What's the legal difference between e-mail spam and B2B Cold-Email Prospecting?

Factual Questions
1

I recently interviewed for a sales job for a successful silicon valley technology company. My role would be talking to prospective clients on the phone about a Software-as-a-Service platform for businesses.

I inquired where all my leads would be coming from and it was explained to me that the company has a sophisticated cold-emailing system in place.

Is it legal to send unsolicited (but highly-targeted) e-mails to thousands of CEOs? It certainly seems like it’s common practice. Here is an e-mail I saw a while ago from the founder of one of the fastest-growing billion-dollar startups in California.

Why isn’t this considered Spam?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 9:16 AM
Subject: Something of interest?
To:
Hi Andrea,

A friend in the advertising space recommended I reach out to you about Zenefits (), and I would very much like to grab a few minutes of your time to discuss.

We do something really boring, but really valuable. The great thing about our software, besides the fact it’s free, is that it gives you a single place to manage your payroll, benefits, and compliance. It also automatically takes care of all the administrative HR headaches you don’t want to deal with (health insurance enrollments, payroll deductions, Affordable Care Act, etc.), and don’t want your team spending time on either.

I really think we can save Pressfriendly a bunch of time (and, possibly, money) dealing with this stuff, and I would love to show you how. Is there some time this week that works well for you?

  • Parker


303 Second St, San Francisco, CA
State Licenses
Don’t email?

2

Apparently it’s not illegal (to email consumers or businesses) as long as you follow certain rules about identifying the advertisement, allowing opt-out, etc.

3

andrewm is correct. E-mail spam is not per se illegal.

Not sure why you’d contact CEOs about an HR-specific product though.

4

Contacting CEOs about an HR service doesn’t seem too crazy. There are tons of small businesses that don’t have a dedicated HR person, so the CEO/owner is handling all things HR. And that would seem to make them a perfect market for what sounds like an outsourced HR service.

5

Hmmm. After looking at the service it appears you’re right. It’s more of an outsourcing platform so definitely small-business-oriented.

6

Virginia’s spam law only bans spam to the extent that it involves spoofing message headers or otherwise disguising the origins of the spam, or attempting to do so. Just sending UCE is apparently not a violation if you send unspoofed emails with real contact information.

7

The main requirement of legitimate UCE is that you can opt out. As long as your company does that, and isn’t trying to hide who you are, it’s perfectly okay.

The real winner for the anti-spam was electronic, not legal.

9

"And most of these emails or track from their IP as well as people mark them as spam."

I’m sorry, but I can’t begin to make sense of this sentence. Can someone help me out?