[cat199]

Really?

Spam is unsolicited commercial email.

if I sign up on a site, click the 'yes email me' button, and then mark the email as spam when I get it, I am the one acting incorrectly, not the sender who is literally doing what I instructed them to do..

[MisterBastahrd]

Sure, but the end user is going to do whatever is most convenient for them.

Unsubscribing from email lists can be cumbersome and non-uniform, which is usually why people just hit that spam button instead. It always provides them a uniform interface and largely achieves the same goal from their perspective.

[webbie917]

Actually, cold emails (without permission) aren't spam. What makes an email spam is: 1) misleading subject line 2) misleading message 3) lack of simple (not requiring login or extra steps) unsubscribe link, and a couple other factors.

People forget subscribing and hit "Spam", which has an impact on the sender reputation and affects future deliverability for that sender.

[thedufer]

That's a very narrow definition of spam that you're only going to hear from spammers (your profile is utterly unsurprising after reading this comment). Unfortunately for you, end-users are going to mark as spam based on their own much more reasonable definition.

[webbie917]

It's not my definition, that's how the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (applicable to US only) defines spam and most marketers are familiar with since it's been around for 15 years. Of course the laws are different in Europe and Canada.

One of the factors I didn't mention in previous comment is presence of physical mail address.

Not sure what "unfortunately for me" is in reference to - BigMailer isn't a platform for cold emails (there are plenty others that specialize in cold email campaigns) and Amazon SES doesn't give a free pass on the practice either.