Cost per acquisition email policy is intrusive due to poor targeting: email marketing based on cost per acquisition goes against the grain of best practice by failing to provide e-data with the required financial 'room to breathe'

Precision Marketing, June, 2004 by Matthew Kelleher

Once again the digital world seems intent on following a blinkered, and somewhat dangerous, strategy by adopting a 'cost per acquisition' (CPA) pricing policy for email marketing.

Right now, a significant proportion of list owners are readily selling data in this way to secure short-term revenue--but at what price?

CPA pricing only pays list owners for their data as and when it generates a sale. As a result, key issues like data quality and targeting are in danger of being completely sidelined. Data owners are literally throwing everything they have at these CPA-based campaigns to ensure they are profitable.

In other words, they are using a scattergun approach in the knowledge that if they hit enough targets some will convert.

It is a move...