What are the risks of sending unsolicited emails?

Unsolicited email carries multiple categories of risk:

Legal exposure: Depending on jurisdiction, penalties can be substantial. CASL fines reach $10 million per violation. GDPR penalties can reach 4% of global revenue. Class actions are possible in some jurisdictions.

Deliverability damage: Complaints and poor engagement erode domain and IP reputation. Once damaged, all email from that infrastructure suffers, including legitimate messages to engaged subscribers.

Blocklisting: Major blocklists like Spamhaus can make your email undeliverable at scale. Delisting requires demonstrating remediation and takes time.

Brand damage: Recipients remember unwanted email. Negative associations persist even if recipients don't formally complain. In tight industries, word spreads.

Resource waste: Low response rates mean most effort produces no return. Domain rotation, warmup overhead, and compliance management consume resources that could go elsewhere.

Provider termination: ESPs and email providers may terminate accounts for sending unsolicited email that generates complaints or violates their terms.