No. A cold first email to a German business contact breaks German competition law. Section 7 of the German Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) bans email advertising sent without the recipient's prior express consent and treats it as an unacceptable nuisance. You can read the text yourself (UWG Section 7 and the official English translation of the UWG). Company recipients get the same protection as private people.
One narrow door stays open: customers who bought from you, contacted about your own similar products, with a clear right to object. Everyone else has to agree before the first email arrives.
The statute never uses the words "cold email". It speaks of advertising by electronic mail, and nothing in the text limits that to newsletters or mass sends. A personal one-to-one note offering a German head of IT a call about your service is advertising.
This is a competition law rule, and it sits apart from data protection. The GDPR side, including list scraping and legitimate interest, is a separate question, and GDPR fines for cold email show what getting it wrong costs. Here I stay with the German statute. I am not a lawyer, and none of this is legal advice.
What does UWG Section 7 say about email advertising?
Section 7 contains a general rule and a hard rule.
Subsection 1 holds the general rule. A commercial practice that harasses a market participant unreasonably is not allowed, and advertising the person obviously does not want is the clearest example. Under this test, the circumstances count.
Subsection 2, No. 2, takes the weighing away for email. Without the recipient's express consent given in advance, email advertising always counts as an unreasonable nuisance. The German wording is "stets anzunehmen", meaning always assumed. That leaves no relevance test, no volume threshold and no first-email allowance.
| Part of the law | What it says, in plain words | What it means for a sales team |
|---|---|---|
| Section 7(1) | A commercial practice that unreasonably harasses someone is not allowed, especially advertising they clearly do not want | Every channel has to pass this test, email or otherwise |
| Section 7(2) No. 2 | Email advertising without the recipient's prior express consent is always an unreasonable nuisance | A first sales email to a stranger fails by default |
| Section 7(3) | No nuisance is assumed for existing customers when four conditions all hold | It covers people who bought from you, and nobody else |
Two words carry most of the weight.
Prior means the consent exists before the first email goes out. A yes you collect in your second message does not reach back to cover the first one.
Express means the person actually agreed to receive your advertising. Publishing an address does not count. Neither does sharing a trade fair hall with you or holding a relevant job title.
The IHK Frankfurt, the regional chamber of commerce, calls the requirements for consent quite strict. For newsletters it recommends a double opt-in, where the first confirmation email carries no advertising at all.
The Federal Court of Justice backs this up. In its 2011 ruling I ZR 164/09, as summarized by lawyer Martin Schirmbacher, the BGH held double opt-in suitable for proving that the address holder agreed. But an employee's testimony that the double opt-in system ran without errors was not enough to prove consent. You need the documented record.
So the working question for every German contact in your CRM is simple. Can you show, in writing, that this person agreed to hear from you?
Does the rule change for B2B email?
No. The statute protects whoever receives the email and makes no distinction between a person and a company.
The IHK Frankfurt states that prior consent is required for email advertising to businesses as well as consumers, and that presumed consent is not enough when the recipient is a business. Steinbock & Partner reads it the same way: without prior express consent, email advertising is generally an unreasonable nuisance whether a private person or a company receives it.
The CMS guide to German law sums up the UWG as requiring prior express consent before marketing emails, with only the narrow customer exception.
Here is where founders get caught.
The published address. An address on a company website, info@ and sales@ included, tells you where to write and nothing more. The IHK Frankfurt page on email advertising makes the same point: a published address does not let you assume consent.
Relevance. "My offer fits their job" is an argument borrowed from data protection debates. Section 7(2) never asks whether the email was relevant.
The single email. The statute says "always". A one-off test to a few German prospects is still email advertising.
The wrong law. A founder who has documented a data protection basis often assumes the job is finished. The UWG question still needs its own answer, and only two answers work: consent or the customer exception.
When does the existing-customer exception apply?
Section 7(3) is the only route to email advertising without consent, and it works only when all four conditions hold at once.
| Condition | What the law requires | It fails when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The address came from a sale | The customer gave you their email address in connection with buying goods or a service from you | The contact downloaded a guide, met you at an event, or you found or bought the address |
| 2. Your own similar products | You advertise only your own goods or services that are similar to what they bought | You promote a partner's product or an unrelated new line |
| 3. No objection | The customer has not objected to this use of the address | They told you to stop, once, through any channel |
| 4. Clear notice | You told them clearly, when you collected the address and in every email, that they can object at any time | The notice was missing at collection or is missing from this email |
German law firms read these conditions strictly. Steinbock & Partner stresses that the customer must not have objected, and that they have to be told clearly, when the address is collected and every time it is used, that they can object at any time at no extra cost.
rdp-law adds that a general privacy notice with an unsubscribe option buried in a long document does not meet the clear-notice requirement, citing a decision of the Paderborn regional court (LG Paderborn, 2 O 325/23).
Picture a dev shop that built route-planning software for a Hamburg logistics company last year. The operations lead typed her email into the order form, and the form told her plainly that she could object to marketing emails at any time.
The shop may email her about a support and maintenance plan for that software, provided every email repeats the objection line and she has never asked them to stop.
Hosting that a partner sells is off limits. So is her finance director, whose address came from a web search and not from the sale. So is the person who downloaded a case study and never bought.
Who enforces UWG violations, and what can happen?
Section 8 lets the right claimants demand that an unlawful practice under Section 3 or Section 7 stops and that its effects are removed. They do not have to wait for a breach: the claim is available once one is imminent.
One email is enough to trigger it. The IHK Nord Westfalen points to BGH decision I ZR 218/07: a single advertising email is already unlawful.
Then comes the bill. The lawyer's fees for a warning letter are calculated from a value in dispute. In 2023 the Kammergericht added EUR 1,000 to that value for each further email, unless the emails are closely linked in substance and time.
These can bring it:
- Competitors that sell or buy goods or services of the same kind, in more than a trivial amount and more than occasionally
- Qualified trade associations
- Qualified consumer organizations
- Chambers of industry and commerce, and chambers of crafts
- Trade unions
Two details matter for a sales team. Under Section 8(2), when an employee or agent commits the breach, the claim also runs against the owner of the business, so outsourcing German sends does not move the risk off your company. Section 9 of the UWG (English translation) also gives competitors a claim for damages when the breach was intentional or negligent, on top of the claim to stop.
You also cannot choose who opens your email. In a niche market, a German list can include a competitor, and competitors are among those who can bring a claim. Your company name sits on every message as the sender.
Why does my team open German conversations on LinkedIn?
Our outreach mostly goes to English-speaking markets: the USA, the UK and parts of Europe. Germany sits outside our specialties. When a client does need German decision-makers, we put that market under stricter house rules: no cold email without a compliant basis, and LinkedIn carries the outreach.
LinkedIn first also fits how we like to open anywhere: a pitch in the first message is the fastest way to get ignored. In Germany, the law makes that order compulsory for email.
LinkedIn is no legal free zone. The statute names no platform, and subsection 1 applies to any commercial practice that harasses someone unreasonably. A promotional LinkedIn message is still advertising, so moving a pitch from the inbox to the DMs keeps it inside the legal test. Treat a pitch in a DM with the same care as a pitch in an inbox.
What changes on LinkedIn is the first touch. We open with a connection request and a conversation, and the first message sells the conversation, not the service. The profile does the rest. Even a plain message works when the profile is strong. A perfect message from an empty profile gets ignored. The person can accept or ignore it, and a reply starts an exchange both sides chose.
Here is what LinkedIn outreach looked like for one client. In a 6-month LinkedIn campaign for a software development company based in Germany, the sample of 84 requests showed a 61.9% connection rate (52 accepted) and a 76.9% reply rate (40 of those 52 replied). The full campaign booked 488 sales calls.
Rates like these need the real decision-maker titles for the niche, not a generic manager title, and an opener worth answering.
In other markets, our warm emails (emails to people who have already seen us on LinkedIn) follow the connection. In Germany an accepted request is no yes to email, so the email waits until consent or the customer exception covers it.
What should a founder check before emailing a German contact?
Put every German contact through these steps, in this order, before anything goes out.
- Consent. Can you show express consent from this person to receive your advertising? If yes, email within what they agreed to. If no, go to step 2.
- Source of the address. Did the customer give you this address as part of a sale? If no, email is off the table. Skip to step 5, Channel.
- Product. Is the email about your own goods or services, similar to what they bought? If no, ask for consent first.
- Objection. Has the person objected, and does this email carry a clear objection notice? An objection ends it. A missing notice gets added before sending.
- Channel. If any step failed, email is out. Open on LinkedIn with a conversation and ask before moving to email.
Start with the customer file. Before we target anyone, my team studies a client's past and current customers and then builds the list from companies that look like them.
For Germany the same file answers a legal question too: which German customers handed over their address during a sale, and were they told clearly at that moment that they could object? One file, two jobs: the clients you already have show you who to target next, and they are the only people whose address could have reached you through a sale.
Keep Germany out of your email experiments. When you try a new cold email sequence, run it in a market where the law allows a first-touch email, and give German contacts their own LinkedIn track. Germany is one of the markets to plan around when running B2B outbound into Europe.
| Fine to do this week | Keep out of your sends |
|---|---|
| Export German customers and flag which addresses came from a sale | A bought or scraped German list loaded into a cold email sequence |
| Put a clear objection line into every customer email | Partner offers sent to your customer list |
| Keep one do-not-contact list that logs objections from every channel | A "just one email" test to German prospects |
| Write a LinkedIn opener that asks a question and pitches nothing | Emails whose only justification is "it fits their role" |
| Save every written request to be contacted by email | A follow-up email to someone who only accepted a connection request |
For German contacts: start with the customer file, open on LinkedIn, and save every written yes. Get that order right first. Then scale in markets where a first email is allowed.
If you want to reach German buyers and are unsure which contacts could be emailed at all, I can go through your customer file with you. Book a call.
Questions founders ask about German email outreach
Does every follow-up email need its own legal basis?
Yes. Each message in a sequence is its own piece of email advertising, so each needs consent or the customer exception behind it. A sequence that started without a basis does not gain one at step 3. Once someone objects through any channel, pull them from every sequence.
Does the same apply to Austria and the Czech Republic?
Each country has its own national law, so have local counsel check those markets before you send anything. In our own campaigns, the three get one treatment: we need prior consent or another compliant basis before any email goes out, and LinkedIn opens the conversation instead. The customer-file review works the same way in all three markets.
Can we phone German prospects instead of emailing them?
Phone advertising has its own rule in Section 7(2) No. 1: calls to consumers need prior express consent, and calls to other market participants need at least presumed consent. My team never does pure cold calling. We work through email and LinkedIn, and warm calls are an optional add-on, only to people who have already replied or opted in.
Is a reply on LinkedIn enough to start emailing?
Only when the reply asks for email. "Send the details to this address" is a request you can point to later, so screenshot or export it and keep it with the contact record. "Thanks for connecting" or "sounds interesting" is no yes to your advertising. When in doubt, ask in the chat and save the answer.