Automated cold e-mails for sales people?

I decided to teach myself some ruby this afternoon. The idea is that using Mustache, and a list of names, a salesperson would be able to automate some of the targeted e-mails they send to a market vertical. ie: Imagine going after a single industry and having target material including attachments, white papers and a good template. The offer can include coffee, along with their name and company. Looking for some feedback on usefulness compared to MailChimp or tools.

I made something like this a while back, but after some research I found that it's illegal to send unsolicited emails and you could be fined by the FTC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's ok to open source the code so people can use it at their own discretion, but making it into an actual product would run into legal troubles?

Honest question. Is this any different from spam?<p>The end users of MailChimp require double opt-in before being signed up for receiving news letters, email, whatever, etc. Your use of &quot;Automated cold e-mails&quot; in the headline sounds oddly similar of spam to me.