Cold Email Is Spam. Full Stop.

There’s a lot of noise lately from self-proclaimed growth hackers, sales gurus, and startup founders preaching the gospel of “cold email.” They say it’s how you “scale outreach,” how you “get noticed,” how you “grow.” They wrap it up in euphemisms like “personalized contact” or “B2B lead generation,” but the truth is simpler: cold email is unsolicited marketing. And unsolicited marketing is spam.

Let’s unpack that.

What Is “Cold Email” Really?

Marketers like to pretend that “cold email” lives in a special moral gray area, like it’s somehow different from spam because it’s “personalized” or “targeted.” But in reality, it’s the same mechanism.

You obtained an email address without consent.
You’re sending commercial content.
You’re doing it in bulk.
You’re hoping for conversions.

That’s literally the legal and ethical definition of spam. Adding “Dear John” at the top doesn’t magically sanctify it.

If someone didn’t ask for your email, and you’re trying to sell them something, it’s spam. End of debate.

No one has ever gotten off a blacklist by saying “we send cold email, not spam.” Not once. It’s the same thing, and the people running anti-abuse systems know it.

The Industry Built Around Stopping You

If you need a reality check, look at the infrastructure that exists specifically to fight “cold outreach.” An entire global industry exists to identify and stop people who send cold email. From blocklists to spam filters to data vendors, the entire system is designed to make sure your “outreach” never lands.

At MXroute, we see both sides of it. On one side are the people sending “campaigns” and “outreach.” On the other are the systems built to find and bury them. The filters aren’t fooled by excuses, and neither are we.

The Future Is Already Watching You

We are actively monitoring email warmup services and compiling lists of their customers. Not because we’re playing police, but because warmup activity is one of the clearest signals that someone plans to send spam. That data is being shared with other providers who are also tired of cleaning up the aftermath.

So if you’re using a warmup service to “prepare” for a cold email campaign, you’re already marked. You are not being clever. You are already on the radar.

The “Everyone’s Doing It” Problem

Here’s what’s really killing your results. The flood of new SaaS founders has created a massive surge in cold outreach. We’ve never seen so many people launching products and immediately blasting “cold emails” to strangers. The result is fatigue. Every inbox owner is fucking tired of it.

If everyone is doing it, no one stands out. You’re not being “scrappy.” You’re just another interruption. Another unwanted pitch in a sea of delete buttons.

The Honest Alternative

If you want to reach people, start by earning permission.

Build something valuable enough that people want to hear from you. Offer them something real before you ask for their time. Let them subscribe to you, not be hunted by you.

The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing. It feels like alignment. That’s what built MXroute’s customer base: years of reputation, word of mouth, and treating every email we send as a guest in someone’s inbox, not a battering ram at the door.