Unasked for E-mail is Spam

A site visitor was curious and pondered:

I am organizing a green event in my area, which is a grass roots, environmentally minded social gathering. The whole point is to get as many people from as many different disciplines as possible together, so I want to send out an email list invitation. However, I do not personally know some of the people that I want to invite (for example, there are some organizations in the area that are environmentally minded, but I have not actually met them yet, also there are the municipal planners and government officials that I would like to let know about the event, people from the local university, etc). Is it inappropriate to email them even if I can easily locate their email addresses on their websites?

Sending of any unrequested mass e-mail regardless of how noble the sender feels the topic is, is still spam. This is an event your company is putting together which is a community marketing effort you hope to gain from. The last thing you want is to have your event tainted by those who may not agree, many not want to participate or correlate your event with unsolicited e-mails.

For those you don’t know, it is best you send them a flyer via snail mail (USPS) with a Web site address or contact information that they then can contact for more info. Put a notice on your Web site where folks can get on your mailing list for that kind of stuff — then you can e-mail them as they have formally given you permission to do so. Because e-mail addresses are on a Web site doesn’t give you permission to mass e-mail them about something they didn’t ask for that is not directly related to their business.

Some More Info for You:

1. How to Handle Unasked for IM Requests
2. It’s Still Spam!
3. CAN-SPAM and Your Business Email