[chinathrow]

Don't use this in Europe. Cold emailing is forbidden in lots of countries.

If you cold email me with your business/sales/whatever you make money with it pitch, I report you to your hosting provider and if necessary, to the local authorities.

[jwatte]

And I'm sure France invade California to enforce their laws. (Or Barbados, or Jersey, or wherever this moves to.)

[the_watcher]

How do they define cold email? If someone you know gives me your email address, and I don't tell you how I got it, is that illegal? Can you only email people who have actively given you an email address? This seems very unlikely, and extremely hard to enforce.

[chinathrow]

You even need consent and proof of it. Cold email can't have that consent...

http://www.selligent.com/blog/inspiration/think-differently-...

[the_watcher]

This is for email marketing, not cold emails. Email marketing refers to using automated systems to send emails to a list. A cold email is a human sending an email individually. They might use a template or software to aid in creation, but each email is sent to an individual separately. You might think that this sounds identical, but it isn't.

[the_watcher]

It is true, no matter how many times you claim that it isn't. Can you name one single salesperson who has ever been prosecuted for this? Active consent is required for email marketing in the US too. It's not required for me to send a cold email to someone whose email address I acquired (or could guess).

[chinathrow]

Not true. That is an excuse of any spammers out there.

Edit: Check my posts - I am talking about Europe not the US. Cold emails are against UWG in Germany.

[antisthenes]

> Can you only email people who have actively given you an email address?

While soliciting them with offers or advertising, yes. Anything other than that would be sheer lunacy, frankly.