What characteristics classify an email as spam?

[mdsah512534300]

Many people think that spam is equivalent to a scam. Scams can be many things, from the Nigerian Prince Scam to phishing emails posing as banks needing you to re-confirm your personal details, to advertisements for male enhancement pharmaceuticals. And email is just one of many forms – and perhaps the most common – that scams can take.

But while many scammers do send bucket loads of spam, spam and scams are two separate things.

Scam emails are malicious spam. But you don’t have to have nefarious intent [url=https://lastdatabase.com/australia-email-list]australian consumer email list[/url to be a spammer.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission defines spam as “unwanted commercial email” (UCE). And the Spamhaus Project, the biggest international nonprofit organization fighting spam, defines it as “unsolicited bulk email” (UBE).

Although they differ slightly, what these definitions have in common is they stress that to be classified as spam, an email needs to meet two criteria:

It is unwanted or unsolicited. This means the recipient did not ask to get this email.
It is sent in bulk to many recipients (as opposed to just one or two).
Many people will tell you that “spam is in the eye of the beholder” and “one person’s spam is another person’s ham.” That is absolutely correct.

A recipient defines what spam is, not the sender.

Occasionally recipients sign up for legitimate email marketing, and then they forget they signed up for it.

In that case, it’s, unfortunately, still a type of spam. It is unwanted. That’s why you always need to provide all recipients the option of unsubscribing from your list in every single email that you send. If a contact decides that your email is spam, they have a quick and easy way to stop receiving email from you.

As an email marketer, you don’t get to say if you’re sending spam or not, your contacts decide. Your best bet is to send bulk emails without spamming.