How do I send an email campaign to new, multiple contacts?

[Barbara]

I'm a new marketing director, so there are some things that I'm still learning. My company obtained a list of 30,000 contacts that they want to email about our new project (the contacts are from a business that we are dealing with, so that's how they are justifying it). They want me to find a email marketing company like iContact, ConstantContact, Benchmark, etc. I don't know how they expect that to fly, because most companies will require you to fill out some sort of form when you get over 50 contacts to verify these people want to receive the emails. These contacts (from what I know) don't even know about our company and I'm pretty sure what we are doing is breaking some ethical grounds...maybe even illegal? Or is it perfectly fine and there's a way to do it? I'm so confused. I never thought I would be in this kind of ethical position. Really disappointing.

[Jim]

Based upon my Inbox, I'm sure there are plenty of suppliers of spamming software.