Whether you're starting off with digital marketing or you have been at it for years, you're always searching for the next "BIG THING" to help put you over the edge within your marketing endeavors.

As we all know, there are a few staple strategies in place we use continually and one of the cornerstones of a good online marketing strategy is "emailing".

However, doing email marketing effectively is where it gets tricky. The first problem every single marketer has when they start off is, "How to get people into my list".

There is no quick answer to this, it requires investing time, energy and sometimes money to make your list relevant and with a high conversion rate. So we create landing pages, offer bribe gifts, special offers and add our calls-to-actions everywhere just to have people give us their emails and potentially convert them to customers.

This is all fine and dandy, however, let me talk to you now about 'What you're not supposed to do".

The following experience happened to me a few years back. I was no longer "green" when it comes to marketing and have had a firm understanding of the "inbound methodology" in relation to list building for years.

But as mentioned, us marketers always look for a loophole here or a hidden tactic there to advance our marketing efforts. So a client of mine tells me he wants to build an email list. I told him the process and instructed him that to build a value-list it will take time, effort and consistency.

He would have none of it. He wanted to get a large list quickly and make money even quicker. He also told me that he had some "secret weapons" we can use to achieve our goals in less time.

What were the secret weapons you ask?

Over 10k connections on LinkedIn Purchased lists with over 40k people in it.

"Just email them" he said, "We can set up automated messages and just get the word out there. Even if 5% converts we make money".

An uneasy feeling sat in the pit of my stomach, I knew that this was not really "ethical" however the client insisted and told me he spoke to some 'other marketer' about this tactic and that it's fine.

Reluctantly I went along with it, and even acquired software that would send the emails via a proxy server in order to avoid the actual domain of the site to be blacklisted.

I configured the lists, set up the automated emails, linked them to squeeze pages, and clicked "send".

At first, it didn't seem so bad. The emails were being opened making me think that people were reading them. I thought to myself, "If this works...I'm so doing it myself."

It wasn't too long after that thought that reality came in through the door and slapped me in the face with a wet fish. The bounce rates of the emails started shooting up, then delivery rates started falling, fewer people opened the emails and eventually I knew that something was amiss.

I tried sending a test mail to one of my email aliases and when I saw that the email never hit my inbox, I checked the spam folder and lo' and behold...there it was.

I sub-sequentially tried to email my alias directly using the client's email address and....SPAM!

It's one of those "Oh Shit!" moments within digital marketing when you realize your client's site might be black listed. I started searching whether the domain was indeed black listed and as suspected, it was black listed on roughly 12 different servers.

If you've ever been black listed, you know it can seriously affect your deliver-ability rates. But is there anything you can do to remove the domain from the black listed servers?

Fortunately there was. It's not easy though.

You have to search for the individual black listed server, make a request to remove it, pray to the digital gods for mercy and hope that it will work.

After roughly 2 months of me going to each server, at times having to physically talk to people and explain to them the "Mishap" through a white lie, I managed to get the site only black listed on one server.

It ended up costing the client a few thousand dollars to get his domain clean again, not to mention the expense of the bought lists.

Out of the nearly 100k emails we had, less than a thousand opened the emails and only 3-5 people actually came back to us with inquiries.

And so my lesson was learned and I understood that no matter how appealing a "list of 10k business people" might seem to you at the moment, it's always best to "build a list" ethically as opposed to having to run into the digital wasteland of removing your domain from a black listed server.

Oh, and before I forget. If any one of the people within the list of 100k people decided to get nasty, they would have had a legal right to sue my client due to anti-spam laws...which is a real thing.

IF litigation was involved, the 'offending party' pays per 'instance', meaning if the court decides that you owe $10,000 in retributions to the affected parties...you'd pay for ALL AFFECTED PARTIES. You do the math.

So what's the moral of the story?

There's no cutting corners within digital marketing. Don't buy lists, build them and never listen to your clients when it comes to doing what you do. You're the marketer....not them!

And that was the worst email marketing advice I have ever received.

And you know what they say...."If at first you don't succeed, burn all evidence you ever tried..."

Thanks for sticking by and reading this personal account of horrible decisions...I hope at least you learned 'what not to do' by reading this experience.

Keep it real people, and keep on trucking!