When is a reply spam?

Sending sales info to people who send the same to me

[bshort]

What is the legal position on sending a sales pitch to someone who has sent one to me? I always identify myself and give a valid email address. I also always give remove instructions and I keep my list clean.

[redzone]

Did you request the email you received from them?

If so, putting a sales offer into a reply, would not be considered spam. Many companies have relationships where two companies both utilize services that the other offers. (It's smart business)..

[sugarrae]

If you're talking about replying to spammers - don't bother. They don't read the emails and all you do is confirm your email is valid and get it on another 100 lists.

[Crush]

According to godaddy you have to get prior consent before sending the mail. If you have all the spam compliance blah it will not wash with them. You mailed someone without them knowing about it they can suspend your domain.

[webtress]

From the definition your response would qualify as spam if both conditions apply.

The word "Spam" as applied to Email means Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE").

Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

- Unsolicited Email is normal email
(examples: first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries)

- Bulk Email is normal email
(examples: subscriber newsletters, customer communications, discussion lists)

I recently was being spammed by a religious organization that did not have an opt-out feature after requesting removal with adding a few choice cc's to my reply (prior attempts had no effect on them) they emailed back to say they would be removing my email from their database, so you can have some sucess in stopping spam.