The draft is ready. The contact came from a public page. The role looks plausible. None of that answers whether this sender, using this channel, may contact this person in this context. The decision starts before the subject line.
Run the eligibility tree in order
- Identity: Is the sender a real person or business represented accurately?
- Jurisdiction and channel: Which rules apply to the sender, recipient, data, and channel?
- Source: Where did the business contact and context come from, when was it collected, and is that use allowed?
- Role and context: Is there a specific professional reason this role could care, without claiming knowledge of an internal workflow?
- Platform or community rule: Does the channel allow the behavior? Are there narrower community rules?
- Objection and suppression: Has the person or organization declined, opted out, objected, or otherwise asked for contact to stop?
Fail a step and the route changes: stop, suppress, wait, or ask for review. Do not switch channels, accounts, or identities to route around the answer.
The primary sources set boundaries, not a global recipe
| Context | What the source says | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| US commercial email | The FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide says the law covers commercial messages, including B2B email, and includes requirements around accurate information, opt-out, and honoring stop requests. | This is a US framework, not worldwide advice for a particular campaign. |
| UK B2B marketing | The ICO’s B2B marketing guidance distinguishes channels and subscriber types, while UK GDPR can still apply when personal data is processed. | The guidance was under revision when observed on 2026-07-28. Recheck it and do not transpose it to the EU or the world. |
| LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies prohibit fake profiles, misleading information, and untargeted, irrelevant, obviously unwanted, unauthorized, or repetitive promotional messages. | A platform policy is not legal clearance. Check the current policy before acting. | |
| Reddit’s spam policy addresses repeated or unsolicited actions, promotional bots, mass unsolicited messages, and automated multiple accounts. | Individual communities may impose tighter rules. A community is not a prospect list. |
“Publicly available” does not mean unrestricted use. Nor does a relevant job title settle the legal or platform question. Record both context and boundary.
Write a reason-for-contact record, not a personalization trick
Reason-for-contact record
Leave family details, private activity, sensitive data, invented familiarity, false referrals, fake customers, and disguised promotion out. Do not scrape or enrich data without the required purpose, basis, transparency, permission, and review. Hidden tracking should not be treated as a harmless default.
Inspect one message without pretending it was sent
Illustrative draft; not sent; no recipient, response, or result is implied. The names, company, posting, workflow, and product are fictional. Assume the applicable checks have not yet been completed, so this remains a writing sample only.
Subject: Question about weekly site updates
Hi Jordan,
A fictional project-coordinator posting mentions collecting site updates for a weekly report. I’m drafting a small product concept that turns emailed updates into a report with unresolved items left for review.
I do not know whether your team works that way. If this were a real and eligible contact, the question would be: is collecting the updates the awkward step, or does the difficulty sit somewhere else?
No reply would be required, and the contact would be closed after the applicable stop rule.
Sam
The draft labels observation and hypothesis. It makes no performance claim. More importantly, good wording does not repair a failed source, jurisdiction, channel, or suppression check.
A follow-up requires a new trigger and a fresh gate
| Trigger | Possible decision | What not to infer |
|---|---|---|
| The recipient requested specific information. | Send only the requested material if the channel and suppression status still allow it. | That the person wants a call or broader sales sequence. |
| A material clarification corrects an ambiguous first message. | Consider one concise correction after review. | That repeating the same pitch with new wording adds value. |
| An inspectable sample directly answers the original question. | Offer or provide it only when appropriate and honestly labeled. | That fictional data demonstrates a customer result. |
| Nothing new happened. | Wait or stop. | That elapsed time creates permission or relevance. |
| Decline, opt-out, objection, or suppression signal. | Suppress. Do not send a closing note unless the applicable process specifically requires one. | That another channel or account is available. |
There is no universal number of follow-ups and no universal day-by-day cadence. Silence is not consent, interest, or rejection. It is silence. If the original reason has gone stale and no new requested or material information exists, another message is difficult to defend.
Keep the stop register boring
| Field | Minimum record |
|---|---|
| Person or organization | Enough information to prevent recontact without retaining unnecessary personal data. |
| Channel and offer | Where and what the restriction covers. |
| Signal | Opt-out, objection, wrong person, policy block, closed contact, or reviewer decision. |
| Date and source | When and how the stop condition was recorded. |
| Action | Suppressed, deleted where appropriate, escalated, or retained under a documented requirement. |
Do not turn suppression into a growth experiment. No second identity. No “just checking” message. No move from email to LinkedIn because email went quiet. No promotion disguised as independent advice in a community.
Ignore template libraries, subject-line tricks, open tracking, automation volume, and response-rate benchmarks. They cannot answer the eligibility question. Also ignore the temptation to treat a job posting, profile, or visible address as permission on its own.
The record ends with send, wait, stop, suppress, or escalate
If identity, source, context, channel rule, and suppression status are documented, a human reviewer can decide whether the draft is eligible. If any of them is missing, do not compensate with better copy. Mark the record wait, stop, suppress, or escalate. Only an eligible conversation moves to founder-led sales.