(Note: deleted and moved here because I put it in reply to the wrong comment)
I work for an email marketing provider (opinions my own, obviously), and I was extremely surprised how many people genuinely want to receive lots of commercial bulk marketing email. And by "want to" I don't mean "don't mark as spam", I mean "continually sign up for different marketing newsletters, and consistently use links in newsletters/marketing emails to make purchases from multiple companies".
It's an alien phenomenon to me, and it may be a minority of bulk email, but it definitely is useful to a lot of people. Maybe it's their equivalent of coupon-clipping-based shopping, or maybe they just like learning about things to buy in that format? I have no idea.
That aside, the last thing an email marketing platform wants to do is send spam. Every time someone marks an email such a provider sends as spam, the reputation of their sending addresses is damaged, and therefore their ability to deliver mail to aforementioned people who want to receive them (and therefore the ability of the marketing platform to make money by facilitating that kind of desired email) is jeopardized.
TL;dr there's bulk marketing email and then there's spam, and surprisingly little overlap (and overlapping incentives) between the people who send each.
Sure, I do this. A lot of stuff people buy is often a lot cheaper with promotions. Just the other day, I bought a $600 set of tires for $300-380 (depending on whether or not I remember to do the mail in rebate). That alone is well worth the few clicks it took to filter mails from that list out of my inbox and into a label for car-related marketing.
I have a couple of broad categories for these filters like car stuff, computer stuff, other-hobby-related-stuff and of course clothing, and just take a look at the appropriate one when I need or want something. Takes virtually no time, and saves a lot of money.
Of course I'm not gonna lie, I do end up buying things that I wouldn't have bought otherwise by doing this. But some of those things are pretty cool, too. :) I do have a few more cheap ARM boards of various types than I can probably use, though.
I work for an email marketing provider (opinions my own, obviously), and I was extremely surprised how many people genuinely want to receive lots of commercial bulk marketing email. And by "want to" I don't mean "don't mark as spam", I mean "continually sign up for different marketing newsletters, and consistently use links in newsletters/marketing emails to make purchases from multiple companies". It's an alien phenomenon to me, and it may be a minority of bulk email, but it definitely is useful to a lot of people. Maybe it's their equivalent of coupon-clipping-based shopping, or maybe they just like learning about things to buy in that format? I have no idea.
That aside, the last thing an email marketing platform wants to do is send spam. Every time someone marks an email such a provider sends as spam, the reputation of their sending addresses is damaged, and therefore their ability to deliver mail to aforementioned people who want to receive them (and therefore the ability of the marketing platform to make money by facilitating that kind of desired email) is jeopardized.
TL;dr there's bulk marketing email and then there's spam, and surprisingly little overlap (and overlapping incentives) between the people who send each.