Is cold email legal in Germany for B2B?

No. In Germany an advertising email to a business needs the recipient's prior express consent, the same as an email to a consumer, and Austria and Switzerland have the same consent rule in their own statutes. I base this on the statute texts and the case law below, and on the DACH outreach I run on LinkedIn instead, with my own numbers from August and September 2026 further down. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. What follows is the reading I work from, and the reason my DACH campaigns contain no cold email.

Cold email, as I use the term here, is an unsolicited email that promotes your product or service to someone who has not asked for it and is not an existing customer. The test is whether the message promotes something you sell.

I covered the country choice and the 90-day plan in the hub on launching in a new European market. This piece goes one level down: the operative wording, where presumed consent stops, what a violation costs, and what I send instead.

Is cold email to businesses legal in Germany?

No. § 7 Abs. 2 Nr. 2 UWG treats advertising by electronic mail as an unreasonable nuisance (unzumutbare Belästigung) whenever there is no "vorherige ausdrückliche Einwilligung des Adressaten", and the word Adressat covers companies as well as consumers.

The current wording has been in force since 14 May 2024 (dejure.org). The structure is short:

1. Abs. 1 sets the general ban on business practices that unreasonably harass a market participant.
2. Abs. 2 Nr. 1 covers phone calls, with a lighter test for businesses (more on that below).
3. Abs. 2 Nr. 2 covers automated calls, fax and electronic mail: prior express consent, for every addressee.
4. Abs. 3 is the only exception for email, and it needs all four conditions at once: you got the address from the customer in connection with a sale, you advertise your own similar goods or services, the customer has not objected, and you pointed out the right to object when you collected the address and in every message.

The Abs. 3 exception is for existing customers. A prospect you found on Apollo or on a company website does not meet the first condition, so the exception does not apply to cold outreach.

German practitioners read it the same way. The Plutte overview, updated September 2025, says the consent rule applies "wobei es keinen Unterschied macht, ob Unternehmer oder Verbraucher angeschrieben werden" (Plutte).

Does presumed consent (mutmaßliche Einwilligung) cover B2B email?

No. Presumed consent exists in § 7 UWG only for phone calls to businesses, and the Bundesgerichtshof has ruled it out for email, so a "they would obviously be interested" argument does not hold for an inbox.

BGH, 10 December 2009, I ZR 201/07 settled this. Two commercial vehicle dealers with no prior business contact; one emailed its dealer offer to the other. The court held that email advertising can be justified "nicht durch ein mutmaßliches, sondern nur durch ein ausdrückliches oder konkludentes Einverständnis" (WBS Legal). That case was decided under the 2004 wording, which was looser than today's "ausdrückliche Einwilligung". If presumed consent failed under the looser text, it fails under the current one.

The same judgment closes the other common argument. The recipient had published its email address as a contact option on its website. The court accepted the lower court's reading that the contact line related to selling used vehicles to end buyers, and that publishing it was no consent to receive advertising from a competitor.

What follows in practice:

1. A published info@ or sales@ address is not consent in Germany.
2. A business card handed over at a trade fair is a grey zone. I treat it as permission to follow up on what we discussed, and I do not add the person to a sequence.
3. An inbound form submission or a direct request ("send me your deck") is consent for that request, documented in the CRM with the date.

What are the rules in Austria and Switzerland?

Both require prior consent for advertising email to businesses. Austria is stricter than Germany on phone calls, and Switzerland writes its rule around mass advertising with an existing-customer exception.

Austria first. § 174 Abs. 3 TKG 2021 makes electronic mail for direct advertising inadmissible without the recipient's prior consent (RIS). Abs. 4 has an existing-customer exception with the same shape as Germany's, plus one extra condition: the recipient must not have opted out in advance, for example by entering the address on the ECG list kept by RTR. The Austrian chamber of commerce answers the B2B question directly: "Es gibt keinen Unterschied zwischen Unternehmer:innen und Verbraucher:innen" (WKO). Abs. 6 adds that an offence committed outside Austria counts as committed where the message reaches the recipient.

Switzerland next. Art. 3 Abs. 1 lit. o UWG makes it unfair to send mass advertising by telecommunication without a direct link to requested content and to fail to obtain the customers' prior consent, give the correct sender, or point to a simple and free way to opt out (lexfind.ch). The same letter exempts a seller who received the customer's contact details during a sale, mentioned the opt-out at that time, and advertises its own similar goods or services. A Swiss practitioner note adds that the rules on electronic advertising "gelten für juristische wie für natürliche Personen" (WEKA).

The Swiss text uses the word Massenwerbung, mass advertising. Neither source I read defines it, so I cannot tell you where a handful of hand-written emails stops being mass advertising. A sequence tool sending the same template to 200 Swiss contacts is clearly on the wrong side. I would not build a Swiss channel on the gap and would put that specific question to a Swiss lawyer.

Are cold calls and LinkedIn messages treated differently?

Calls, yes: Germany allows a call to a business on presumed consent, which it does not allow for email. LinkedIn messages, no: a promotional direct message is treated like email, and a connection request is only safe while it asks a question and sells nothing.

Phone in Germany: § 7 Abs. 2 Nr. 1 UWG requires prior express consent for calls to consumers and "zumindest mutmaßliche Einwilligung" for calls to other market participants (dejure.org). In BGH, 20 September 2007, I ZR 88/05, the court said a call to a business is allowed where "ein sachliches Interesse des Angerufenen an dem Telefonat vermutet werden kann", and that the presumed consent must extend "sowohl auf den Inhalt als auch auf die Art der Werbung" (Deutsche Handwerks Zeitung). In that case a company had taken a free listing in an online directory, the operator called to sell a paid listing, and the court held the call unlawful. An existing relationship of sorts did not make the sales call expected.

Phone in Austria and Switzerland: Austria requires prior consent for advertising calls under § 174 Abs. 1 TKG 2021, and the WKO notes that, unlike email, "gibt es von diesem Grundsatz keine Ausnahmen" (WKO). In Switzerland, Art. 3 Abs. 1 lit. u UWG bars calls that ignore the notation in the phone directory, and numbers without a directory entry count as marked (law.ch).

LinkedIn: the IT-Recht Kanzlei states that promotional InMails count as an unreasonable nuisance under § 7 Abs. 2 Nr. 2 UWG, that this applies to members of the same business network, and that a connection "kann nicht zwingend als Zustimmung" to advertising messages be read (IT-Recht Kanzlei). The article cites AG Düsseldorf, 20 November 2025, 23 C 120/25. I found no Austrian or Swiss source on LinkedIn specifically; I run those markets on the same reading.

The line I hold: the connection note asks a question about something the person posted or announced. No link and no offer.

Which channel is legal where: DE, AT, CH, NL and UK?

Germany, Austria and Switzerland need consent for cold B2B email; the Netherlands needs it too unless the business published the address for that purpose; the UK allows email to corporate bodies. The table is my working summary of the texts above, for B2B outreach to a company you have never sold to.

Sources for the NL and UK columns: the business-subscriber exception was added to art. 11.7 by Staatsblad 2008, 525, and ACM records the extension of the spam ban to businesses on 1 October 2009. ACM published the telemarketing change on 25 June 2026. The ICO says "You can email or text any corporate body", recommends a do-not-email list, and notes the guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act. For calls, the ICO says B2B callers screen against both TPS and CTPS.

Two cells deserve a caution. The UK "allowed" still sits under UK GDPR when the address is a named person's work email. The Dutch exception only covers an address the company designated for that purpose; a generic contact address on a website is not proof of that.

What happens if you send cold email into Germany anyway?

Usually an Abmahnung: a lawyer's letter demanding a signed cease-and-desist declaration with a contractual penalty, plus the cost of the letter. One email is enough to trigger it, and the claim does not depend on fault.

Who can act, per the Plutte overview:

1. Competitors and trade associations, under the UWG.
2. The recipient business itself, under §§ 823 Abs. 1 and 1004 BGB, as interference with its established business. The overview cites OLG Dresden (24 June 2024) for the point that a single spam email already counts.

The cost grows after the first letter. Once you sign the declaration, every further email to that recipient triggers the penalty. Plutte cites OLG Hamm accepting EUR 3,000 per email between merchants, and OLG München EUR 13,500 for several violations. Liability can reach the company, the agency that sent on its behalf, and possibly the managing director personally.

Austria enforces through administrative fines. The WKO lists up to EUR 50,000 for unsolicited electronic advertising and up to EUR 100,000 for unsolicited advertising calls under § 174 TKG 2021 (WKO). Switzerland is criminal law on complaint: Art. 23 UWG provides imprisonment of up to three years or a monetary penalty for intentional violations of Art. 3 (lexfind.ch).

GDPR sits on top whenever the address belongs to a person, which firstname.lastname@ always does. Recital 47 says direct marketing "may be regarded as carried out for a legitimate interest" (GDPR-Info), and that is the basis most senders rely on. I would not rely on it for an email that breaks § 7 UWG, because a balancing test is hard to win for a message the national law calls an unreasonable nuisance. The ceiling under Art. 83(5) is EUR 20 million or 4% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher (GDPR-Info). A small sender is far more likely to receive an Abmahnung than a GDPR fine of that size.

What do I run instead of cold email in DACH?

LinkedIn connection notes in formal Sie-form, referrals with the referrer named in the first line, and phone only where I can write down the reason for the call. My own numbers show how differently segments respond to that approach.

The rules on every DACH note:

1. Sie-form, surname, title where the person uses one.
2. Under 300 characters, built on one observation from the person's own profile, post or company news.
3. One question they can answer in a sentence. No link, no offer.
4. Two touches at most on a cold contact: the note, and one follow-up after acceptance.
5. For a referral, the referrer's name goes in the first line.

Here is what my own DACH LinkedIn outreach produced, pulled from HeyReach on 16 October 2026, all-time per segment. Every note was sent from my profile between August and September 2026.

These are small samples from one sender over two months. The hotel figure rests on three acceptances, and one more or one fewer would move it by about nine points. Use the table to see the method and the spread between segments; it is too small to be a benchmark.

What I take from it:

1. Acceptance varied by a factor of four between segments: 6.8% for PE operating partners, 27% for independent hotels, with the same note rules for both. In this sample the choice of list moved acceptance more than anything in the note.
2. Replies per acceptance were the same in all three segments, one in three (4 of 12 overall). Once a person accepted a specific Sie-form note, the conversation rate held.
3. The two-touch ceiling keeps the volume of unanswered contact low. Under it, the 12 who accepted could get one follow-up at most, and the 91 who did not accept got nothing after the request.

What I would not conclude is that hotels are a better market than private equity. Eleven requests cannot carry that claim, and the PE list was four times larger.

If you are choosing your first channel for DACH, email is off the table for cold contacts, so the decision is which segment will answer a stranger on LinkedIn. Test two segments with about 50 requests each before you build a long list.

I do this as part of European market entry work for US companies and for Dutch and German companies crossing into the neighbouring market. The GTM Sprint, from $3,500 over two weeks, includes an outbound system spec built for the target country's rules: which channels are legal, the touch limits, and the note templates in the right form of address.