tl;dr: Yes, sending cold email is legal and no, it is not SPAM.
Is sending cold email legal?
We get asked this question a lot. While our team is mostly sales people & engineers, not lawyers, we can tell you that sending cold outbound email to prospects is legal in the United States.*
There is a difference between bulk pharmacy product emails (which accounts for
81% of spam) and one-to-one emails to a targeted business audience. Under the CAN-SPAM act, you can send emails to business people that you do not know. However, you want to make sure you are complying with the
rules that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has outlined.
Luckily, that isn’t difficult to do. Here are the 7 things you need to incorporate when sending cold emails:
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Don’t misrepresent who you are – Your “From”, “To”, and “Reply-To” information needs to identify who you are.
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Don’t use misleading subject lines – Using a subject line of “Your receipt” when pitching your product/service would be misleading. Keep it real.
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Identify if the email is an ad – If your email is an advertisement or special coupon offer, make sure it is labeled as such.
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Include your business address – This can be a PO Box or your physical address, but you have to include it. Ideal placement for this information would be in your signature.
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Give them an opt-out option – You don’t have to use an “unsubscribe” link which takes away some of the personal aspects of the email. Instead, ask them, “Please let me know if you are not the right person to contact for this” as a good alternative that keeps things personal.
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Honor opt-outs – If they don’t want any future emails, make sure they don’t get any more emails.
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Know what others do/send on your behalf – Even if you hire a company to handle your email outreach, you are still legally responsible. Make sure whoever you have working on your email outreach understands and respects these practices.
For more information, you can
read this PDF straight from the FTC.
Is cold email outreach unsolicited? Yes. Is it SPAM? No. Not if you follow the rules outlined above.