I have a website for my local ski town. It has free classifieds. I've noticed more and more people putting there email addresses in the classified ads of the 2 local papers. Would it be wrong to contact these people via email and let them know about my website where they can place free classifieds in an attempt to drove more traffic to my website? I hate spam and don't want to be considered a spammer... What do you think?
As far as I'm concerned, yes, it would be spam. Try running an ad in the papers to let them find you.
i think unless you're emailing them in regards to the items they are selling in the classifieds, then yeah, it would be spam.
as long as you say you wont email them again if they dont want you to, i personally think that it should not be considered spam - but if you do a mass mail it would be. each email would have to be individually addressed.
morals... thats like AOL fighting hard for anti-spam legislation, but then spamming my mailbox (real life) with free trial cds ??
Morally yes, but to be legally spam the e-mails addresses have to be harvested. He's manually creating the list, it's a technicality but it gets him around the law in the US.