M3AAWG Position on Cold Email (Nov 2025)

M3AAWG Position on Cold Email, November 2025, Version 1.0 (M3AAWG-154; reference URL m3aawg.org/M3AAWGPositionOnColdEmail). This one-page position statement is the explicit industry stance on the "cold outreach" category: it is focused on deceptive practices used to deploy cold-email communications that mimic or appear to be one-to-one communications, but in reality are considered spam.

Definition

In email marketing terms, a "Cold Email" is an unsolicited email from otherwise legitimate, identifiable senders that tries to create a business relationship, a sale, a business opportunity, or other professional benefit from a recipient who has no prior relationship, connection, or consent with the sender or business.

Note the framing: the senders are "otherwise legitimate, identifiable" — this is not about criminal spam operations. The defining element is the absence of any prior relationship, connection, or consent.

Deceptive tactics the position targets

Cold emails sent in bulk often use, to look uniquely related to the recipient and appear as one-to-one communication:

• Authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC — technically compliant but used as camouflage)
• Opt-out links
• Personalization (first name, title, company name, etc.)
• Other AI-generated content

Misleading delivery methods used with the intention of avoiding spam-filter detection:

• Sending at random intervals
• Lookalike domains — domains that resemble legitimate domains but are actually unrelated (M3AAWG's example: paypal-security.com for paypal.com)
• Multiple sending accounts

The practice of using or facilitating deceptive delivery methods to mask Cold Emailing is in direct violation of core M3AAWG values.

Detection indicators

Reputation metrics that indicate a sender is sending cold email include, but are not limited to:

Indicator	KB deep-dive
Detection in spam traps	Spam Traps · Trap Incident Response
Blocklisting	Blocklists & Spamhaus
High unknown-user hard bounces	DSNs
High complaint rates	Complaint Feedback Loops

Particularly egregious practices

Any attempts to do the following "are particularly egregious and are not acceptable in any manner":

• Bypass mail volume limits
• Avoid spam filters
• Mask sending domains
• Artificially simulate subscriber engagement (e.g., warm-up/engagement-faking tools)
• Use other tools or services that exploit loopholes in mailbox providers or cloud platforms

Consent is not transferable between channels

M3AAWG's position is that the specific form of consent received to market to an individual is not transferable between marketing channels. Example given: consent to be contacted and/or marketed to via telephone does not provide consent for the business to contact that individual via cold email.

The position

M3AAWG's position is that using deceptive and misleading delivery methods to send unsolicited email (including Cold Email) is an abusive practice.

Operational implications for an ESP

• Cold email may be legal in some jurisdictions (e.g., CAN-SPAM's opt-out regime — see CAN-SPAM), but the industry body that includes the major mailbox providers classifies deceptively delivered cold email as abuse, not marketing. Legality does not equal deliverability or acceptability.
• The detection-indicator list doubles as a vetting/monitoring checklist: trap hits + blocklistings + unknown-user bounces + complaints on one customer stream is the cold-email fingerprint.
• Customers using domain rotation, lookalike domains, mailbox-account farms, randomized cadence, or engagement-simulation ("warm-up") services fall under the "particularly egregious" clause.
• This position is in addition to and inclusive of all other M3AAWG best-practice guidance, and explicitly builds on the M3AAWG Position on Selling Email Address Lists (m3aawg.org/SellingEmailLists) and the M3AAWG Position on Email Appending (m3aawg.org/AppendingPosition) — list selling and e-pending were already condemned; this extends the same stance to the cold-outreach delivery layer.

Related: Consent Methods · Two Worlds of Email Deliverability · M3AAWG Senders BCP.