We all know the feeling: whenever you buy a piece of equipment or make an inquiry, your inbox starts filling up with endless promotional offers, upsells, and marketing emails from suppliers. You bought the thing and make no secret that you’ll buy again. By no means are you a cold lead! And yet, the annoying attempts to sell you some more never seem to stop.

We’re talking, of course, about the dreaded end-sales spam.

It’s exactly what used to plague Sebastian Skirving from Sydney Pressure Cleaning Experts. As it often happens, this small, family-run business started as a one-and-a-half-person show. At the beginning, its founder and CEO had to juggle everything from managing clients to handling the admin work himself. But over time, end-sales spam began to eat into his work week.

Not that he did anything to call for them either.

“I’d order a set of new pressure washers or just ask about pricing for cleaning solutions, and suddenly I’d be on the mailing list for every sale, special, or product I did or didn’t need,” Sebastian explains. “It got to the point where I was getting more junk than actual client emails.” How much of it was actually solicited? Even if you okayed a partner or supplier emailing you, you never said you wanted it three times a week.

Being a small business with a tight budget, especially in the early days, means that every wasted minute counts. With his wife occasionally helping on the admin side, they couldn’t afford to be distracted by irrelevant messages. Sebastian recalls, “We’re not a big operation, so the last thing we needed was to spend half our time sifting through junk emails.”

How to Beat the Sales Spam?

To begin with, Sebastian tried to just unsubscribe from the flood of emails. But that didn’t do much to solve the problem. For every company he unsubscribed from, another one seemed to add him to their list.

As Sydney Pressure Cleaning Experts began to grow, more equipment and supplies were needed—things like specialized detergents for pressure cleaning different surfaces, water recovery systems, or secondary stuff like vehicle maintenance items for his work truck.

Almost every single purchase triggered a cascade of follow-up emails. Even if follow-up emails are perfectly legitimate, when they go over the top, they do border on spam. It’s written in law too, and not without a reason.

At first, Sebastian tried simple email filters, flagging words like “sale” or “discount” for blocking. But this quick fix was a touch too quick. The filters ended up devouring important emails too, like invoices or updates from suppliers the business actually needed to stay in touch with.

He also experimented with creating folders to separate promotional emails from important business communications, but the manual sorting and labelling was too clunky and inefficient. “It felt like I was just swiping the mess from one corner to another.”

Too Much Junk in One Email? Try Using Two!

With no room in his budget to invest in complex solutions or hire an administrative assistant, Sebastian needed something that would be both effective and affordable. After some trial and error, he found a more practical approach by tweaking his email setup.

“I figured out that using the same email for every inquiry or purchase was a huge part of the problem. Now, I use a separate email just for suppliers and orders,” he says. By setting up a dedicated email address solely for inquiries and purchases, Sebastian kept the spam isolated from his main inbox. It was a simple fix, but it made a huge difference.

This change meant that any follow-up emails, promotions, or upsell offers from suppliers were funneled into a separate inbox, leaving his primary business email clean and focused on client communications. The only downside of the new arrangement is that it took quite a while to settle and start working.

Moreover, Sebastian started paying more attention to which suppliers he worked with, choosing those who respected his preferences for minimal communication. “If a company kept hammering me with spam after a purchase, I stopped doing business with them. I’d rather spend a bit more with a supplier who respects my time than deal with constant junk.”

Lessons Learned

Sebastian’s case is an apt example of how small business owners can take simple, low-budget steps to fight back against end-sales spam. The key takeaway is that you don’t need expensive software or complicated solutions. Sometimes, small adjustments—like setting up a dedicated email for purchases or being selective with suppliers—can make all the difference.

“Look, I’m not a tech genius, and we don’t have a huge budget, but we found a way to make it work,” Sebastian advises. “If you’re spending too much time fighting off spam, step back and think about how you can make your setup work better for you. It doesn’t have to cost you anything.”

Conclusion

For Sebastian Skirving, the solution to fighting end-sales spam didn’t come from fancy software or complex systems. Instead, it came from practical, cost-effective adjustments that allowed him to streamline his communications and focus on running Sydney Pressure Cleaning. His experience serves as a reminder that even small businesses with limited budgets can find ways to protect their time and improve productivity with a little creativity and smart decision-making.

Salespeople should also take note, by the way!

Let’s begin with the question we get asked every so often: are there anti-spam rules and regulations specific to Queensland?

The answer is no. There are only federal regulations that apply to Queensland as well as all other states and territories. These regulations were first devised and put into force as early as 2003! The so-called Spam Act 2003 would later be amended in 2021 with the text called Spam Regulations.

We already tackled different ways how you can and should minimise spam. Here we’ll lay out in detail what these regulations mean for your business, and how to implement them.

But first, let’s see what spam actually is, as it can easily be mistaken for other forms of undesirable online activity.

What Spam Is (& What It Isn’t)

Let’s begin with how the government itself defines spam. In plain English, an email is spammy if it meets any of these three requirements:

1. It’s unsolicited, that is, you are sending it without the person asking for it or consenting to it.
2. It lacks clear or contains misleading identification of the sender.
3. It lacks a clear and functional way to opt out of any future messaging.

In other words, anything that isn’t explicitly asked for or said yes to can classify as spam. This means not only emails but ANY messaging—including text messages or even communication on social media.

Ignore any of these and you could be facing very fat fines! In fact, the heaviest penalty to date was dished out back in 2023. The Commonwealth Bank had to pay a whopping $3.55 million for having sent 65 million emails that disregarded the bill. Not that the bank sent unsolicited or unsigned emails, mind you! The “only” thing it did was requiring users to log in when they wanted to unsubscribe.

In other words, they failed to provide a one-click way to opt out, probably hoping that the inconvenience of logging in and out would avert people from unsubscribing.

Other notable examples of companies that breached the act include the food delivery service DoorDash, the eyewear company Luxottica, as well as Pizza Hut, which had to dish out $2.5 million for emailing people who hadn’t subscribed. The list goes on to include Kogan, Ticketek, Sportsbet, Outdoor Supacentre, The Wine Group…

Spam vs. Scam

In our experience, people often tend to mistake spammers for scammers or even what we in the industry call time-wasters.

To draw the line between spam and scam, you need to know that not all spam is harmful or deceitful in its nature. Much of it can be perfectly legitimate! However, legitimate or not, the fact is that it just isn’t wanted and can very often be irrelevant. For example, you may receive a random email offering you sunglasses at 80% off from a company you’ve never heard of. Nor do you even need sunglasses!

Spamming is essentially a numbers game. It works in bulks where the point is to cast as wide a net and get in front of as many eyes as possible, whether people want it or not. Even completely legitimate communication can verge on spam if it starts happening more often than the recipient wants!

The line of consent is very fine, and it takes a lot of tact and attention to get it just right.

On the other hand, scammers will send you an email with a goal to trick or deceive you into giving away something of value. They are usually after your personal info or your money, and they do it by impersonating a trustworthy person, company or institution. For example, you get an email claiming to be from your bank asking you to “verify your account information” by entering your login details on a fake website.

There are other categories of unwanted communication too. At one time or another, you’ve probably dealt with time wasters, who aren’t malicious at all, but can still be annoying. They ask a lot of questions but never move things forward, just taking up your time. There are also cold callers, who typically call random numbers in order to sell something, whether the person on the other side is interested or not. They can be pushy and annoying, but their activity isn’t illegal outside the normal working hours.

Types of Consent

One of the most important concepts in the Spam Act is consent, which is defined as either express or inferred:

• Express Consent: This is when a person specifically agrees to receive marketing messages, typically by ticking a box on a form, signing up for a newsletter, or otherwise giving direct permission. In other words, I absolutely want to receive your emails, and I consciously act to enable it.
• Inferred Consent: This occurs when there’s an existing business or other relationships where it can be reasonably inferred that the recipient is open to receiving messages. For example, if I have purchased from your company in the past, the business might reasonably infer that I am willing to receive updates or offers.

The line here is sometimes blurry! So, if in any way possible, it’s always best to get express consent.

Consent in Practice (+ Examples)

Let’s say a landscaping business in Queensland collects emails from people who use their website to book a service. By ticking a box that says, “Yes, I would like to receive updates and offers,” the customer is providing express consent for the company to send marketing emails. If the customer leaves this box unchecked, the company is not allowed to email them for promotional purposes.

However, if the customer previously hired the company to landscape their garden, and the business sends a follow-up email to offer a discount on future services, this could fall under inferred consent. In this case, it’s reasonable to assume the customer might be interested in hearing from them again.

But what happens if the company sends an email advertising the services of their partners, which isn’t directly related to landscaping? This would cross the line of consent and could be regarded as a breach of the anti-spam rules.

Let’s see what other checkboxes this business has to tick in order to act by the rules.

They would have to provide clear identification, meaning business name and contact details, such as a phone number or an email address.

Another must is a clear “Unsubscribe” button that really does what it says it does, and does it quickly. You can optionally include an “Update Your Preferences” button that can be used to unsubscribe but also tweak the frequency of receiving emails from you.

As Arlo Hughes, one of our former clients and the founder of a roofing business in Brisbane (QLD) points out, the best way is to include a double opt-in where the user needs to confirm their subscription for your emails. “Moreover, the email can include a short note as a reminder why the user is receiving emails from the company. We always remind them that they are getting this email because they opted in either through our website or in-person, as customers or clients. This is because, in our experience, many people will mark your email as spam even if it’s not, mistakenly assuming that it’s not much different in effect from deleting or archiving an unwanted email. But if you remind them that it’s them who opted in and how they did it, they’ll be more considerate and hit ‘unsubscribe’ if that’s what they want,” Hughes told us.

Note that this reminder isn’t a must under Spam Act. Still, it acts nicely as another safety layer for you as a sender.

What Else is Illegal Under Spam Act?

As we said above, spammers play a numbers game.

And if you want to play a numbers game and send hundreds or thousands of emails every day, you can’t go around and manually scour websites for contact info. By that pace, it would take months to collect enough email addresses to make it work!

So to scale up their activity and make it at all viable, they use so-called email harvesting software. These are tools that are automated to screen gazillions of websites looking for one thing alone: email addresses.

Small wonder that such harvesting software was made completely illegal by the Spam Act! The very concept bypasses consent as such, so it’s no wonder that no businesses are allowed to use such software for any purposes.

Exemptions Under the Spam Act

Not every email you may want to send is covered by the Spam Act. Some exemptions include:

• Non-commercial messages: Emails or messages that do not contain any commercial content, such as personal emails or political messages, are exempt. Note, however, that this applies to registered organisations such as political parties or charities, as well as government and educational institutions.
• Transactional messages: Emails that are necessary for the completion of a transaction, such as receipts or booking confirmations, are also exempt.

Spam isn’t just that stubborn, repetitive sales email you don’t remember having ever subscribed to. Or the request for help from a prince from a faraway land who was tricked by his family into poverty.

Spam is basically anything that clogs your business inbox and slashes your productivity. But can also pose security risks or even damage your company’s reputation if it’s you who does it unwittingly.

It’s one more thing: a scourge that almost never completely disappears. Where there’s internet access, there’s spam too. That, however, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t even try to fight it. Quite the contrary!

Here are some easy yet effective steps that ANY business can take, whatever the size or means of your operation, to protect yourself from others but also others from yourself.

1. Filters Are the First Line of Defense

The first thing you need is reliable email filtering solution.

These tools act like a firewall of sorts that can block most unwanted emails before they ever reach your inbox. They do this by deploying sophisticated algorithms to detect suspicious content, spam keywords, known malicious senders, or even new senders that are as yet unverified.

Google’s Gmail and Microsoft Outlook come pre-equipped with strong spam filtering, but you may want to look into advanced options for more robust protection. We won’t be mentioning any here, but there are tonnes!

Case studies show that businesses that use dedicated spam filters experience a significant reduction in spam volume, which boosts their productivity and reduces the risk of phishing attacks.

2. Educate!

Even though most attacks are automated nowadays, 99% of them rely on one main factor to exploit: human error.

Take phishing as an example. This type of attack tries to exploit the recipient’s trust in a brand that they are trying to impersonate. Usually, they do this by using almost exactly the same design and wording, with tiny and almost unnoticeable differences (such as writing zero instead of capital o in the domain name).

This is why educating your employees to identify spam messages can go a long way in preventing potential security breaches.

Some features of spam emails include:

• Unknown senders
• Poor grammar or spelling errors
• Suspicious, weird or otherwise irrelevant links or attachments
• Requests for personal or financial information

You don’t need training sessions that are regular as in ‘once a month’. But a yearly webinar on email safety can help your team stay alert and aware of the ever-evolving nature of spam and phishing attacks. Encourage employees to be cautious when clicking on links or downloading attachments from unknown sources.

3. Know Your Laws

Did you know that what spammers do is not only annoying and potentially unsafe, but also downright illegal?

That’s right. Australia has strict anti-spam laws under the Spam Act 2003, as well as the ensuing Spam Regulations from 2021.

These regulations say that any commercial electronic messages, such as marketing emails, must include 2 things: clear consent from recipients, and an easy way to unsubscribe.

This isn’t just important to know so that you could protect yourself from others, but also the other way round! Many businesses fail to be compliant just because they aren’t aware of these regulations.

But this kind of compliance isn’t just about avoiding legal penalties. It also builds trust with customers. In other words, showing that your business respects privacy and is committed to following anti-spam laws can enhance your brand’s reputation.

4. Where Are You Listing Your Email Address?

Have you ever wondered why many businesses don’t have email addresses listed on their website? Instead, when you want to reach out to them, you have to do it via contact forms and the like. It’s the site visitor who has to leave their email address to the business, and not the other way round.

That’s because reducing the visibility of your business email addresses is another effective way to minimise spam. Cybercriminals often scrape websites and directories to collect email addresses for spamming.

And it’s not like they have a person who does it manually. To do it at scale, they use specialised software that can scrape tens of thousands websites every day.

To combat this, you should:

• Use contact forms on websites instead of listing email addresses publicly.
• Encode email addresses through HTML or Java so that they are harder for bots to scrape.
• Avoid posting business emails on your social media.

By limiting exposure, you reduce the chances of being targeted by spammers who rely on scraping tools to build their email lists.

5. Who Do You Associate With?

A lesser-known yet equally important aspect of spam prevention is maintaining your business’s online reputation.

What this means is, if your domain has a rep of being associated with spam, emails that are being sent from it could trigger the recipients’ junk filters or even be blocked entirely. Even if you’d never meant it or weren’t aware of it!

Of course, there are tools you can use to keep track of your digital footprint and the ways your reputation suffers or not. They’ll give you insights into how your emails are being perceived by different ISPs (internet service providers).

But it’s not just that the emails you receive can taint your rep. It’s also the vendors you partner with. If your partner companies have poor email practices, they can tarnish your business’s credibility by association.

One of our former clients, a reputable Central Coast landscaping company, told us that they got flagged as spam after unknowingly partnering with a third-party service that violated email regulations.

“The first thing we noticed was that our email deliverability tanked all of a sudden! It took us ages to find out that our third-party vendor wasn’t verifying email addresses before adding them to the list,” tells us Aaliyah Glenn from Central Coast Landscaping. Their vendor wasn’t even aware that what they doing would be deemed spammy, so they didn’t clean their list of addresses that had bounced. “Of course, they stopped the practice right away, but it took months to reflect on our situation and stop slashing our legitimate clients.”

This serves as a powerful reminder that your business is only as strong as its weakest link when it comes to email reputation management.

6. Always Keep Your Email Lists up to Date

This tip is a logical consequence of the previous one.

If a contact bounces, there’s a reason why they did. Not to mention if they unsubscribed!

Many businesses will also monitor the open rate and remove inactive subscribers who never ever open their emails. After all, if someone isn’t interested so much to give a single click to your email, they aren’t very likely to buy from you. You can try to warm them up by sending a targeted campaign that’s tailored to grab their attention or ask them if they are still interested to receive your messaging. And if they stay silent or passive, you can remove them from the list.

Similarly, if an address is no longer valid or active, purge it from the list. All too often, people mistakenly think that an invalid address won’t hurt anything. Sure, its ex-owner won’t mind, but the spam filters will. They’ll read into it as a negligent behaviour on your part, and they’ll act accordingly.

7. Become a Verified Sender

Many email marketing solutions will automatically authenticate your emails using Domainkeys Identified Mail (DKIM), Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and omain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC). That’s the sole reason why we’re leaving this tip for the end. Many businesses will have authenticated already without even knowing.

However, you shouldn’t put all your trust onto software to make sure you’re compliant.

After all, there’s a reason why Gmail and Yahoo introduced authentication as a must starting February 2024 for anyone who sends to over 5,000 addresses.

The long and short of these acronyms is that they cryptographically confirm that your content hasn’t been tampered with or forged, or that you aren’t being impersonated as a sender.

Conclusion

Spam still is, and always will be, a significant challenge to Australian as well as any other businesses. However, it IS possible to significantly reduce its impact. From using filtering tools to educating your employees and keeping your email lists clean, taking a proactive stance on spam management can save your business time, money, and headaches. Remember, a strong digital reputation is key, and being mindful of the companies you partner with is crucial in maintaining that trustworthiness.