Can I legally market my services to people who connect with me on LinkedIn?

[fstep2]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY

I mean linkedin has a feature where you can export your contacts and retrieve their email addresses. So my question is if someone connected with me on linkedin am i allowed to take their email address and market my services to them as i would say my website's subscriber or would that be classified as spam?

 

[Zigner]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY

I mean linkedin has a feature where you can export your contacts and retrieve their email addresses. So my question is if someone connected with me on linkedin am i allowed to take their email address and market my services to them as i would say my website's subscriber or would that be classified as spam?

Sounds like spam to me

 

[fstep2]

Sounds like spam to me

what do i have to do to make it "not spam"? I mean they did connect ot me with intention of communicating regarding business opportunities right? Is something like this ok:


Hello,

I am contacting you because we are connected on linkedin. I noticed you have a small business and thought we could benefit from working together. Check out "my website" and let me know if any of my services could be of use to you. I offer everything from marketing and website development to financial consulting and investment analysis. I also have active and profitable businesses available at "my website" if you are interested in starting your own company without going through the long and expensive process of business development. Please let me know what you provide as well. Look forward to hearing from you.

 

[TigerD]

I would drop my connection with you in about 3.5 seconds after receiving that e-mail.

DC

 

[fstep2]

I would drop my connection with you in about 3.5 seconds after receiving that e-mail.

DC

I don't care about that really. I'm more concerned about the email being legal to send. Furthermore I doubt anyone would take the time to look me up on linkedin to drop the connect, most would just delete the email, but in any case that's not my concern

 

[Zigner]

I don't care about that really. I'm more concerned about the email being legal to send. Furthermore I doubt anyone would take the time to look me up on linkedin to drop the connect, most would just delete the email, but in any case that's not my concern

Great business model.

 

[fstep2]

Great business model.

That's not my business. I can get a 1000 connections per/day on there, if someone wants to unsubscribe the moment I start talking to them about business they can go ahead, what use are those people as a connection anyway?

 

[Zigner]

That's not my business. I can get a 1000 connections per/day on there, if someone wants to unsubscribe the moment I start talking to them about business they can go ahead, what use are those people as a connection anyway?

I guess they are good targets for spam, huh?

 

[sandyclaus]

The very definition of SPAM is UNWANTED and/or UNSOLICITED email solicitations.

Just because you have someone's email address doesn't mean they WANT to receive your advertisements. If they ASK for it, or enter into a business relationship with you, that's one thing. But I'm with Zig - if you used my email as a marketing tool to send me solicitations I never asked for, then you'd lose any potential business relationship you had with me before you even got started.

In fact, I do believe that using email addresses in the manner you have in mind may even get you booted from LinkedIn (at least I would hope so, because I sure wouldn't want to give you access to a free SPAM marketing source).

 

[HomeGuru]

I say the OP should look at other methods to market his/her services.