Ask HN: Why do purchased B2B email lists still have such poor deliverability?

former email marketing automation company employee here: These lists have been sold multiple times before, there may be more "functional" mailboxes or distribution lists (like sales@, it@) than real people, they may be in a dire need of list hygiene, they may contain spam traps, and for the most important part - there is no consent given from the email owners to you. All unsolicited email will end up in spam or trash just because of lack of consent. And if you feed this lists to most of the email automation software then you are cruising for a bruising as they can terminate your account based on that.

Maybe because it’s literally a spam what you’re doing?

My email is on many such lists, I never ever would contact someone who spams. Just no.

I also have all tracking pixels blocked, so you would not know I’ve opened.

because their not "B2B email lists", their plain and simple spam lists, and if you bought them shame on you for contributing to the pain