Sending a newsletter without consent: what is the risk?

The rule is simple in principle: you need a legal basis to send commercial mail. The nuances matter.

Consent

Somebody actively signed up. You must be able to show when and how — a pre-ticked box is not consent.

Existing customers

There is room to contact your own customers about similar products, provided you offered an opt-out when you collected the address. That is not a general licence.

What must always be there

Who is sending, with real contact details, and an unsubscribe link that works in one click. An unsubscribe requiring a login does not count.

The real risk

A complaint is unpleasant, but the daily damage is elsewhere: recipients marking you as spam harm your deliverability for everything else you send.

In practice

Record where every address came from. If you cannot say where a contact came from, do not send to them.