NOOOOO! My advice on mailing lists has always been to build your own, but the introduction of the new Data Protection Regulations last year mean this is more important than ever!
The GDPR legislation says that people on your mailing list have to specifically request contact from you and you CANNOT email them (with marketing information) until you have this permission. This means that buying a list THEN emailing people to ask if they would like to hear from you is against the law and you could be fined for it.
However even before this legislation was brought in I would still have strongly advised against buying an email marketing list. It may seem tempting, perhaps you have been offering 10,000 names and email addresses, there have been promises that these are compliantly compiled and that these people are specifically chosen to be your target audience, but the truth is that these people have never heard of you, probably aren’t interested in what you have to say and your email will just end up as junk!
I do believe that email marketing can work, but only if you take the time to build a list of genuinely interested subscribers who will appreciate the time and effort you put into creating interesting content.