"You are getting this email because you have agreed to 3rd party offers..." - When does marketing email become spam?

Why can't users just say no?

Aaarrgg! The bane of existence for users and ISPs alike. A user goes online and buys a ticket to his favourite show, or fills out a survey for his favourite cola, and next thing you know he gets inundated with offerings. This is not spam in the traditional sense, that is to say, you did agree to receive these offerings and they come from (mostly) reputable marketing firms.

And sure, you can unsubscribe, but most users are afraid or unwilling to do this. What do most end users do about this? They change email addresses, or complain to their ISPs.

"Do Not Call" lists have been tried before, but for the most part they don't work or have backfired. But if a person can call the post office and say, "No more commercial marketing mail..." or effectively, "No more junk mail," why can't they do this for their email service? Well now they can. By allowing your users the option to choose, "No more email from marketing companies, " it can provide an incredible sense of relief for them, and for your email administrators. We do not, however, recommend using this list as a global blacklist as these are legitimate mailings and companies, but you can selectively let your users opt out by rejecting email coming from marketing companies.

One of the reasons why marketing email is so bad is that some marketing companies just send too many offerings and in some cases people receive up to 10 to 20 per day. But no matter what the reason, we strongly support and believe in the rights of people to say, "No more commercial offerings."