Cold email and the law: B2B rules in Sweden

This is an overview, not legal advice. Our article on cold email that gets replies is about how to write the email. This one is about who may receive it, and it rests on the statute, the 2003 legislative bill and the EU directive behind the rule, because there is no leading Swedish ruling on B2B email to lean on.

The sections, in order

Marketing Act (2008:486), Section 19, first paragraph: a trader may use electronic mail for marketing to a natural person only if the person has consented in advance. The second paragraph is the existing-customer exception, with three conditions that must all be met: the address was obtained in connection with a sale to the person, the marketing concerns the trader's own similar products, and the person is given a clear and free way to object both when the address is collected and in every message. Section 20: every marketing email must contain a valid address to which the recipient can send a request that the marketing stop, and this expressly applies to marketing to a legal person too. Section 21: other methods of individual distance communication, such as an ordinary phone call, may be used unless the person has clearly objected.

The rule comes from the EU's directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC), Article 13, which requires prior consent for direct marketing by email to subscribers who are natural persons and leaves it to member states to protect the legitimate interests of legal persons in other ways. Sweden chose the address requirement in Section 20. In the bill of December 2003, which brought the consent rule into force on 1 April 2004, the government wrote that no further provisions protecting legal persons against unsolicited marketing should be introduced for the time being, and that the valid-address requirement would give them a better way to deal with it.

info@ versus firstname.lastname@

This is the question that decides whether your cold email campaign is lawful. An email to info@, contact@ or purchasing@ is addressed to the legal person: no consent needed, but the Section 20 address must be there and the general rules on good marketing practice apply. An email to [email protected] is addressed to a person by name. The statute protects 'a natural person' and does not distinguish private addresses from work addresses. The bill does not mention employees' work addresses at all, and neither the Consumer Agency nor IMY has published a position we could find. That does not make it forbidden, but no authority has said it is allowed either, and whoever emails thousands of named people without consent does so at their own risk.

The industry body SWEDMA writes on its page about opt-out registers that, as of September 2026, there are no working registers for companies and that marketing between companies and organisations is regarded as an important part of a functioning business community. That is the industry's view, and a reasonable one, but it is not law. Our recommendation is to treat an email to a named person as something that needs a reason: a prior contact, a call in which the person asked for information, or consent given through a form or at an event. Without such a reason, call first and email after the call. Then the email follows on from that contact instead of arriving unsolicited.

What GDPR adds on top

The Marketing Act and GDPR are two sets of rules that apply at the same time, not one replacing the other. The name and work address are personal data, so you need a legal basis for holding them in the CRM, normally legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f), and under Article 14 the person must be told no later than the first contact where the data came from and how to say no. Article 21 makes the objection to direct marketing absolute. How to document that balancing test is covered in our article on the legal basis for B2B prospecting. The practical result for the email is the same from both directions: a line on where you found the address and a working unsubscribe in every send.

The sanctions

The Consumer Ombudsman supervises the Marketing Act, and cases are decided by the Patent and Market Court. The market disruption fee under Section 29 is at least ten thousand kronor and at most four percent of the trader's turnover. We have found no Swedish ruling that deals specifically with cold B2B email, so treat claims of 'precedents' on other blogs with suspicion. What does exist is a body of telemarketing cases, which we went through in our article on the 2026 telemarketing rules, and they show that the Ombudsman acts when the volume is high and the complaints pile up.

The email that holds up under both sets of rules

1. Address it right: the company's role address when you have neither consent nor prior contact, the named person when you have a documented reason.
2. Name the source: 'I found your company in the trade register' or 'we spoke on Thursday'. It satisfies Article 14 and makes the email human.
3. Write a reason, not a pitch: Gong's analysis of more than 28 million cold emails shows pitching cuts reply rates by as much as 57 percent, and that three to four sentences get the most replies.
4. Unsubscribe in every email: a valid address or link under Section 20, which applies to legal persons too, and a CRM flag that stops the next send.
5. Follow up, once: Säljmotorn's analysis of 9,506 cold B2B emails in summer 2026 shows 25 percent of replies only came after a follow-up, while just 46 percent of recipients got one.

The safest cold email is the one that is not cold: the one that follows a call. Ring, say who you are and why, and ask whether you may send a summary. Then you have both the consent and an email the recipient is waiting for. In Salesprep's Cold call module you practise that call against an AI buyer who asks where you got their number, and in the Follow-up module the second call after the email. Every call is scored on seven metrics with a written comment per score. Three calls in the Cold call module are free, no card required, and Follow-up is available on Pro and up.