work.
This type of tool, email extractor, email scraper or any other software which will search for leads automatically, will never work.
Ultimately, it only serves to send spam and will not bring you any benefit (in fact, the person selling the software is gaining something, your money).
I understand that some people may see it as a tempting system because it is hard to generate an opt-in mailing list, and these databases are generated quickly, a large amount of addresses (7,000 subscribers, said a user on a video) but in fact, i think it probably would be much more effective, to start sending letters to people, telling them about your brand, or just shouting about it on the streets.
What really surprises me is that today there are still people who are using this type of softwares, but I hope that if this article is read by someone who was considering using an email extractor, this post will help you to change your mind, you will save money and avoid many problems.