What is spam? Getting inundated with ads you don't really care about. But what if you suddenly cared about the ad or the product? It's no longer spam!

Spam is not whether you have permission to talk. Spam is not whether you are on solid legal footing. All of those are business procedures. 

For example, say you have permission to email Betty. Betty is 18. She goes to high school. She cares about buying cool clothes. But you, the dumbass marketer, thinking that because you have permission to email her, decide to email her a pitch for life insurance. Why the hell will Betty care about life insurance? Forget that you had permission to email Betty, your email is pure spam to her.

On the other hand, let's talk about Viagra spammers. They email millions of people everyday. A super vast majority consider their email to be spam. But for every million emails they send out, they find a couple guys that buy their product. Think about those couple guys. Do they consider the mail about Viagra a scam? The customers of Viagra spammers do not consider the emails as spam!

So who is better off between the viagra spammer and the so-called permission marketer? Tough to tell. But probably neither. The permission marketer is pitching products that Betty does not care about. The spammer is pissing off 99,999 people to find his one customer. Again, bad idea.

What you want to do is email 99 people who are all very likely to care about. It can bring you more business and fans than emailing the whole world.