Is It Legal to Contact Businesses Via Email w/ Offers?

I was thinking of doing some web design & mobile mock-ups, for companies with lagging or outdated websites, and sending them samples, just to clarify a bit further. Nothing to the likes of just sending random offers or spammy emails.

I'm not a lawyer, and I could be wrong, but I think contacting people by email and pitching your business or any commercial service without their expressed permission is spamming.

If everyone could just get a list of emails and start sending them emails promoting their products and/or services, then what would be the point of building an opt-in subscriber list?

Wouldn't everyone who wants to sell something just be able to purchase or scrape a list of emails and start contacting people?

I thought that's what anti-spam laws were made to protect against. I may be wrong but that's my opinion anyway.

They are not going to like you for it, but yeah, totally legal.

So from the consensus it appears its legal, provided it's done ethically and offers an unsubscribe button within 30 days. That was interesting to know.

Now, I just have to craft emails that get opened by the right people.

While my marketing plan is concentrated on local businesses only, not the entire web, I really wasn't sure if it was an effective way to 'break the ice' with local small businesses, as opposed to walking into their store, shop, or business and asking them to hear/see my pitch.

Actually, the mention of mobile web capability arose above, and that is a big part of my sales approach, as I am not a great designer with a huge portfolio of sites to display.

As far as the 'mock-ups' the system I am planning to use is actually drag n' drop - much like the popular mobile apps that are listed here:

Best App Maker - App Builders and Creators - Business News Daily

Therefore, I will already have a few samples made up, I'll simply change the companies name in the mock-up before the presentation, and hope that will be a helpful tactic to get their attention.

Finally, this all happened by accident. I had bought that new CTA Bar opt-in tool, and one of the bonuses included PLR to a bunch of mobile squeeze pages. That triggered an idea, that lead me back here to find a successful warrior here had an entire system with the base foundation for the idea I was looking to expand upon.

There to, he also offered more than I even thought of doing, so all-in-all, feeling pretty confident this could set me up with full-time work, and allow me to finally transition from a job to full-time online marketing. (Aside some offline web services of course).

Thank You All, your responses clarified a lot, as I wasn't sure if contacting local businesses was even allowed. I used to do some telemarketing back in the day, and I know; that industry has changed immensely.

Seems these days, everyone uses email, video, SMS, and now webinars. The latter two I still have a lot to learn about.

It's perfectly LEGAL to email any business you want as long as you follow the guidelines within CAN-SPAM.

The thing some of you should worry about is just because it's legal and allowed, doesn't mean your ISP or web host will allow you to do it as most ISP's and hosting companies have strict policies in place within their terms of service.

You need to be can-spam compliant.

1. Have an unsubscribe link in the message.
2. You need to remove any address with in 10 days of unsubscribing.
3. You need to have your mailing address in the message. Getting and
using an address from UPS store is fine.

There's other things like not using misleading subject lines, not using
fake headers, etc... But the key stuff is the above, as I doubt your
doing anything misleading.

I doubt you will have any issues. Your contacting them because of an
issue with their site and trying to help them.

As others have stated, there is nothing wrong with contacting businesses with your offer as long as you follow these rules: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/busi...guide-business

After a few minutes on the FTCs site I can only say, "Good luck with that!"

You might want to get your legal info. from a slightly more reliable source then an IM forum.

That is what my Email Marketing Robot does. You will have to check the local laws, but in general it is legal to contact a company if they put their email address on their website. You shouldn't add them to a mailing list without their permission, and shouldn't spam them. But by all means you can ask a question to see if they would be interested in receiving more information from you.

It may be legal but I don't think this method is very effective. People will probably delete your email without even opening it (because they might think it's spam).
I've also heard about people pitching their ideas over the phone. That's even worse, actually.

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that a good amount of states also have laws related to spam. Don't just follow the CAN-SPAM Act and assume you're totally safe. If you're violating the laws of your state, you're still at risk.

Last year Canada passed anti-spam legislation taking effect on July 1, 2014. The law is supposed to be world wide, although I have no idea how they plan to enforce it. The penalties for each violation can be up to $1-million for an individual and up to $10-million for companies.

For reference please see:
New anti-spam law

Regards,
Steve MacLellan

Of course it is legal. There is no doubt about it. Today most of the people are doing this kinds of business. Rest people are using social media sites to do the business.

Hi Cyndi,

I was browsing through the forum and thought I'd chime in because I'm currently in the process myself of planning a sales system for a new business and thinking a lot about the opening lines of the first email that will get sent out. My 16 year old son wants to get into sales and I'm helping him (and me) by getting him involved in designing and building an effective cold-emailing system for this business.

I don't really see a problem if you have identified specific needs or pains in your target market and your intention is to contact prospective customers to see if they are open to exploring a relationship where your services can provide genuine solutions.

I believe most people have the right intention to explore a business opportunity with a potential prospect, but get things wrong in their approach to cold-emailing businesses, because they haven't spent enough time planning and thinking through their sales process.

I spent a number of years helping small businesses implement effective sales systems that included cold-calling other businesses. I would spend a lot of time with clients initially flowcharting processes and scripts to help them work out the criteria that identified someone as a prospect and once these were identified, how to better understand their needs and pain points. A lot of work went into thinking things through before my clients even started contacting other businesses, but once the cold-calling began, the process was always very effective and consistently produced great results.

With cold-calling, the initial call was always a short script, not designed to sell anything, but to get an appointment so we could evaluate the business owners needs. Only when needs were properly understood, could we then assess if the business owners were prospects or not and if so, we would then arrange a second appointment to present them with solutions.

Some people will recognize this as the highly effective sales system described in Michael Gerber's classic "E-Myth" books.

My point is, actively seeking new business whether by cold-calling or cold-emailing is perfectly legal from an "intention" point of view, but you really need to think through all the details of your sales process before implementing an "approach". Using bulk emailing software to move through a huge list of leads can be used in a genuine sales process, or be used to spam.

If you're going to try and sell something in your very first point of contact to someone who hasn't even qualified themselves in or out as a prospect for your services, then you really need to be sure that you have accurately pinpointed and understood all of their needs, pains and motivations in your email copy. Otherwise, I don't see how the approach of emailing someone a sales pitch would be any different than what spammers usually do. In my opinion, it would be better to think of how you can use that email to start building a relationship with the people you contact, and how the rest of your sales process is going to continue supporting that relationship.

Good luck and I wish you great success

Of course it is regal, there is no doubt about it. Why you think it is illegal? There are many ways to run any business, you can choose any way form a huge list of way. I hope already you got your questions answer.

With so many informative responses, I simply do not have time to respond to each one individually, so, first of all Thank-You all for providing insight, (some more than others0, I appreciate it.

As it has been mentioned, I plan to target local businesses to offer web based and mobile services, nothing more.

Obviously, I understand being able to physically 'walk-in' and present a demo or short presentation would be my first choice of actively attracting new clients, and possibly closing some sales orders. (However, this method is very time consuming, and to date I haven't perfected my skills to sell on the spot, so to speak, lol)

Next, I was looking at 'software' that collects (scrapes) emails from geo-targted locations, and whom do have this email listed on their website as a form of contacting them.

Lastly, I too have been exploring "Growth Hacking" as iAmNameless appears to refer to in post #37, whereby, major corporations use these (and similar) techniques to generate leads and large volumes of B2B prospective clients.

In closing, I do not want to SPAM anyone, nor are my expectations to send 10 Million emails out simultaneously, just in-hopes of selling an affiliate product to a global business market, or to scam businesses into a 3rd party sale.

I have some experience as an affiliate marketer, and I do understand that driving traffic to a pre-sell, sales page, or squeeze-page is without a doubt the preferred method of building a relationship within a chosen niche or buyers market. But, to develop a local presence or say that within a 100 mile radius, trying to drive traffic to an opt-in page would seem a bit hideous, and likely wouldn't work to well.

While I am glad to have asked the question here, I am still a bit reluctant to utilize this method as I have been researching the pro's and con's fairly extensively, in-between developing my 'offline' service packages and marketing strategies.

All-in-all, Thanks everyone, I appreciate the diversity in which each has contributed, as it will help greatly in my final decision as to use this method or not.

Lol. So many people here giving legal advice while they are clueless.

Its NOT legal according to this:
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/busi...guide-business

People sending commercial emails without being given prior permission is entire point of why CAN SPAM came to exist.

Anybody contacting me with 'hey, I can improve your website, it looks outdated', or similar nonsense gets reported by me right away, and email marked as spam/harassment. As I doubt I am only person doing that, and government just LOVES the "Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly."part emailing people like me will end your business before it even begins.

I also report anybody calling me with offers as all my phones are on NO CALL lists with USA and Canada.

If people were ok with being spammed, CAN SPAM would not exist. Just lol.

Cindi if i were you i take this to the offline section some folks who have no clue about this might be confusing you with their negative comments they obviously are not offline marketers or they would already know you can do unsolicited email if you abide by the can spam laws

Ok, looked over https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/busi...guide-business again, to answer Mark, and if we look down on that page there is a part stating:

" What are the penalties for violating the CAN-SPAM Act?"
and
"harvesting email addresses"

Since what spammer folks here are doing is harvesting emails, as per:
Email address harvesting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
which includes grabbing my email which is listed on my websites specifically for something like "to report error or omission" and then using it to solicit services, as well as using email I gave without permission to be emailed with offers, such as what some people selling solo ads do.

Agreeing to be emailed by ... lets say Viacom in regards to possible volume discounts, does not mean you agree to be emailed by Disney trying to sell you new toys.

Posting email to be contacted in case some links are broken, or information needs to be updated, legally, does NOT give anyone permission to harvest that email to try to sell me something.

And then you people wonder why spammers like you get such stiff prison sentences. You are ABUSIVE in your promotional methods.

And here: Canada's Law on Spam and Other Electronic Threats - Home - Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation

Unless you know for a fact that you are not emailing a Canadian, you can end up in prison for emailing somebody like me without prior consent. And take my word on this, I do report each and every spammer. I HATE unsolicited junk. I find spammers to be bottom feeders of internet marketing community, detestable and despicable, and the minute I see marketer uses spam tactics, I lose any respect I might have had for that person and will trash their reputation whenever i can.

To send unsolicited emails if you stating to the entire world that you are too incompetent to properly drive traffic, to poor to buy traffic, and that you have no integrity. So anybody doing business with you can count on being scammed. Its THAT simple.

you can but most will ignore

so your like a nark that explains your raving. i wish to invite you to my main email box i have a bunch of spammers i need to get rid of I mean spammers not following any rules hiding behind fake autoresponders. apparently you dont know this but they are here to stay. Enjoy reporting them its been almost 40 years of it do you really think wasting your time reporting them will stop it? What we are talking about here and that are two different things.

Alright ladies and gents, my intentions were to start this thread to receive diverse answers, not bash each other. Claire thank-you for your response, and Jack, I understand and agree that spamming (by it's normal definition) should not be permitted, or even tolerated.

However, the focus of my question - really never constituted a question of spamming local businesses, as opposed to learning whether or not sending an unsolicited email to a businesses contact email was in fact; legal?

From the majority of responses, and from what I have read in the FTC and Can-Spam compliant procedures, it appears contacting them with an offer "IS NOT" illegal, provided I supply all the FTC compliant information, as Claire and others have suggested.

Furthermore, whilst I realize that sending an 'unannounced' or 'unsolicited' random email offering my web design and marketing consultancy services may not be the most effective manner to approach new clients, I am curious to see if it can work, as the alternative is to walk-in to businesses (cold) within a 100 mile radius and attempt to pitch my services on spot, which I am not particularly good at, as I get cold feet, and nervous...

Ultimately, the answers provided have been very informative. I appreciate all the responses, including the negative ones, and as someone else suggested, next time, I'll post in the 'offline' section as not to offend anyone!

If I do 'test' this approach it would be with no more than 150-200 emails, as I am only seeking approx. 10-20 new clients to kickstart this offline web-based business venture, and test the marketplace.

Also, for the record, my email would be both sincere, and offer the service for free for the first 30 days, so no scams running here, the client doesn't pay until they see measurable results. *That's the difference between SPAM and providing solutions, IMHO.

Thanks All,

Cyndi

PS - My offerings are US based, just to clarify that I am NOT targeting Canadian Markets or ANY markets outside the US.

It is legal when you want to do business with someone in Legal Method. I always do business using Email contact list and from site too.

Sure, it is 100% legal. There are may way to do business, it is one of the technique. Any one can follow any way, there is no problem.

Yep spamming is illegal in many countries. That's why you have an opt in list. Best way to do it is to join a niche forum and then you can network

Why B2B Email Marketing to Cold Prospects Isn